I wanted to put out a really quick post today about using the space you have for gardening. There’s all kinds of Pinterest ideas and books about gardening in really small places. As always, I would recommend a gardening journal to keep track of your ideas, and results. Also, it seems to require a creativity and willingness to try things.

Myself? I’ve had LOTS of failures, but lets call them experiments instead. Does every experiment prove the theory? Does every attempt end up working exactly as planned? 

What fun would that be?

I’ll tell you a little secret; I plant things too close almost every year in my little urban farm. I choose not to berate myself about it because I’m just an ambitious gardener-I dream large and abundantly. (I'm sure my neighbors would back this up 😀)

This is part of our front veggie garden. Two raised beds 5'x10' hold dirt, bunny manure, and the following veggies grown from my seeds: strawberries, pumpkins, Zucchini, cucumber, tomatoes, eggplants, bush beans, peppers, and decorative corn. In the background from left to right are blackberries, pear trees, cherry trees, and an apple tree. True, I can barely get in there to prune the vines and harvest, but it pleases me to look at it and think about the jungle I've created.

These are my manure spreaders.

The squashes growing on the front fence have to be 'encouraged' to stay there every week or so. 

This is this morning's harvest. Squash vine tips are yummy stir fried with soy sauce and garlic. 

So I encourage the same for you. Dream as large as you dare each spring and see how that changes over your years. You might be surprised with what you are willing to try and the way that bounty, and sometimes the lack thereof, teaches you about gardening, soil, and yourself. 

Blue Skies

For those of you reading this who know me personally, you know that we are hoping to move our family and critters to a hobby farm inside of 2 years from now, hopefully less. I tell people that I’ve tried lots of things in my Saint Paul yard and that I’ve now outgrown my tiny lab and need a bigger one.

In the interim, in part because I get the comment frequently, “I can’t believe you do all this while you live in the city!”, I’ve decided to bend my blog to something with a little more focus. Exactly how much can my tiny portion of Mother Earth create? While I long to have the ability to do more than I can do while we are here, I’m still proud of what I have accomplished already and I think it would be interesting to showcase that.

So to that end, I’ll post some pictures of where we are now in the wheel of the year as we move into harvest season, and challenge myself both to see how much I can do and create, AND how much I can demonstrate and encourage.

My mom made this ceramic toad years ago and it graces my perennial garden.

 This is my back garden. 2 raised beds, 1 with things rabbits like to eat, and the other with overflow tomato and eggplant seedlings and a few herbs.

These are white currents growing in th front yard, next to the rhubarb and blackberries.

This is the view to the street out front. You can see the pumkins clearly in the begginning of world domonation. I hope we don't loose the mail carrier as she hacks her way thru the jungle 

to deliver our mail.

More of the front garden with: Cleome flowers free seeded for the humming birds, pumkins, zucchini, pear trees, cherry trees, and blackberries.

Front raised beds with: decorative corn, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, pumpkins.

King of the North grapes growing on the side fence. 

Seed starting; Go boldly but simply.

In the spirit of getting ready for the next season, I thought I would take the next couple posts to lay out some of my plans in the garden for 2017 and perhaps a rehashing of what worked and what didn’t in the years past.

A friend of mine recently asked about seed starting and what recommendations I had. I could likely have begun an expanded version of that conversation here in blog-land by stating my vast experience from when I owned and ran a CSA. However, the truth is, I’m sure I did do seed starting all wrong in those years for that kind of business. In that venture, what’s needed are proven varieties that grow in a wide range of conditions, mature predictably, harvest with good structure, and maintain their own post-harvest freshness and appearance. It’s not romantic at all but very effective.

What I wanted in those years was popping color, an array of unusual varieties, and amazing flavor. Oh yeah, I also had this vision of having the hours in the day to save my own seeds, which, among other things, necessitates the making of tiny, pollinator proof cages to house parent varieties that I would then get up at the crack of dawn and hand pollinate and then mark for later seed saving. I know, it’s OK to laugh at my ideas of how much time I would have. The amazing Hmong farmers I formed relationships with were polite enough to not openly mock me. They were, to a family, masters of a kind of efficiency I only dreamed of. Generations of hard-scrabble mountain farming in Laos left their elders with real knowledge of farming when what you grew might very well be all you had to eat. If you ever had dreams of learning the ropes, apprenticing even for a day of harvest with one of these families would never been time wasted.

But grow things, I did, and they were beautiful and bountiful. Now that I’m the master gardener of my city lot only, and don’t even sell very much, I could go whole hog with my seed fantasies. But falling on my face a few times a season running a small farm did teach me to marry the two visions and that I could have all the unique beauty, but temper my exuberance with a healthy dose of keeping things simple.

