Suburban Permaculture Project

Ok, update: we ate our first strawberry out of the garden last week, and this week we had our first harvested broccoli. Apparently there are little grub worm things that like broccoli, but gryphynshadow  managed to pick them out when cooking, so I don't think we got too much extra protein from that. She has planted the heirloom tomato seedlings she started, 7 of them (I'll let her update you on the varieties and which are doing better or worse) and has shared a bunch of them with laughingturtle  as well. LT reports that something is attacking said tomatoes and is planning on spraying them with a soap nut mix to see if that solves the problem.

We have the chicken pen almost finished enough to bring the chickens over (taking long enough, isn't it?), we just need to add the roof. Then it will be time to find some food-grade DE to paint the wooden parts of the will-be-a-coop and treat the litter with. We are planning to try the deep litter method, so I'm on the lookout for side-of-the-road plywood to add an edge to the coop area to contain the litter. We still haven't figure out how the best way to add a rain barrier roof over the coop area, but we have some ideas we are bouncing around, so hopefully we will solve that one soon.

Progress in the yard has been slightly delayed by the Evil-Cold-of-Neverending-Lethargy that is making it's way through the family, and by us taking a weekend to work on our yurts for Flipside with errantember , but we hope to have at least the chickens moved over before we head out to that in May.

The spinach apparently either went in too late to take advantage of the cool weather, or needs to be planted on a side of the house that isn't quite so sunny and warm, as it has all gone to seed.gryphynshadow  dutifully saved the seeds when it bolted, so while we didn't get edible spinach, we did get the beginning of future spinach out of them.

The peppers lost their blossoms to the last cold snap, but those that had already set are doing their darndest to become peppers we can eat. And the accidental-pumpkins are blossoming as well.

The compost is doing better, and our daughters were absolutely enthralled to learn what our son already knew; that when you play outside, the mommies LIKE it when you pee in the compost.

goudananda  has offered to be on the lookout and try to get a hold of some barrels for us to use for rainwater catchment, so hopefully by the end of the season we can get a hold of a few of those and go about converting them to harvest rain off the roof.

Chicken pen progress, this pic is slightly outdated, as I have actually taken the pile of salvaged brick from the garden-bed-against-the-house removal and placed them inside the pen around the edge to discourage chicken digging of holes beneath the fence.

future peppers! Our first strawberry! wheee!! It was delicious...we shared it between gryphynshadow , myself, and our friend tazfromtx  who was over at the moment of harvest (clever timing) and all agreed it tasted far superior to store purchased strawberries.

Pumpking blossoms! Broccoli! They got slightly larger than this, but not by much, and then we harvested....I don't remember if GS said that was because she couldn't wait, or because they were starting to open up and preparing to bolt, but either way, it was tasty.

Progress is slow so far, but we have accomplished a few things. Since they happened before we started the blog, let me catch you up. :)

We have put in a compost pile. When I say "we" in this instance, what I mean is that I helped weed to provide things for the compost pile and gryphynshadow  did all the rest of the work. There was some confusion for a while as to why it wasn't heating up (the germinating pumpkin seeds in the middle were sort of a clue we were doing something wrong). But G got on the internet and discovered that one of our problems is that (duh!) bone dry stuff does not rot. She has begun watering it, and we are getting some heat in one, though nothing in the other. Still not sure what the problem is there.



We also (and again, I mostly mean her, I bought the plants though! lol) planted three strawberry plants,  a row of broccoli, and a row of brussels sprouts on the south side of the house. Then, with some help from the visiting errantember , we (and I actually do mean "we" this time) put in three Earth Boxes worth of onions. The Earth boxes are left over from my container gardening era before I had a capable human to live with and could contemplate other methods of growing food. I've had good luck with them in the past, but this will be the first time I've tried them without their plastic cover (which I don't have any more of now) so I'm curious to see if they perform as well as they did with all their intended pieces.




Oh, the red thing in the photo? That's the painted stump from one of the four trees we had removed before we installed the privacy fence.

So that's where we stand right now; couple of rows of plants put in at the tail end of the recommended planting season, a stubbornly cool compost pile, and big ideas!

The next step will be putting in the chicken pen.....