It's spring time...

...and I have been wanting to do this for a while. I wanted to try to document the growth my little urban farm, and try to not only remember what I did last year, but hopefully share my experiences with others, so we all can have better urban farming success.

A little about me...I love to garden, farm, produce, whatever you want to call it. I was the dirty kid. The tomboy(ish). I was always outside when I was a kid, always asking questions. My parents took my older brother and I camping, a lot. We loved it. We recycled, and were members of the Sierra Club. The one thing I always wanted, and never had, was a vegetable garden. Not enough light, steep slopes, rocks, sand, it just never worked.

My brother and I started going to a leave-no-trace backpacking camp all summer, every summer until college, Camp Jack Hazard. It changed our lives. We learned vital lessons about nature and the importance of leaving no trace.

I took my love for the environment to college where I ended up majoring in Environmental Studies, and Geography. I got a little house with a garden my sophomore year, and started experimenting with growing my first garden. I got a job at the on campus environmental resource center and worked under the Environmental Department chair, who I looked up to, and learned a lot from. His garden inspired me.

After college, I ended up not going into anything environmental, largely due to the shitty economy, but found a job I still truly love. One thing it lacks though, is the connection to the soil, the earth, the outside, and the environment.

I spend all the spare time that I have, in the garden, or thinking about plans for the garden. I like to call it our urban farm. I live in a cottage with my boyfriend who definitely helps me with everything in the garden, and mostly, Stella, our precious blue Indian Runner Duck. We use Stella's poop, vermicompost (worm poop) and compost as fertilizer in the garden.

Stella

We try to keep everything as organic and sustainable as possible. This year we replaced about 80% of the soil in our 'raised beds' with organic vegetable garden soil and compost. We bought all of our seeds from the Petaluma Seed Bank. They sell organic heirloom seeds from the oldest seed company in America, Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Co. Also, check out the Petaluma Seed Bank on facebook, they have a lot of interesting information.
 

Petaluma Seed Bank

Oldest seed company in the US

Neem Oil

We use neem oil as a pesticide, a naturally occurring deterrent of pests, mostly because it smells god awful. I heard about this stuff in one of my sustainability classes in college, and always remembered its name. It not only has the ability to repel most living creatures, but Indians call it the 'Pharmacy Tree', because it cures lots of medical conditions as well, from eczema to malaria. Works great on my plants, that's all I know. Just make sure you get the one that is specifically designed to be put on your plants, some neem products can burn them, as I have found out the hard way. I order my organic neem products from Amazon because they are pretty hard to find.