A Permaculture Adventure

Sneaking Up On Springtime

2011-02-10T09:47:00.000-08:00

These sunny days have been a luxury.

Though the frost is still pretty hard in the mornings with the clear skies, the ground has been dry enough to work a little and we've taken good advantage in order to make some early headway in the garden.

Peas and spinach are in already. The winter plantings are all ready to eat. One potentially exciting development is our new cold frame we'll use to do our own starts this year. There's also a brand new potato bed, plans for a much improved hop trellis, a new garlic bed, greatly expanded strawberry plantings, and six new blueberry bushes...so far. Our new plums appear to be very pleased with themselves. The apple trees took a break from bearing last year and look unbelievably healthy now...ready to go. I think we are too.

This year we're trying to focus on better yield, mostly by doing differently rather than doing more. A lot of that will fall to timing our efforts better. I'm learning that while building a garden is inevitably hard work, making a garden work for you is mostly a matter of paying attention.

Our composting efforts last year were incredibly successful. We probably harvested 4-5 cubic yards of fantastic compost in all. During the winter, the piles slow down and we maybe get one yield in four months. During summer, with a good turning schedule, it's more like two months and we can get the piles hot enough to break almost anything down. If we keep this up, I think the days of hauling in soil "products" are behind us now.

How Many Green Tomatoes Does a Man Need?

2010-09-23T19:56:00.000-07:00

Alas! Poor Uncle Leo always gets the short end of my jokes, but this year I do indeed feel likely to be buried in green tomatoes unless we're graced by a bit more sun before the cold comes.

I've been eking out a pot of tomato sauce here and there, but mostly nowhere, snitching instead and hoping for enough of an Indian Summer surge to enable some canning in earnest. We'll see.

Squash and peppers limp along similarly this year. I expect maybe a bushel or two of winter squash. Even the zucchini have been reserved this year...I'm almost keeping up with them.

Beans are another story...after a very slow start and several re-plantings early on, they're yielding nicely...all of my varieties. And, probably owing to the cool wet weather, the scarlet runners have been especially tender. My 20 year old son, in an inexplicable burst of homesteader-like energy, canned up 13 quarts of them one day. He did a fine job of things and even cleaned up after himself. I'm still scratching my head and wondering if I should perhaps have a doctor look at him.

Fall is always a sweet sort of panic for me. All things come ripe and demand attention mostly by threatening horrible waste if ignored. The winter rains loom too, reminding me of all the chores left to do. Almost as if summoned, 'work work' also seems to heat up come September or so. I buckle down, pull late nights, cram tasks into every nook of the day, meanwhile stealing as much of the waning summer fun as I can hiking or kayaking, and try not to worry too much or just go plain crazy. It never works, and then it sort of does, and then the rain comes and I am happy for what I managed to finish and cross with myself for what I did not. A better settling of scores is always warranted I think looking back over years of the same restlessness.

Green tomatoes this year are bound to break me. No matter how many old boxes I unearth in my garage, I cannot image there are enough empty Ball jars in my possession to hold the probably hundreds of pounds of wannabe Roma's, Early Girl's, Purple Cherokee's, etc. bearing down upon me. I'll do what I can, but am wondering if maybe it's possible to somehow make biodiesel, or perhaps settle the national debt with the remainder, or somehow get the IRS to accept them in lieu of taxes next year.

I went to a wedding last weekend, an Oregon wedding (in the rain), for a couple of true farm geek friends. They were tying the knot and simultaneously celebrating their acquisition of a lovely patch of land with an old farmhouse on it and a barn or two where they will make their life together. It was a good wedding, the best I can remember, and for reasons not much to do with the extravagance of the preparations. Bride and groom were simply dressed: baggy pants and a new pair of workshoes for the groom and a pretty cotton wrap for the bride. They performed their own ceremony on the porch of the farmhouse and offered a blessing to each other, to the land, and to the guests in attendance all of whom stood and watched adoringly in the slow Oregon rain. A small tribe of children composed and sang a song to seal the deal. I hope they're happy for a long time to come. I suspect they will be. I know they made a lot of other people happy that day at least and things like that tend to come around again. I thought about giving them green tomatoes as a wedding present, but in the end could figure no sober way of convincing myself of the notion and so offered up a new beehive for their place instead.

I'll check back with them later and at least give them an opportunity to trade the hive out for tomatoes...just in case.

