(R)evolution of My Yard Part 1

It’s February in Seattle, and that means it’s time to start thinking about gardening. 2010 will be my first growing season with a fairly large space to call my own. This has it’s own set of challenges, but before I get into that, I want to tell you about how my partner, Double S, and I have made a garden and local, sustainable eating work during the past two summers–with limited space and limited resources.

The point being, you can do it too!

Double S and I used to live in a tiny third floor attic apartment in downtown Ballard. It was 325 square feet, an oasis amongst the trees. We called it The Treehouse, and we rocked it. We maximized the crap out of it. We cooked and made wine and baked and canned and had parties and made kombucha and made cheese and sewed and painted and lived it up.

We also negotiated our way into a garden plot.  We lived in The Treehouse three summers, composted everything, were the recipients of some sweet rabbit “tea” from our gardening whiz neighbor (needed especially because the soil was so depleted), and managed to create some sweet soil in our small plot. We grew tomatoes and corn and peas and potatoes and kale (we had kale for days!) and lettuce and onions and chard and…I feel a little verklempt just thinking about it.

We used pretty much every square inch of our 10′ by 20′ garden plot, and last summer (we were getting itchy to move) we added a bunch of food grade containers for tomatoes and herbs.

Our plot was irregularly shaped and we sometimes had problems with sunlight, especially in Pacific Northwest springs and early summers.  So we built cloches using old tomato cages and clear plastic sheeting, to gently urge our tomatoes to thrive until the (relatively) hot days of July and August.

In the summer of 2009, we were prepared as the season began.  We went to Seattle Tilth’s Plant Sale for starts. What an immense variety of species!  We had a fun day of designing our garden in the Spring rain.

We supplemented by joining Cascadian Edible Landscape’s plant start CSA. We didn’t have the space to start our own plants indoors, so this was a perfect option for us to get starts that were appropriate for the season, and to support an awesome new business endeavor. The folks at Edible Landscapes have a pretty ingenious idea. They offer a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) share for plant starts. You sign up at the beginning of the year, supporting the farmers and ensuring that you’ll get four seasons of plant starts. You pick your starts from a list of offerings and they are delivered to a neighbor’s driveway where you pick them up right when you should be planting them.

Timed perfectly. Well unless you move, but more on that later.  Also, in 2009, we tried our hand at more storage crops. Our garden was looking like gardens do in May, so organized, so full of promise. We had good luck dropping our chitted potatoes in this former compost pile.

We made hand painted garden signs to demarcate our crops. Ended up not needing the cauliflower and Brussel sprouts–not much luck with those brassicas other than kale. We learned a lot these first few years. Double S has gardened a lot in the past, but I was a newbie. I read what I could get my hands on, but nothing was like the actual experience of organic gardening for two years in a limited space with limited funds (gotta save for the homestead, yo!).

Crop rotation, say. We didn’t have the space to plant our peas in a different location–we needed the fence for trellising. And we got the same mildew issues in 2008 that we did in 2009. So there was learning!  We also found out that it takes a village to garden. If you go on as many trips as we do during the summer, you need some nice neighbors who will tend to your delicate shoots and sprouts.

We learned that not fully broken down compost will mostly work, but you’ll probably get a lot of fennel and squash in strange, hard to reach places. However, that lesson brought us a bonus: Double S mastered the art of of making crowd pleasing stuffed squash blossoms. Dust ‘em in eggwash, then drag ‘em through panko bread crumbs, and stuff ‘em with goat cheese. Then lightly fry, and voila, you’re getting oohs and ahhs from party guests.

Stay tuned for the next installment on the (R)evolution of my yard–farmers’ market perceptions debunked and the process of moving the homestead.

About the author: M.J. Briggs grew up in St. Louis, then spent seven years living it up in NYC before moving to Seattle. Now, finally with some space to give it a shot, Briggs is going to town with urban agriculture. Converting lawn to food, then canning, preserving and cooking the heck out of it! And maybe keeping chickens? Briggs blogs at ohbriggsy.wordpress.com.  Drop Briggs a line at ohbriggsy.gmail.com.

Related posts:

1. (R)evolution of My Yard Part 2
2. The (R)Evolution of My Yard Part 5: Green Everywhere
3. The (R)evolution of My Yard Part 3: Transplants and Seed Starting

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