Hello everyone and happy spring! We are excited to announce that we bought a house and are finally all moved in. While it’s not our total dream property, as it’s much smaller that what we would like to have someday, it does have a lot going for it in the semi-urban permaculture sense. We feel lucky to be all moved in just in time for the planting season, and we are drawing up many plans for the outdoor space. Joel is building a chicken coop, so that will be a new and fun experience for us. I’ll give you a quick backyard tour, but keep in mind that these are all intended to be “before” pictures. In a few months I’ll do another tour and hopefully there will be a huge difference!
The backyard is fairly large, but is somewhat different because it’s in the shape of an “L”. I’ll start at one end and walk you though to the other end. This is the long side of the yard. You can see the line of potted plants on the right that we brought with us. Those will all have a more permanent home soon. The property came with a ridiculous amount of rose bushes, some of which Joel has already taken out. We will keep a few, of course, as I love rose hips.
Walk a little bit further, and you can see better where the chicken coop and run will go, just past the compost pile along the fence. It should be finished in the next few weeks, and then it will be baby chick time for us! The city that we live in allows one chicken per 1000 square feet of your lot. Our lot is about 6000 square feet, so we can have up to 6 chickens. Yay!
Turn to the right from here, and you can see the covered porch, garden shed, and Cosmo the kitten! It only took him a few days to get settled in, but now he feels at home. We have potatoes planted in those big pots, and you can see all of the amazing calendula in bloom.
Move towards the back of the property, just to the left of the garden shed, is our lovely apple tree! We don’t have a clue as to what variety of apples it will produce, but we’ll be happy with anything. We have strawberry starts to plant underneath it, along with the violet and irises that are already there. We also plan on planting one pear and one plum tree somewhere on the property as well.
Turn to the right and you can see the short side of the “L”. This area doesn’t have a whole lot besides the garden shed and a whole bunch of cement pavers. Those will be taken up and relocated in a much prettier and more functional fashion at some point. Oh, and there’s the rain barrel, which also needs to be finished getting set up.
Then we move to the sunny little corner of the property, which is where we made our planing beds. That was one of the first things we did! We don’t have much planted in them yet as most of our seeds are getting their start inside, but soon these will teeming with homegrown veggies.
That big green plant in the corner, we were happy to discover, is rhubarb! I’ve never grown rhubarb before, but have always wanted to. Now I can make strawberry rhubarb pie! Hmm, or jam, I can’t decide. I did cut off the flowers today after I took this picture, as I read that they will inhibit the growth of the ribs.
That’s about it for the backyard. The front yard is quite small and needs some work as well, but it will be mostly cosmetic. All in all, we have a lot of work cut out for us, as the interior of the house also needs a lot of updating, but it’s ok because it’s *ours*. That’s definitely saying something!
Let me know what you guys think and if you have any ideas for us. I’ll keep you updated as the season goes on with how we’re progressing! I’m actually really excited for our mini food forest that we intend to make. Yay for permaculture!
This is so inspiring. I have a similar “re-do” project but it happens to be my mess over the years of neglect. I have had a full-time job which didn’t allow me the freedom to garden and create. Your photos made me realize how important before pictures are. I’m doing that part today (February, 2018). I live in Bend Oregon so our climate can be challenging but that makes for real celebration when you get it right.
Thank you for sharing your experience and being a warrior in the grow, forage, cook, ferment part of life. I’m looking forward to following your pages.
Lived in the US for 40 years then realized that my kids were grown I was only responsible for myself – packed up and returned to Hungary. Although I purchased a downtown apartment in Budapest, after Mother passed away my brother and I inherited the house we grew up in – small village, end of town, end of a dead-end street, tucked between two streams at the foot of a hill. No I knew nothing about gardening but there is a large flower garden in front of the house and a HUGE vegetable garden that once fed the seven of us living here. Although mostly flowers, I do grow veggies and renewing the fruit trees on the property. Never had so much pleasure in my life.
from your paradise to mine :)
Happy I’ve found this page …. I am trying to do similar …. on what would be about 2700 sq feet. You may want to check which plum you choose (and maybe pear?) because I think you will need two for pollination. I understand separate trees seem to work better than multigrafts if you were thinking of going that way, because sometimes one variety is stronger than the other. A solution I intend to use (and also for space) is to dig one very large hole and place both varieties which pollinate each other in the same hole. It doesn’t matter that the branches intertwine, you can prune out any which become problematic. Looking forward to reading more. :)
Glad you like my page :D Luckily, we live in fruit tree country and there are many orchards very close to us, so I don’t think we’ll need to worry too much about pollination. Thanks for the tips, though!
If your new to chickens go for the Chicken Chick blog, she is an expert on everything that comes with having chickens. Love her Facebook page too. Hope you will be a fan of Rachel, the frizzle chicken . Have a wonderful time in your new house, love to you both.