My own bees, happily, came through with a bounty this year. After the cold start to the summer, this was an unexpected pleasure. I took about 70 lbs from the two hives and left them more than enough to see the winter through.

Certainly, there must be at least one recipe out there consisting mainly of honey and green tomatoes.

Packing It In

2010-05-25T14:14:00.000-07:00

Long time, no post. Fortunately, there's been a lot more gardening happening than blogging...at least here.

My bee blog has been getting more attention and because it follows our efforts to create a new bee co-op, also explains the lack of focus here.

Anyway...this season is starting out strong. We have beans, peas, collards, kale, strawberries, squash, basil, tomatoes, onions, garlic, beets, cress, spinach, lovage, poatatoes, artichokes, and more all in and/or producing already.

We're packing something good into every nook and cranny, even building up (hop poles and bean tunnels) and out (into my neighbor's yard) at every opportunity. It's going to be a good year by all signs.

I'm super grateful this season to enjoy some help from a few U of O students who have taken an interest in the garden. They rock! Some are learning about bees, others about gardens, etc. It's really wonderful.

Fork In the Road

2010-01-26T08:33:00.000-08:00

I've been decidedly torn about one of the tree species that inhabits the lot where my garden exists. When I arrived, there were several European White Poplar trees already here, some quite large. I took one (which was growing into my house and fence) almost immediately. No regrets there. The other two have given me years of pause.

I have no love for these particular trees. European White Poplars (Populus Alba) propagate roots aggressively and have invaded nearly every garden bed I've tried to create, in some cases so badly that beds had to be abandoned or completely dug out. Each spring they also spend about three weeks dropping copious amounts of white, fluffy seed everywhere.

On the plus side, they are trees. That's a basic bonus in my book. They also have a nice sound to them in the wind, as many cottonwoods and poplars do. In summer time the breeze rattles the leaves nicely and if I can forget about their encroachment on my gardens for a moment, it's lovely to hear them. The trees also provide good shade for my house and now after considerable pruning on one of them even look pretty good.

I'm at a crossroads with the smaller of the two remaining trees, however, which is planted in the narrow strip between sidewalk and street on the north side of my garden. It's sending shoots again, seemingly everywhere and nearly wiped out a bed of raspberries last year. It's also buckling the sidewalk, which doesn't irk me so much but will at some point attract the attention of the City maintenance folks who will require the tree to be removed.

Truth be told, the real driver for my discontent for this particular tree is that I'd very much like to put a couple of plum trees in that spot to broaden the variety of fruit the lot produces.

So, my quandry involves the decision to replace one tree with another. It's a weighty choice in my book and I've considered this situation now for more than a year. I remember once taking out a neglected and fairly unattractive laurel hedge, not thinking much about it, only a few days later finding myself in a cafe looking at a lovely set of venerable laurel shrubs that had been carefully and artfully shaped into small trees. I was immediately struck by the contrast between how long it took the laurels to grow and how quickly I had been able to remove them. My own lack of vision and creativity also confronted me inescapably in that encounter.

I don't think my poplar has anything like the aesthetic potential the laurel hedge might have. It's a badly shaped tree despite the fact that I've already done all that I can to improve its shape. Nonetheless, this poplar does have standing. It's probably almost as old as I am. The burden of proof seems to me to be mine.

Rationally, gardeners like me replace one species with another all the time. We make choices based on productivity, taste, aesthetics, etc. on a regular basis...acting as judge, jury, executioner, and midwife simultaneously. But, the price of that arrogance is easily seen all around us in our depleted soils, wasted streams, and ravaged forests. Deciding quickly and only in consideration of utility predictably yields short term results and weakens the bigger communities which both consist of and support the things we decide are useful.

Trees may or may not make choices in the way we understand choice, but they do behave in varying ways and, as is the case of my poplar (an introduced species), often interact aggressively with their surroundings (the other introduced species of my garden).

This story's clearly not over, but I'm out of time for now.

Water Works!

2010-01-26T08:29:00.000-08:00

I'm most gratified to report that my water solution for the lot seems to be working well in this first wet season. Everything drains nicely, but not off the lot itself, which means I'm steadily hydrating the soil beneath my garden. Fantastic!

The concrete-sided raised beds also seem to be draining as needed, even given my design choice not to equip them with weep holes on the sides.