I have just a couple sources for seeds and sometimes, I just buy the darn plant, already well on its way. I buy seeds almost exclusively from Baker Creek (http://www.rareseeds.com/), hands down the best garden-porn in the catalog industry. They support heirloom varieties and put a great deal of time and effort into finding and rescuing our planet’s ancient seeds, tiny little treasures of culture that deserve a place. I also usually will buy a few from Seeds Savers (http://www.seedsavers.org/), Seeds of Change (http://www.seedsofchange.com/), and for market gardening varieties that work, Johnny’s (http://www.johnnyseeds.com/). And don’t start seeds inside unless you have an actual greenhouse of some sort to transfer them to more than 6-8 weeks before the last possible frost date for your area. It’s easy to get excited and plant them in early February, here in MN, but they run the risk of getting leggy and are prone to disease indoors.

I bought a small seed starting mat, like a heating pad for soil, and used a soil block maker from Johnny’s that would make the soil into tiny blacks to optimize my small area on the mat. It means you have to replant within a week or so of the tiny spouts emerging, but when your seed starting in your house in the kitchen counter, being able to take up a small space is important. I always had a small thermometer so I knew if the soil was too hot or not hot enough. There are charts for each veggie, but I shot for about 80 degrees Fahrenheit and that worked well because I had a mix of tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, okra, strawberries, certain flowers that like it hotter to germinate. Sometimes I would have to mess around with covering the flat and plants with towels to get the temperature up and remove them if it got too hot. Then the little seeds would emerge and I would carefully replant them in flats with bigger soil plugs and try, with varying success not to mix up the variety tags. They would go into a shelf in my kitchen window with lights and then I boosted the efficiency of the light by using tin foil to reflect it back onto them instead of spilling into my kitchen.

The best thing about this whole process is that seeds, by their very nature, want to grow. The Mother has made that their only purpose and with a couple tools and careful attention, most of my seeds sprouted just fine. So rustle up your courage and order those seed catalogs. You’ll spend way more at the garden stores and never get the variety if you don’t start them yourself.

Blue Skies, All.

Poop, it's everywhere!

That's right, poop is everywhere in our tiny urban farm. And over the last few years we have come up with a pretty good system for cycling organic matter into poop and then into organic matter again. So let's talk poop.

First off I want to say that having chickens has really changed the way we deal with our kitchen waste because let me tell you, chickens will eat just about anything!

Into this humble container on our counter goes all our kitchen waste. This includes coffee grounds, yucky lettuce, onion skins, the crusts of sandwiches that my toddler absolutely refuses to eat no matter what goodness is on the rest of the bread, and everything in between. And, ready for this? Other chicken's bones and anything meat-like. Remember hearing that birds roughly descended from dinosaurs? Well, they will happily eat each other under the right circumstances without any hesitation.

(They will also catch and eat mice. See that mouse tail? Bet you'll never look at chickens in quite the same way again.)

So each day, one of us dumps the bucket into the coop for the ladies. Now, they don't eat some things, like coffee grounds. But they do dig through it and pick out what they want and this keeps happening every day, all day long, this digging. All those articles about turning your compost to get it to decompose faster? Momma aint got time for that, so I let the chickens do it for me. In the meantime, they are also pooping all over the place and digging that in, too, so it becomes a very hot mess. And by hot mess, I mean FULL of nitrogen and way too 'hot' to put on the garden or use directly, not to mention full of bacteria that's dangerous to have on things your going to eat. (Salmonella outbreaks on spinach from animal waste?)

So twice a year, my awesome husband digs it all out of there back down to the dirt (or so, it's not scientific at all) and it goes into one of those dumb round plastic round compost bins someone gave us a few years ago. In theory, your supposed to turn this compost, how? I have no idea, but we just let the hot mess rest in there for a full season. While it's in there getting rained, snowed and sunned on, the nitrogen amount leaches out some and it becomes safe for plants. Also, it magically fills with worms that come from...well, I don't have an answer for that, but they get in there.

From there, it goes into these awesome stack- able bins. This way, when it's ready, I don't need a forklift or husband to move it around. I just remove one from the stack and take it where I want to put it. Sometimes I dig it in and sometimes I don't bother and just top-dress. That cycle takes about a year for chicken waste to become safe and wonderful for plants. By the time it's done, it does not stink at all and we do screen it to get out the big twigs and bits that are too big to do well.

(An old crib mattress covered with hardware screen and secured with zip-ties works great. We dump in on in shovels full and push it back and forth across the screen with a rake into another of these bins.)

