Growing up in a suburb of Denver, Co I never really had the chance to really be exposed to much gardening outside of a couple of tomato plants on the side of the house. After we got this house I decided it was time to have a shor nuff garden of my own.
No more pesticides, fresh vegetables, canning a bounty of surplus tomatoes for our long 2 month winter. Yeah! thats what I want. Looking over our back forty I picked out the perfect spot. Having purchased a garden tiller months before, with this in mind, I began tilling. Wow – this is hard work. Better grab another glass of tea and a rag to wipe the sweat off.
To give you some ideal of what our yard looked like before we started the process of building our garden you can look at a picture of the front of our house and multiply it by 100 to picture the back yard. It was an over grown mess and thats understated at best.
This says it best
While I dont have a picture of what the garden looked like before we started, this picture does give you an ideal of what I was in for when I began. Not exaggerating, we had 3 full 1/2 simi trailer loads of shrubs, thees, bushes, and you name it, that the city had to picked up. We had to put it out by the street of course. At times (and I wish I had pictures) we had bushes and stuff piled on the street from one corner of our lots to the other. It was kind of embarrassing. They had to come with a crane thing-a-ma-bob to pick it all up.
We eventually got it cleared and began work on our garden. First we had to till all the roots and stuff out of the beds. Later we enlarged the first area that we would use for the garden.
The garden begins
dont despise small beginings
~~~~
I soon had a place tilled up and the ruck raked up that the tiller left behind. For you “non farmers” ruck is an urban term used by urban farmers to describe grass, weeds, roots, and any other junk that your tiller tills up.
Now, what to plant? A quick trip to the Urban Farm Store and we found a great selection of nifty things to plant. Oh Yeah Babe! look at those tomato plants and hay check out these eggplants. Whats that? you say we need to get some marigolds. Good ideal, I heard they will keep certain bugs away too. Better grab some of those squash plants too and don’t forget the zucchini. Oh man this is going to be great; no more trips to wal-mart. Were going to be living off the land. Yeah!!!! arrg arrg arrggg
We soon got our first plants in the ground and couldnt wait for the summer bounty that was ahead.
For diner that night we had some frozen green beans with our meal when all of a sudden a light went off. WE CAN GROW OUR OWN BEANS TOO! YEAHHH! I have never grown beans either so after diner I spent the rest of the evening reading about beens and looking at pictures on the internet of beans. Woo Hoo!
After hours of intense research I come to the conclusion that what we needed was a bean trellis. Yup, another trip to the Urban Farm Store. We got some 4X4s and some 2X4s and back home we went to build our bean trellis.
Ahhhhh doesn’t that look nice. Im already feeling the stress of city life roll away.
(click on pictures to enlarge)
Now, what about some cucumbers? And oh yeah, some luffas too. For you city folk, luffas are those things you find you your tipical fancy bath store that look like a sponge. No, they dont come from the sea. You grow them. Sounded fun to me, so after some research we began building the trellis.
Nice trellis
I built the cucumber trellis out of a hog panel that I bought at the farm store. If the cucumbers don’t work out I will be one up on my hog pen. The neighbors are going to love that (BIG SMILE) just kidding Trevor. I curved the panel over and tied it to some 2×2 stakes. Looked like a great trellis to me.
its a luffa plant - WOW
But wait! I screamed, arising from a deep sleep, covered in sweat. We forgot about the corn! The garden would have to be bigger.
The next morning, out came the tiller again. I tilled up more of the yard and moved the monkey grass so the neighbors wouldnt really notice that I was turning my yard into a major agriculture project.
lookin good
~~~~
What kind of urban farmer would I be without a compost bin? With all this golden material I must make my own dirt too. More research. The neat thing about this phase of the garden project is that I already had all the materials and didnt have to buy anything but the 4X4s. I used some old fence materials that I had taken down when tearing out the overgrown yard. Im very happy with the way it turned out and. Just ask my wife what I say when I find a perfectly good banana peel in the garbage can in the house. What a waste. why dont you know? This is GOLD I say as we both laugh. She is such a great sport. Now its old hat for her and nothing gets wasted. What a great urban farm wife she is!
There's GOLD in them there boxes
~~~~~~~
Dont go away, there is more to come. Im just out of time for now… Be Blessed!