Of course, the acid test for all of this will come later this spring as planting begins and I need to get into the soil. But, for now, I get a provisional pass!

Gratitude for a Good Harvest

2009-10-07T09:54:00.000-07:00

It's a blue-sky fall morning and from my vantage point where I can see the lovely garden space below, I'm awash with gratitude for the unbelievable experience this first year of the new garden has provided. Some words of thanks are in order, but will surely be insufficient to the task!

Most of all I've enjoyed the opportunity to do so much of this with Kristin. She's an odd one, my kind of girl, the type that gets excited about a pickup load of manure, the whorl pattern of an echinacea flower head, or saving seeds. I hope we enjoy many future seasons of gardening and canning and that we have the opportunity to create many more gardens together.

Many neighbors and friends have been super. Some mostly remind me that there's stuff that needs eating. That's fine! Others pick up shovels and rakes and whatnot and dig in. Stormi has been a great friend to the garden in that regard. Lynda (aka "Queen Basilica") got some good digs in too.

I'm also fortunate to know a couple of what I'd call 'hard hitters' in the making-gardens-happen world. My young friend Andy has energy and muscles and a work ethic that I can only vaguely remember. He's awesome! Andy moved probably as much earth and rock as I did this year. Go, Andy! I hope you have a lifetime of pleasure growing things! Loren (also endowed with admirable git-r-done qualities) put a lot of path in with me and did a ton of work on the concrete beds. I am always amazed at how much he can accomplish in a short time. Loren has a great knack for making beautiful things from whatever's at hand.

In May, a whole tribe of workshop participants converged and really got the growing side moving with a weekend of planting. I was away at the time in a very hot and dismal part of the world, so returning to their verdant handiwork in mid-June was almost miraculous. I have not even met most of them in person, but I owe them many thanks.

Now, I also and perhaps most importantly need to thank my bees, snakes, ladybugs, nematodes, wasps, birds, various mystery soil denizens, unbelievably indolent house cats, plants, sun, rain, and wind for doing all the hard work. This last shout-out may strike some people as frivolous, but a single honeybee, you should know, produces only about one-eighth of a teaspoon of honey in its entire lifetime. I am certain, on that account, that I will never show as much dedication myself to such a beautiful enterprise, and so I am grateful for theirs.

Happy Fall!

Where there's beer...

2009-09-30T17:10:00.001-07:00

Beer is such a powerful attractor that even the mere possibility of even a draught in the distant future draws people.

I learned this earlier in the week as a couple of college guys ambled down the alley, stopped at the garden, and made no attempt to hide their interest in my hops. Even before they accosted me as I grazed on a row of spinach, I knew where this was going.

Their timing was impeccable. Just that afternoon I'd been fretting about how to harvest all of the various things that needed bringing in: tomatoes, basil, cukes, hops, pears, etc. Rain was coming and time was short.

In no time flat the two fellows had morphed into four and all five of us were sitting on my back deck around a three foot high heap of Willamette hop vines, shucking the perfectly ripe blossoms into grocery bags. And, bless their party-loving hearts, they were kind enough to bring along some very nice beer to help the work go...well, if not more quickly, at least more smoothly. My harvest worries soon faded entirely.

In about two hours we'd filled four grocery bags brimming with green hops. Once dried the harvest came to about two pounds in all. They took half and I've got the other. Mine are now vacuum sealed and awaiting a brewing adventure planned for mid-month.

Here's to the amazing phenomenon of the ad hoc community garden!

2009-09-24T08:45:00.000-07:00

Here's a mid-summer view of the new space, with the just-completed concrete bed. I'll post a more current one soon showing the truly spectacular Fall garden now fully up and producing.

The next step will be an enclosure for the right (east) end of the concrete bed to enable winter gardening.

For a first year space, this one has produced handsomely: we've been eating like people ought to for the past four months and have canned about 300 pounds of various things for later in the year. There's much more to go!

Official Food, Inc. Movie Site - Hungry For Change?

2009-08-04T16:17:00.001-07:00

If you care about the food you eat, about the environment, or about the people who feed you, then you owe it to yourself to see the movie, "Food, Inc."

It's an unsparing, honest, and disturbing short-take on a topic that literally involves everyone.

See the preview site here: Official Food, Inc. Movie Site - Hungry For Change?