Then we got rabbits, and believe me, that changed the whole equation around here. If you've never experienced how much poop 3 adults rabbits can make along with their offspring, it's pretty amazing. And here's the real beauty of it. While they are much more sensitive to freshness and toxins than chickens, in the warm months thay eat a lot from our yard, maybe as much as 50% of their diet. Plus their manure is so mild, no resting period is required, it can go directly on the garden!

I researched on Pinterest, and this blog Rise and Shine Rabbitry, what kinds of organic matter is OK for bunnies. From my garden they get: mint, dill, parsley, french sorrel, lettuce, grass, raspberry and blackberry leaves and canes and twice daily clippings from my willow, which they eat leaves, twigs and all.

We set up this collection system under the main hutch to make it easier.

Another example of the way I started using their manure is in one of my raised beds. Last winter we turned this into a hoophouse and the bunnies spent the winter in it in their cages. When spring came, I pulled off some of the 12 inch layer of manure mixed with bedding straw and covered my front vegetable patch. But the rest we just left right where it was in the raised bed and I planted seeds right into it with great success.

You can see at the edges of this picture that we have left the frame of the hoophouse up since we plan to house bunnies in here again for next winter. I'm using it to trellis beans on for now and it just makes less work to take it down and put it back up all the time.


It's pretty clear that the greens in this picture: mustard, spinach, lettuces, chard and some Bull's Blood beets are very much enjoying this layer of composted manure to grow in. The jury is still out about how other, less nitrogen hungry crops like tomatoes and peppers, will like this, but I think winging it has proved fairly successful so far for us.


So until next time, keep winging it and enjoy summer!

Big Spring Shows up

Spring is in high gear around our place and we have a lot of exciting developments.

Both of our rabbit does have kindled, about a week apart, just like last time. The pictures show pretty clearly the developmental differences in just a week. 

Both does are caring for their litters really well so far and built very soft nests from their hair. I lined the metal baskets we are using for nests boxes with thin towels this time instead of the cardboard I used last time. I was worried about them getting too hot as temps climb and it seems to be working. I originally had them in there with just straw, but the basket has holes so wide the first litter of babies were actually wiggling out of the holes and onto the floor of their cage. Luckily it was a warm evening so they didn’t get chilled, but I was pretty surprised to come home at 10 PM to 3 babies out of the nests and one stuck midway. They are all safe, though and now that I lined their nest with the towel, all of them are staying in there fine. It’s a good example of making sure to really watch when any animals are little. 

One of the things that surprised me about baby bunnies is that despite their hairless, helpless appearance, they squirm around a lot looking for their momma. I still don’t ever actually see the mommas on the nests nursing, but now I don’t worry after reading that  they just don’t do that. They get on the nest and nurse in the night a couple times and that’s it; more might draw predators, instinct tells them.

The plants are all doing pretty well but I either need to pot them up into larger pots or put them in the ground soon. Weather isn’t that great this week with clouds and low temps, so I might pot some of them up tomorrow or alternatively I’l plant them and them cut some polyspun row cover fabric to cover them with. It’s works really well to keep the temps a few degrees warmer this time of year without going to all the bother of bringing them into the house on a cold night.

I’m increasing the size of the side garden a little this year, shocking  to no one, especially my husband. I just don’t see the point of trying to grow grass somewhere that gets that high of traffic. I think I might plan a mix of perennials, another fruit tree or two, and some hardscape for our patio table. I love to eat outside with the kids and write and have my morning coffee, so this seems like a perfect solution.

The fruit trees are doing really well and I hope to add a couple this year. Everything’s basically flowered already.

I was surprised to see some swelling flower ends on my Asian pear, indicating fertilized flowers. Pears don't fertilize well in general and it's not uncommon for small growers like myself to spend a little time hand pollinating with a paind brush. The stamens don't seem to have a lot of pollen and they also flower in temps that bees are pretty lathargic.Plus, my other Asian pear died last year and I didn’t think there were any other pears in the neighborhood. But sure enough, it appears as though I’ll get some Asian pears, so I’m excited about that. 

Neither one of the baby European pear trees flowered at all but they are growing precociously. I’ll have to start training the branches on the one because it’s growing really upright, so perhaps I will show a before and after picture for demonstration.

I’ll replace both of the Frost peach trees I had to cut down. The winter damage I got from the hard winter a couple years ago was just too much for them and I had to cut them down. I cried a little, and if you tasted my peaches, you would too! 

Anyway, I’ll replace those and add a tart cherry, a cider apple, and a plum with 3 varieties of Japanese plums grafted to the same trunk. I might also add some hazelnuts, but we’ll see. 

Until I get some pictures this weekend that's all for now. 

Blue Skies...

