Tuesday, December 7, 2010

What does any of this have to do with urban farming?

So I started the orchard and it is finally starting to take root but something happened during that time. I needed a place to test out different fruit varieties in less drastic conditions. I started putting in a plant here and a tree there at the house in town. By the way, we live in downtown San Marcos, TX and it is a great little town. The orchard is about 15 miles outside town in the country.

Here is a picture of our house.



Slowly but surely I started taking up space in the yard. I would run out room and start digging up the non-edible plants around the yard. I had never taken notice before but there were a lot of invasive crap plants around the house. We had lots of Ligustrum and Hackberries.

Everytime I took out one plant, I put in two or three edibles. I realized that the perimeter of the yard is the best place to start. I have about .29 of an acre lot so it isnt huge but not small. If you take a lot that is 1/4 acre, you basically have a perimeter of a little more than 400 feet. If you maximize fruit tree plantings with dwarf varities, you can fit nearly 40 trees on the edge of your property. Of course you need to make room for the driveway, sidewalks, etc.

Filling in the insides is the hard part. You need to find a spot for a garden or two. This will take up prime sun spots in the yard so only do it if you are ready to take care of a garden. I only have a 10x12 area set aside for this and I dont use it to its potential. Frankly, I dont like gardening but I do it to stay in touch with the soil and pests in the yard. Tomatoes are great and I get to try many unusual annuals that I will cover later. I would say it is more of a testing bed if anything.

Raised beds are good for plants, bushes and trees if you have poor soil, clay soil, poor drainage and rocks. Everything I grow in a raised bed seems to do better. I started breaking the interior of the yard into sections I could plant and areas that were shaded out by the Pecan trees. YES, we have lots of Pecans in the yard which is good but they shade out so much of the areas that I cant plant in large sections. I have been experimenting with shade tolerants and I will cover that in detail later on.

This was a newly built raised bed in the front yard.



Something to remember about shady areas is that they are not always shady year round. Some spots that are beneath a deciduous (drops leaves in winter) tree will get lots of light from fall to early spring. Some plants produce fruit during that time period and can get enough light to produce before they get shaded out again. This is a more likely senario in the south rather than nothern yards. Serviceberries are a great example of shade tolerant trees that get enough light in early spring to produce fruit.

Exhale.

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