Compost Report: A Note from Down Under

2009-07-28T10:11:00.000-07:00

I have unbridled enthusiasm for compost. It's totally nutty and weird, but when it comes time to harvest compost I put my hands in the stuff, sniff it, turn it over again and again. My cats look on with suspicious interest. My friends (thankfully a forgiving and understanding bunch) watch with amusement.

For my gardens which cover the better part of two lots, I have two 4X4X4 piles. I harvest about two times per year. I get about two cubic yards of super good stuff per harvest. It's full of worms.

In truth, I'm not a very good composter. I do layer, but should really turn more frequently, water better in the summer, etc. Nonetheless, compost is forgiving: even my slacker style composting pays off in good measure.

One issue I've recognized however is that my starting notions of the scale on which I should compost are no longer suitable for my goals. My original notion was just to compost, e.g. have a compost pile. Super. Did that. Seems to work.

But, now I'm trying stop hauling stuff (soil, manure, etc.) into my garden from without and I'm trying to stop hauling stuff out of my garden (cuttings, sticks, weeds, etc.). Composting is clearly the answer, but I need to improve my technique and probably change the scale of my operations somewhat.

I currently haul out about 3 pickup loads of biomass each year. Most of this is material I currently deem to be non-compostable. That includes invasive species, big woody stuff, and whatnot. I want to eliminate those loads this next year.

Similarly, this year I have hauled in a massive amount of soil, manure, etc. Almost all of that has been associated with a one-time build-out of new garden space over a short period of time. If I'd been in less of a hurry, I could plausibly have built using my own compost, but if my math is correct that would have taken me about 10 years. To put it bluntly, I'm too old for that shit. (Sorry, couldn't resist!) Next year (after my new raised beds are filled), I won't bring anything in.

So, the challenge is really about finding a compost solution for the 3 pickup loads of biomass I produce annually. I think this is a realistic goal. I don't know what the solution will look like exactly, but here are a some starter observations:

Sizing a compost pile is a critical part of garden design. It's not trivial, especially if you want more than just 'token' compost. I've learned a lot about the amount and type of biomass my lots produce over the years. I'm doing things to alter those patterns. That learning is telling me the most basic things about how big my compost solution needs to be.
Location. Location. Location. Making compost involves lots of schlepping of stuff. Putting a pile in the right place make a huge amount of difference. Locate near gardens, near kitchen, near animals like chickens.
Mastication may matter. My lots produce quite a bit of woody stuff. I'm learning to re-use some of that for fuel and for garden supports. The rest has to go somewhere and takes a very long time to compost. Having some means of grinding can accelerate radically. Manual chopping is OK, but time consuming. I'm exploring neighborhood scale solutions, e.g. shared shredder, large long-term piles, etc.
Maintenance can speed cycle time quite a bit. My piles go super fast in the summer months. Winter is slow. I could probably get a third harvest in by doing better with maintenance. If so, that's 2 more cubic yards of compost per year...probably a good portion of the pickup loads I'm trying to eliminate.

Stay tuned for solution decisions and notes!

Sustainability: Getting to Basics

2009-07-28T09:29:00.001-07:00

Recently I had the pleasure of reviewing architecture student midterm garden design projects. The assignment was geared for sustainability. The projects I looked at revealed a high degree of variety and creativity. Some were quite lovely.

One thing that struck me, however, was how differently the students interpreted what 'sustainability' means. As I realized this, I began to prod a bit by asking questions: "What does sustainability mean?", "What were the sustainability objectives for your design?"

Their good work notwithstanding, the answers given by the students were surprisingly vague and gave opportunity to reflect on how I consider and pursue (or don't!) sustainability in my own garden. The conversations which resulted surfaced a couple of basic things perhaps worth sharing here.

First, sustainability is about balancing inputs and outputs. Better still, it's about zeroing out inputs and outputs within a defined space. If I'm dragging lots of materials into my garden (guilty as charged!), then I'm not balanced. If I'm hauling out lots of materials, I'm not balanced. If I'm consuming more food than I'm producing, I'm not balanced.

I realize this is not a very forgiving definition of sustainability, but it is simple, direct, and measurable. The latter qualities make it a sturdy guidepost for design choices, lifestyle choices, etc. Not to be harsh, but it strikes me that without such a clear and basic way of talking about sustainability, the word and the concept become mostly about style and intentions and not much at all about creating lasting ways of living.

