Down On The Urban Farm

Often the notion of an urban farm is sequestered in the thought that an urban farm is a FARM, with bad smells, chemical cocktails and all the ickies that come with a farm. A farm that is large and can have some detractors in the neighborhood.

Not so at The Urban Farm. I’d like to throw out the possibility of a new kind of farming, what I will call community farming. Farming on a much smaller basis that what our perceptions give, a kind that each and every one of us can do.

In the late 90’s I started ramping up the amount of food that I grew on my 1/3 acre property in central Phoenix, AZ ( a 1/3 acre in my case is a lot 80 feet x 160 feet.) Now I didn’t plow everything over and put in long rows of corn and beans. On a completely different tact I relandscaped my yard with edibles, replacing some of the grass areas with garden beds and my two dozen trees with fruit. I actually have planted out over 60 fruit trees inside the space of my 1/3 acre. I do this by keeping the trees small and putting them in hedgerows along the edge of my property. My goal is to have some kind of fruit that is harvestable every month of the year. Currently I’m at about 8 months.

Extreme…perhaps, but it is a hobby that my mom says has gone overboard. The good news is that I eat quite heartily from my yard and a few years back I was making over $1000 per month growing food and flowers to take to the market. Since then however I have reevaluated my goals and primarily grow enough food for me and to share with the people that visit.

OK so you don’t have a 1/3 acre lot. If you listen to the square foot gardener you can grow more that you can eat in 100 square feet. So for a teeny plot in your front or back yard you can raise a lot of food. I have also enrolled the neighbor in letting me plant a row of 8 apple trees in the boundary between his property and mine. Plus we have a great community garden that a friend of mine used to raise a lot of food to take to the market each week. She did great and made a fine living too.

Imagine a community where you walked down the street and found food for the harvesting, where you could grab a bag and collect whatever caught your eye. Such a place, abounding with fruits and vegetables, would magically draw people together simply to harvest dinner. I have been imagining such a community cornucopia for years. And while this botanical utopia may not be right around the corner, we can begin to realize the vision, even if it is only by planting a few fruit trees.

Just where can you plant some food? Grow some basil, a tomatoes or artichokes. There is nothing better than munching on that (insert your vegetable or fruit here) that you just plucked from your yard. Whatever you do, will make a difference.

I am often asked how I make such great soil at the Urban Farm, and how come I literally don't have to till the soil any more. And as you get to know me you will learn that I love to tell stories and this is how I explain this one.

I start by asking if they have a notion of what permaculture is. Usually they say know and I explain that it is the (my defenition as there are so many) art and science of working with nature. At this point I usually recieve a very puzzeled look. So this is how the story goes....

In the city what happens to the leaves that fall on our yards? Usually (not all of us) they are raked up and sent along to the landfill along with all the nutrients that they carry. Then we come back later and add fertilizer to make our plants grow.

Then I ask in the forest what happens to the leaves that fall? There is no one to rake em up. The deer, birds and other animals dig and leave their deposits and over time the nutients bound up in the leves are released and the soil is that much healthier. See my post on 5 components of healthy soil.

So here is where the extended understandable explanation of permaculture comes in. The creators of permaculture looked at the forest soil building process and said we can design something that works just as well and sheet mulching was born (also known in some circles as lasagna gardening.) AND this is the soilution to my healthy soil problem in my garden. AND my chickens pay a big part in providing the fertilizer for this process. AND, AND, AND.

Sheet mulching in a nutshell.

Collect all your and your neighbors dried leaves, add some alfalfa hey (nitrogen rich) and fluff it in a layer about 6 inches thick. Add to the top of that a smattering of composted steer manure, chicken manure or something similar in the maure department. Then another layer of hay/leaves and then more manure, going as thick as you like. Usually my sheet mulch projects are 2 feet thick.

Then the next part (one of the most important) is to leave it alone and let nature takes its course. And after 6 months or so you will have a couple of inches of great mulch where all your living things can florish, including your plants.

Its that simple...

Couple of ideas and a couple of caveats:

If you want to plant out some plants right after you do the sheet mulching excersize, burrow out a small area and add several cups of good would and plant your seeds or seedlings into that. As the pile shrings your plants just move down with it.

Be careful about the manure that you use. If you are using cow or horse manure make sure it is composted to kill the weed seeds.

Make sure that you are aware of the type of hay that you are using. Here in Phoenix they sell a Bermuda hay, full of seeds. That would be just like planting a grass lawn in my garden.

My permaculture teacher Tim Murphy told us that we could sheet mulch right on top of concrete and grow great goodies.

Most of all be patient and you will end up with some great results.

My goal is to have some kind of fresh fruit to eat each month. I’m doing pretty good with: fresh stone fruit (peaches, plums, apricots and nectarines) from April to July; apples and pears from June to September; pomegranates and figs in September and October; six different kinds of citrus from November to March. This takes some planning, and I am not yet getting fruit during the whole year but as the trees mature over the next few years the fruiting year will fill out.

One of the things that I do is plant trees in hedgerows – three or four kinds of the same kind of trees in a row. This gives me a the opportunity to have several different kinds of the same fruit planted where the fruit ripens at different times.

In the front yard I have a hedgerow of citrus – 17 trees long. 13 navels, 1 lemon, 1 limequat, 1 lime, and 1 trovita orange. These trees are 4 feet apart.

Also there is an apple tree hedge with four different kinds of apples: Anna, Dorset, Einsheimer, and Pettingill. They are planted three feet apart and I am working on pleaching the branches together. Pleaching is a natural process that naturally has the branches grow together, making the hedgerow stronger.

This first picture was when the apple tree hedge was planted in 2003.

And this is the trees this year. I suspect that I will harvest 100 pounds of apples from this hedge, this year.

More Later...Greg

Boy did our blog coach Dave come up with a doozie for me to see today. Check out Robin's post called Grow Don't Mow. I love what she is talking about and she is pointing to how our food could be free.

Great work Robin - Love the pictures.

I found a wonderful resource: localharvest.org.

It is a great website for finding farmers' markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area, where you can buy produce, grass-fed meats, and many other goodies.