Spring Gardening Peparations

It's Easter weekend and temperatures are in the mid-50's. Here in Michigan we're not out of the woods yet for an occasional morning frost, so we will have to hold off on planting anything significant that is frost sensitive. But I couldn't resist doing some garden prepping today anyway.

We added an additional above ground bed today.

These modular kits were purchased at Home Depot. They are economical and readily available, but the best part is that as your gardening efforts expand your gardening can easily expand also.

We also prepared our Earthbox gardening area with some additional leveling pedestals. These were actually recycled from our backyard. The previous owners used the pavers in the backyard, so re-purposing them was pretty easy.

In the next couple of weeks we will finish leveling the pavers and prepare our Earthboxes. The backyard deck works well because our vegetables have a practical place to "climb".

Backyard Farming (Gardening)

Whether you call it farming or gardening makes no difference to me. I rather like the sound of farming, but based on overall scale it's really probably closer to gardening than farming. Nonetheless I am growing food in my small urban backyard.

I have neighbors on all four sides and some of them are a little on the "particular" side (some might call it "picky" even). A few of them mow their yards twice per week and I have no doubt if it rained a little bit more one of them would probably go to mowing three times a week.

With that as a backdrop, I wanted to share some pictures of our small backyard food production strategy which includes 10 Earthboxes, a 4' x 4' above ground bed, a 4' x 20' in ground bed, 4 miscellaneous containers, and a canvas bag hanging from a metal pole made for holding bird feeders.

Strawberrie in a repurposed flower pot

A hanging bag laying horizontal

A "hanging" bag

An Earthbox growing peas



Above ground bed with onions, radishes, carrots, and two blackberry bushes.

 Folks in states located south of Michigan are probably harvesting produce in large quantities at this point of May, but we had two nights of hard frost no less than 2 weeks ago. I grow impatient at this point of the northern growing season, but you know what they say, "good things come to those who wait".

15 Reasons to Grow Your Own Food

It's probably not possible to grow everything you eat. Even if you grow an organic garden in your backyard, grow your own chickens, rabbits, and goats, it might prove difficult to swear off processed foods completely.  This article from Rodale.com provides some pretty good reasons why it's important to understand the food we are eating: The 15 Grossest Things You Are Eating.

Growing your own food doesn't need to be expensive.
This above ground bed was purchased for $30 from Home Depot.
It's hard to see because we just planted it, but this 4' x 4' bed
contains 3 rows of onions, a row of carrots, a row of radishes,
3 collard greens, and 2 blackberry bushes. Eventually the bushes will
take over, but in the meantime I'm taking advantage of every
square inch of growing space.