Second, and in a related sense, sustainability always has a specific scope. There's no such thing as generic 'sustainability'. Scope defines the specific realm within which inputs and outputs are zeroed out. It can be thought of both in terms of what things it covers (e.g. soil, water, food, tools, etc.) and in terms of the geography (garden plot, neighborhood, city, region, etc.) which bounds it.

So, I could aim for soil sustainability by reprocessing garden waste to create all of my own amendments such as compost, manure, and the like. I could go for water sustainability by capturing and storing all the water I require. I could go for food sustainability by growing all I eat. But I could also scope my sustainability efforts around soil, water, and food to extend throughout my neighborhood (by trading with neighbors), my city, my region, etc.

In a very practical, daily sense, being able to spell out my sustainability objectives in terms of what they cover and over what geography they apply is helpful to me in identifying specific courses of action that make more sense than others. There are lots of things I could do. Knowing this year, for example, that I want to stop removing large quantities of biomass and bringing in similar quantities of soil amendments gives me something specific to work on around compost, mulching, etc. Next year it could be about seed and start sustainability. Recognizing the geography within which I intend to zero out tells me who I need to help and get help from.

I live a long way from sustainability. Recognizing that makes it clear that getting to sustainability is not just about lifestyle. There's really no daily solution that'll get me there. Rather, a lot of my 'infrastructure' is just plain wrong. That means re-design. Which brings me back to the wonderful and creative design students I had the pleasure to meet recently. They enjoy super opportunities to shape spaces in ways which can actually enable or enhance the likelihood that people will live in sustainable and durable ways....or not. Clarity about what that actually means is a good starting point.

Come See For Yourself!

2009-04-20T16:54:00.000-07:00

On May 23rd-24th, we'll be hosting a permaculture workshop at the site for persons interested in some hands-on, expert-guided (not me!) experience creating a permaculture-based urban micro farm.

Read more about it and register here: http://www.aprovecho.net/pg/ws-09urbanpermy.html

Raised beds are underway!

2009-02-18T14:28:00.000-08:00

Huge progress! Dug out and poured footings for the raised beds along the north border. These will hold about 400 square feet of prime space for annuals and will enable me to do three and four season gardening. You can read the details here.

About Paths

2008-12-03T23:49:00.000-08:00

In my stumbling sort of way, I'm slowly coming to a deeper appreciation of how important paths are to a garden.

I have to admit that historically my garden planning habits have been really pathetic. I would basically clear a patch, spade the earth, put in seeds, and hope to somehow muster enough focus to keep it weeded and watered long enough to harvest something. Beds were mostly square or rectangular and usually too large to work from outside the bed...you had to stand in the middle of it.

Times, they are a changing. I'm starting to recognize how much a path can contribute to the ease with which I maintain a bed. If I place a garden along a route I walk for other reasons, it tends to get more of my attention and hence does better. Attention means weeding, watering when necessary, minding problems, etc. Beds that are out of my way tend to become work and usually don't perform well.

Last year I took a new turn and put in a keyhole bed. It worked great! Easy to access, optimized space, etc. That started me thinking more about the relationship between paths and gardens. In a subtle way, this has also transformed how I 'see' gardens in my yard. Whereas a garden used to have to be a certain size for me even to recognize it as a garden, I now try to put something in along my walkways wherever there's a square foot or two of space. Small beds rule! I'll only offer the caveat that borders also invite encroachment by weeds, etc. and that small beds mean more borders. So, as with everything else, there's no free lunch....except when it comes to zuchinni.

Sheet Mulching

2008-12-03T23:32:00.000-08:00

I don't like grass. I really don't like grass in my garden. Unfortunately, the lot began as a grassy area. More generally, the Willamette Valley is home to the grass seed capital of the world! So, it often seems that I've got a fight to the death on my hands.

One of my best weapons in this epic struggle has been 'sheet mulching'. For the most part, it works pretty well, though it's not a panacea.

Sheet mulching is simple: you wet the grass, put down a layer of cardboard, add a few inches of soil or manure, and then top off with at least a foot of leaves. Clearly it's a thing most easily done in the fall.

Last year I sheet mulched the blueberries and artichokes in the traffic strip on the north side. It worked fantastically...even without cardboard in some cases (just used extra leaves). This fall, we busted out with a huge sheet mulching effort in what will be the largest area of cultivation in the garden. We covered about 1200 square feet by schlepping in five pickup loads of manure, lots and lots of big cardboard, and about 10 loads of leaves we scavenged from the neighborhood. I'll post a picture of this soon for those who get silly about staring at manure and leaves!