Trickier Jobs Need Helping Hands

In this installment I’m going to be fairly detailed about both the process of dispatching the rabbits and my feelings and thoughts about the process. If that’s not comfortable to read about, please go no further, but also go knowing that we were as careful and respectful as good stewards could be. I can assure you that it will give me a whole new meaning to saying a prayer of gratitude at dinner time.

So it was a busy weekend on the urban farm that culminated in butchering our first batch of rabbits. I thankfully had 2 more experienced helpers, so it was a fairly smooth process. I’ll try to detail the devices my dad made to hold the rabbit for the killing and the other device to hanging them while butchering. I know these were just prototypes and we’ll work together to create something that works more effectively.

Initially I had basic ideas of the processing taking place in 3 stations: dispatch, butcher, and cutter/bagging for the freezer. It did work out that way though I also wanted to make sure I was able to try each job. Having good light is essential and since we were working in my garage for discretions sake, we made sure to have portable lighting. That and an old shower curtain behind the stations kept the mess to a minimum were pretty key to making the job go as well as it did.

A few words about my help for the day. My father was present to lend his deer hunting and old time farm knowledge. He came with the tools he made to help with the job since I was not interested in spending the money to buy them. One was a steel device for holding the head of the rabbit and quickly separating the neck vertebrae and the other was a holder for the feet while skinning and cleaning. And a newer friend, Kevin, came with all the experiences of childhood farm and long- time chef. He also brought his travel chef knife set and a change of clothes, no doubt due to his past experiences with butchering, and his lovely family who were very tolerant of the chaos that reins at my house. 

I also want to take a minute and let readers know that I was more than a little nervous about doing this. It’s not that I don’t feel capable and I had taken reasonable pains not to coddle or otherwise befriend my soon-to-be food. Having said that, on any given weekend you might have seen me clipping blackberry canes and willow twigs because I have learned how much the rabbits care for munching on them. I didn’t do that over a sense of guilt at their upcoming demise, it was more out of concern and pride that I was giving them to the best of my ability a life that they were cared for and doing normal domestic bunny kinds of things. I did spend some anxious times leading up to this wondering how I would do, would I be sad, would they be hard for me to actually eat? I occasionally had visions of my family digging into delicious fricassee while I sat in sorrow with a salad because I got too attached to my charges.

To my immense relief, it was not that complicated. It’s like any of the things I have done that are perhaps somewhat out of the mainstream: Skydiving, Flying, oddly enough the Polar Bear Plunge –it’s different than what you imagine in your mind, and much more straight forward. It wasn’t that I was void of emotion about it. It was more that I said my mental thank-yous to them and left it at that. I did not actually end any of their lives, not necessarily because I didn’t want to, but more because the device we built for vertebrae separation did not work quite like we thought so it took a little more force than we planned for.  (Next time I will make sure to do this part of the job as well, just so that I feel like I have taken full part in this experiment.) But as soon as they were dead I was in there cleaning them and dressing them and it was different than I thought but I’m not sure I can explain. Certainly more businesslike  with a certain curiosity to learn a skill. We learned how to work as a team and while the first rabbit took us 45 minutes to dispatch and butcher, the last one only took us 10 minutes.

Based on their smaller size, I have decided to wait another 2 weeks or so to take care of the younger batch of 7 still in the greenhouse with the adults. They grew significantly slower despite only being a week younger, so I redistributed them in the cages so there are only a couple per cage. I have read that animals will grow slower in a smaller environment, so we’ll see how that does. I suspect my feed and other expenses  to meat/pounds is crap for this batch, but if I took out the long term expenses like cages and feeders it improves a great deal. Hopefully my own efficiencies will also improve as I learn what works best and how to do chores for their care faster.

I feel like I’m still processing what my thoughts are about all of this. For now I feel positive and encouraged that this was a good thing to embark on and will continue to add updates about it.

In other news, I have spent all the tears and worry I could over my peach trees with their fungus and just chopped the buggers down. We will burn the wood before spring so they can’t spread the fungus blight to other things in the yard. I’m also fessing up here that I have embarked on some destruction of public property by attempting to ring a lovely boulevard maple whose roots have competed hard enough with my Asian pears as to kill one of them and severely limit the growth of the other. I’m also getting started with seeds in a couple weeks and I’ll make sure to detail that along with the other preparation for spring.

I won’t post any of the more graphic pictures of our butchery this weekend, but I will post my helpers hard at work. It was great to have their knowledge and was a good example of many hands making for light work. 

Updated Bunny Pictures

I just wanted to give everyone a peek into the rabbitry. We hope you all have a great New Years and I'm looking  forward to new farm adventures in 2015. XO Blue Skies!