Farms: Suburban Farming - Farming with limited space in mind
Productivity | Information | History | View | Quality
Live in a small lot in the city or suburbs? Did you know that you can still produce a decent amount of food for yourself? Here in the U.S about 80% of us call the city or the suburbs our home but why can't we produce some of our own food too! In this video I give a quick tour of some of the ways in which we are utilizing space around our yard to grow food. It is a work in progress but much progress has been made in the last 18 months since we started this venture. The goal for us is to produce as much of our own food as possible for now and eventually produce all of our own vegetables and fruit for the year. We started with the chickens last year and some small garden spaces. The chickens have been the highest producers and most impactful addition to our small homestead. We feed them our food scraps and they graze in our yard; in return they produce 6 eggs per day for our family. That is a lot of eggs! Chickens are probably the only real livestock that we will be able to have here on our small lot and they are a perfect fit here. The first gardening step we took was to watch the amount of sun that we get in various areas of the yard. Unfortunately the best area for gardening at our home is also the septic tile field and cannot be used. We decided to start with raised bed gardens. closer to the house in a hilly location where traditional gardening would not work well. WE current are using 6 3'X6' raised bed garden boxed made for free from pallets. These have been able to produce many pounds of sugar snap peas, over 180 carrots, 72 onions, over 15-20 cucumbers per week, basil, lettuce, dill, spinach, cilantro, and a potato harvest coming soon. You can pack a lot of food into a few square feet with the square foot gardening method. Along our privacy fence we have about 96' of space that was not being used. this does not get full sun all day but it gets plenty for more than half. A garden bed was cleared along the fence about 36" wide and amended with compost, peat, and some sand. WE then layered planting here so that we have some climbing or taller plants in the back along the fence, some tomatoes a along, vining plants along the front bottom edge and some corn plants scattered along the front edge in between the tomatoes. This is proving to be a very dense and efficient way to plant along this area and will produce a huge amount of food for us this year. In the back of the property we sectioned off a small 20' X 20' area and plants 6 apple trees. We covered the ground with free mulch from the city park and we now have an orchard in the makings. As these tress grow and produce more and more each year we will eventually be able to make apple cider, apple cider vinegar, pies, canned apples, and dried apple fruit snacks for long terms storage. We have also landscaped up near our house and instead of flowers and bushes have plants an herb and strawberry garden. This will be a perennial garden and will continue to become more diverse each year. We also utilize space between other landscaped areas for tomatoes, cabbage, peas, beans, sunflowers, and flowers to attract pollinators. Even though these are smaller scattered spaces they have proven to be very productive. Each year the gardens grow, a few more fruit trees are planted, a few more raised beds are built, and more land is cleared from grassy nothingness to food producing farmland. Although we are not buying a combine yet the small suburban farm is an ever expanding adventure that we will never be finished with. Thanks for tagging along to see how the SSL Family grows in the suburbs. General Store - http://astore.amazon.com/simpsubulivi-20 Please check us out at www.simplesuburbanliving.com and follow us on.... http://www.pinterest.com/simplesuburban/ http://www.facebook.com/simplesuburbanliving http://www.twitter.com/simplesuburban5 http://www.instagram.com/simplesuburbanliving
Comments
-
hey bro what times do you plant your potatoes?
-
you can put a rolling pen with a doz. hens therein, upon yon productive ground shall they fertilize each setting with fowl shattment.
-
Great video! We are building a home in the country and will also have a big area of land with septic and pipes underneath. Is there anything that can be done with that land that would be productive/sustainable but mobile in case we have to access what is underneath?
-
Real nice. Very informative.
-
Very Nice!
-
Your doing a great job in the back yard and your use of space is nice.. I built a raised garden bed 100 sq feet of planting space and built a large firepit area in our back yard. One important feature of our back yard is the Perennial Gardens which bring plenty of Bumblebee and Honey bees which in turn pollinate our vegetables. Bees are our Friends. Feel free to check out my channel. Thanks for posting a great video SSLFamilyDad. :)
-
nice set-up....a word to the wise....watch that Lemon Bee Balm....it will take over
-
I wanted to start Apples from seed. How long does it take to get apples off those trees?
-
I sure would like to know what planning zone you are in
-
hello great videos you ever think about going from ginger? there's not check out some of my videos
-
For all of your crops; did you start with seed from a store or from small plants? This was my first year attempting to grow some typical fruits/veggies and they didn't take well at all from seed from the store. Just wondering if you had a video or method on the best way to get started from nothing.
-
I'm really just getting started at this and I'm glad I found your station.
-
The garden looks so healthy. Great idea for the trellis. Bet you're enjoying a lot of great fresh veggies.
-
with how eggs are going up in price I feel like getting chickens. Its nice how you got things going on with fruit tree's and the garden. I like watching your video's keep them coming. did you finish the bee hive?
-
Is there any reason you couldn't add a gate to your fence and have a garden in the field behind you?
-
Not sure what the animals are like in your area but do you do anything to keep mice, rats, rabbits, slugs, or other critters from eating all of your vegetables? I notice you don't have any fencing or chicken wire. Thanks!
-
Not sure if you were aware, but apples don't grow true from seed. You will probably end up getting apples that look more like wild apples (golf ball size) or crabapples than grocery store apples. You may have to graft some branches onto those apple trees you planted to get anything edible.
-
Looks great.
-
Im not an expert by any means but have you considered a few rabbits? if legal of course. here we cant keep anything outside except dogs and cats but Ive raised rabbits before in other places. for the amount of feed the return of meat is very favorable. The droppings are one of the best fertilizers. Just have to be careful like with all natural fertilizers not to burn the plants. I was always encouraged to keep rabbits as a kid. What droppings werent utilized by us or other family, the neighbors were always finding uses for.
-
Are the apple and pear trees between the raised beds and the fence dwarf varieties? They look like they will shade out the raised beds when they get bigger. Love the cameo appearance from the boss at the end there:)