Urban Farmers Produce Nearly All Their Food With Backyard Garden

[chlamor]

Berkeley: Urban farmers produce nearly all their food with a sustainable garden in their backyard

by John Fall

There is nothing unusual about sitting down to a nice salad for lunch during the summer. What makes the salads prepared by Jim Montgomery and Mateo Rutherford different is that almost every component has been grown, raised or made in their West Berkeley backyard -- the purple endive, the lettuce, the tomatoes, the carrots, the green beans and even the feta cheese.

When they skip adding nuts or avocados, then every part of the salad was planted, fertilized, grown and processed at their home. If they added a hard boiled egg or smoked duck meat, those elements too would have been produced behind their house.

"What we take from the garden and animals goes into the kitchen, and garden waste goes to the animals," Montgomery said. Without pause, Rutherford added, "And the animal waste goes into the garden."

The approximately 6,000-square-foot yard, just off of San Pablo Avenue, provides generous space for a bustling urban farm. From the street it is impossible to tell that the property holds everything from apple trees to tomato vines, rabbits to goats, and chickens to domesticated pigeons.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/07/23/EBG247MA251.DTL&type=news

[slor]

1. Cool...thanks for posting.

We may all need to do this soon!

[chlamor]

2. We DO need to

do this NOW. It takes a while to get a really fruitful garden established, a couple of years. Don't wait. Act as if your life depended on it. It Does.

Seed to Seed-Suzanne Answorth

Four Seasons Gardening- Eliot Coleman

The Natural Way of Farming- Masanobu Fukuoka

[Extend a Hand]

4. thanks for the links

We are just starting this year. I've been using a book called
Square-Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. We planted an apple tree and two pear trees.

Unfortunately, we live in a neighborhood with a lot of restrictions so we are trying to get ready to sell by next spring. But should things really tank and we can't sell we'll have a start; if we can sell we can take what we've learned with us :)

[chlamor]

5. Sprouts

and John Jeavons book on Biointensive Gardening

Sprouts are packed with nutrients. Don't let them get too big 3-5days depending on seed. Year round goodies.

Peace

[WhiteTara]

9. new research shows that the double digging

greatly disturbs the micro organisms.  Better to plant close,
mulch and feed from the top.

[dcfirefighter]

7. I used this book to

plant my first garden a month ago. I've got a 4x4 plot, and a ~1x8 trellis. My sugar peas, cucumbers and beans are starting nicely. I transplanted tomatoes, peppers, and an eggplant. I've got about 20 other species in various stages of sprouting.

I also, on a lark, planted a section of the 'three sisters', as done by the native americans: corn, beans, and squash planted on small hills. I hope this does well.

I looked for the jeavons book, but it wasn't to be found without mail ordering it.

[Extend a Hand]

8. Good Luck

I'll be interested to hear how your garden grows :). I got started kind of late so I purchased seedlings this past weekend instead of getting to start from seed. Unfortunately, we had frost warnings and a late spring snow so I'm hoping to get my planting done this next weekend.

[eridani]

6. Exactly. This is economics at its most basic

That is, if you can't eat it, drink it, wear it, build a house with it, or burn it to keep warm, then to hell with it.

[Warpy]

3. I've really missed having a kitchen garden

and I garden intensively, so I get a tremendous amount of food out of a little 10x10 plot.

However, the southwest has been in 7 years of drought, something that appears to be over this winter, but the summer will tell. Irrigation water has become so expensive that buying produce is cheaper than growing it.

If the monsoon rains don't fizzle out again, I may believe the drought is over, and break ground for next year's garden. I'd dearly love to have one.