Perhaps your garden, like mine, has a dumping ground area. Some place where random bits of lumber, useful but not in-use buckets and lengths of rebar mingle with weeds, neglected tools and a compost bin that’s seen better days. That’s the Ugly Side of Urban Homesteading – it’s when a focus on reuse and the…
Designing and Building
DIY Concrete Mesh and Rebar Trellis
Last April 2nd I took these photos of my newly-constructed Half-Ass Hugelkultur Beds. Today, just shy of three months later they look like this. Can I get a woot-woot for hugels? Other than the massive attack of greenery, one of the biggest changes in this planting area are the twin concrete mesh trellises we installed…
Be Not Discouraged (If Your Garden Doesn’t Look Like Erica’s)
Meet Ugly Garden: I’m not a long-time reader of Northwest Edible Life. I’m not a long time gardener either. Both these afflictions are rather new for me. I started my measly little Ugly Garden in earnest last year, with just two beds and some picket fencing repurposed from the neighbor’s dump pile. One of those…
Your Seedlings Hate Your Fancy Window: How Plants See Light
Two months ago, Erica posted comparison photos showing seedlings started in a south-facing window vs seedlings started under full-spectrum grow lights. The results were surprising to many readers (including me!) and at least a few readers invested in grow lights after seeing the difference light makes. There are a few reasons why windowsill started seedlings…
Improve Your Soil With Chemical Exudates (It's Not What You Think)
Guest post by Kelly Scott of Sweet Bay Farm. Thanks Kelly! The more I learn about farming, the more I realize that plants are truly wondrous things. It’s easy to think plants are boring and passive. After all, they just sit there. But here’s some news! Plants are powerful chemists and very active participators in their…
Half-Ass Hugelkultur
Hugelkultur is all the rage right now. This permaculture method of raised bed building is supposed to reduce irrigation needs and provide long term fertility to plants while giving the gardener a kind of hipster garden cred that only comes from funny foreign-sounding growing techniques. A hugelkultur bed is built with hunks of wood as…
A Tour Of The Indoor Seed Starting Rack
My seed-starting set-up is pretty well equipped, which makes it a lot easier to manage the fairly aggressive seed-starting schedule I keep. When we moved into our current home, I commandeered a corner of the garage as my indoor garden and seed-starting area. Having a dedicated area to grow out seedlings is a luxury, but one I would sacrifice…
Stop Ripping Up Your Lawn To Grow Veggies
It’s a badge of honor among urban homesteaders to say, “I’ve ripped up my whole lawn and put in a garden.” Stop doing that. No, seriously, I would now like to explain why you should not actually rip up your lawn, and I’d like to start with a little soil science. Bear with me, this’ll…
Refactoring In The Garden
2011 was The Year of Additions. We added to our garden: new perennial bed, new mini-orchard, new chickens, two new coops for aforementioned chickens, and a couple new raised beds. We added this blog, and with it a sizable commitment and a wonderful community of like-minded folks. And late in 2010 of course, we had added this…
How To Plan Your Harvest Based On What You Eat (Plus The Winner of The Urban Farm Handbook!)
One you you awesome readers has won The Urban Farm Handbook. But before you shoot right to the bottom of this post to find out if it’s you, read on to discover a great way to plan your harvest from the plate backwards. This is a technique straight out of The Urban Farm Handbook, so…
Tools For A Hand Job
Good tools are essential to any job, and work in the garden is no exception. I’m one of those girls that likes a good workout session with a garden fork, but the longer I garden, the more I find small tools get most of the work done. For my last birthday, my best friends gave…
The Great Cover-Up: Carpeting Your Garden Floor
I have noticed that keeping my garden’s paths well-mulched does a ton for the overall appearance of my garden. This makes sense: if you walked into someone’s living room and they had tasteful, comfortable furniture, well-displayed books and artwork and walls painted in a stylish but personal hue, but the floor was rough, bare plywood, you’d probably notice that…