This will be somewhat of an experiment owing mainly to the presence of a particular species of grass here which has super tenacious roots. I've found that sheet mulching mostly works if I attend to the borders of the mulched area by digging all of the grass out where the mulching ends. Failure to do so usually allows the roots to re-invade over time. In all cases, some maintenance is required and mulching needs to be done each fall to keep airborne or otherwise seeded grass from encroaching.

I leave the mulch on for about four months or so and then simply apply soil over the top to create a new garden. I do not remove the leaves. They simply rot away to compost, resulting in a really nice and loose bed.

In permaculture terms, my interpretation of what's happening with my successful blueberry-artichoke mulched bed is that the leaves basically replicate what happens on a forest floor. Grasses and other annuals are supressed by leaf fall from the canopy. In my case, I just bring the leaves in since I don't have enough tree cover to provide it on site. The effect is the same.

The Site

2008-11-30T20:29:00.001-08:00

The lot in question is a 50 X 60 parcel located on the east end of Eugene, Oregon and sits on gently sloping land toward the mid-point of the Amazon Creek watershed.

The lot used to be the site of a small creek that ran down from a nearby hill toward the slightly larger Amazon Creek which in turn eventually finds its way into the Willamette River via the Long Tom Creek. Nowadays, the old creek is gone, but the lot remains fairly wet for 6 months of the year.

The riverbottom soil in the lot is pretty good, though can run to clay in spots. We have good west and north sun, partial east and south sun. We get about 40 inches of rain here every year, mostly between the months of November and June. There are very few trees on the lot currently, except for espalliered apples I put in about three years ago along the West and North fence lines.

Basically, it's a blank slate!

Permaculture?

2008-11-30T18:35:00.000-08:00

I come from two families of farmers, so using words like 'permaculture' and thereby occasioning questions from people who have vastly more time growing food than I do is a little embarassing to me, but I like the idea enough to stick it out there for consideration nonetheless.

Permaculture is shorthand for a way of food gardening which prioritizes perennials and seeks long-term sustainability using a minimum of inputs such as water, fertilizer, etc.

By contrast the type of gardening I've done for most of my 46 years has been based upon annuals and (much to the chagrin of my aching back!) has also involved lots of moving of earth, weeding, planting and replanting, watering, etc.

In nature, ground left to do as it will over a period of years naturally undergoes a succesion from annual species such as grasses, 'weeds', etc. through to perennials and finally to taller woody plants and trees. By contrast, most farms and vegetable gardens involve annuals: peas, carrots, beans, grains, etc. This means that each year ground that would otherwise mature through a natural succession ending in forest, must be artificially kept in a state of successional immaturity. Not surprisingly, keeping it that state of unnatural immaturity takes a lot of effort in the form of weeding, fertilizing, watering, etc.

Here's the good news: there's another way to grow food!

Gardening using permaculture principles involves creation of more 'natural', mature plant and animal communities centered on perrenials. The result is less need for the inputs (labor, water, fertilizer) required by traditional annual gardening. The plant communities or 'guilds' used in permaculture ideally work together to create self-sustaining systems. Overstory plants, for example, offer shade which reduces need for watering. Big leafing, deep rooters like comfrey pull minerals up from below and then leave them on the surface in the form of mulch to feed shallow-rooters above. Nitrogen fixing perrenials like locust trees make the soil richer for annuals. Flowering plants attract polinators for all species, etc. etc.

I'm strongly attracted to any model of gardening which means less work! My interest in permaculture arose largely from recent years of experience building and watching native plant based (non-food) gardens grow. I saw how they required so much less input than my traditional beds and how they had a special wild grace of their own. Permaculture offered a way to do that with food crops, so I thought I'd give it a try.

You can read a lot more about permaculture here.

A Permaculture Adventure Begins!

2008-11-30T18:25:00.000-08:00

Actually...the project began a few years ago, but we seem to be getting ready to make some fun moves, so I thought it'd be neat to share the process a little in hopes of encouraging other people interested in similar garden adventures.

The adventure: transformation of a small ( 60 X 50) vacant lot into a beautiful and hopefully bountiful, family sustaining food garden based largely on a permaculture approach to gardening.