The Back Yard Garden

One of the goals of Urban Farming is to take it on with the same reckless abandon that people take on cooking.The outcome should be the same,be prepared to eat what you produce.

I started the back yard garden in the spring of 2008.  We removed an aluminum play set that our daughter out grew, and cut down an oak tree in preparation of a 3 season porch. I decided to plant a as assortment of vegetables from the local garden center, and was pleasantly surprised by the outcome of the harvest in late summer and early fall. The oak tree stump remained as the main obstacle for two years, I worked around the stump, and chopped the assortment of oak sprouts that appeared like hardened weeds around the edge.  the stump was cut to ground level, but was still about two feed across, and the roots spread out further.  At first I thought of using a treatment that poured chemicals into the stump, drenched it in kerosene, and light it on fire.  My better judgement took hold, having that much chemicals in my garden didn't make sense, so in 2010 I paid a to have the entire stump and roots grounded.

The 2010 season was the first time I had an even ground to grow a garden.  I don't have  much property to begin with, and every square foot is precious.  For the 2010 season I had 10 x 10 sq feet.  I started using a  "Boardwalk" layout with one 6 in by 8 in plant down the middle, and two other planks cut in half by 4 foot planks to break the garden into6 zones zones. This made it easy to plan, plant, and maintain.   I put a fence around the garden in an attempt to keep animals out.  The garden was a great success, though I was surprised by the lack of bees around to pollinate the plants.

This year, 2011 I started early.  Aggressively getting the garden prepared in mid-March, expanding the garden to 16 x 12 ft, and 9 zones (think tic tack toe). I  even tried planting lettuce, swiss chard, peas and argula before the end of March in four of the zones.  What a mistake!  A late winter storm on April 1st left an inch of snow on the ground.  I covered the effected zones so they were not directly effected by the snow, but the chilly, damp winter festered throughout Metrowest Massachusetts like a band cold until the end of May.

Little of what I originally planted survived.  I replanted almost everything the first  weekend in June. I found a single swiss chard plant that was no more than 4 inches high, even though it was planted over 60 days ago.  Ideally, the replanting should have been done in May, but we had one of the wettest and coldest in a long time. 

I have peas, cucumber and squash plants that are outdoors and already blooming.  I started some bean plants indoors under the grow lamp, and transplanted them outdoors- most of them were about 4-5 inches high. I planted radishes last year, but didn't like them.  It turned out the radishes went to seed and spread like weeks through the garden.  Unfortunately there is still a shortage of bees and a surplus or squirrels within the neighborhood.

Urban Farmers can be a victim of the weather, and the unpredictability of New England weather is no exception. You can only take good notes on your trials, successes and failures so that the lessons learned from one season and apply it to future years. I have some ideas on how to plant the garden better, but I need to wait for next spring to turn those ideas into action.   For now, I wait patently for this year's garden harvest to begin.