Saturday, June 27, 2009

Ballard Edible Garden

I spent the day roaming my neighborhood to take part in the Ballard Edible Garden. I saw the most amazing vegetable gardens ever. A lot of people are digging up their front yards--that area between the street and sidewalk--and growing a serious amount of food.

The best was the first house I went to. I actually spent almost 2 hours with this woman. Not only does she have a beautiful permaculture microfarm going. She has 4 chickens and 2 goats. Everything works in tandem. The chickens hang out with the goats and run around in the garden. She has her coop set up so it only takes her about 15 minutes every few months to clean out and she has instant compost. The chickens keep her garden free of slugs and other insects she doesn't want. The goats keep the racoons away from the chickens. Her female goat hasn't been bred yet so she doesn't get milk for her.

She's selling her house. I want it. Badly. All the work I've ever wanted has been done. It's a tiny house and AwesomeHusband would give a no-go, but I covet it deeply. It's an old house from the early 1900s and sort of in ditch so it feels really private on one side. If I was a single girl, I'd do whatever I had to do to purchase the property. It is exactly what my little piece of heaven would be.

I finally got to see what was going on with my neighbor a few blocks away. She's has a double lot and I've seen a lot of work going into it, but didn't know what was going on. It's huge and lush. She's got 6 neighbors sharing raised beds and they shrae their crops. It's gorgeous and lush. A lot of love definitely happening.

And so, I'm totally jazzed up right now. i'm looking at my tiny plot that is half-unused because I'm not sure what to do with it and the mound of dirt I took out of it. Time to create another raised bed, I think. I just gotta go for it. Talking to all these people made me realize that nobody really knows what they are doing. In fact, one lady was telling me that 3 years ago, she just decided to pull up her lawn and start planting. She was so ignorant, she didn't know if 1 radish seed would just make 1 radish plant or multiple. We all gotta start somewhere.

A very nice lady also talked me into growing a meyer lemon tree. She has one and it is still tiny an 7 years old. I told her that I earlier this year I was lamenting about wanting a lemon meyer tree and a number of other dwarf fruit trees but I didn't have the space to bring them in for the winter and was scared to try to grow a meyer lemon tree. She convinced me to just go down to Lowe's or something and pick up a frackin' tree and just TRY IT. I might be successful.

So, I'm picking up a lemon tree this weekend, dag nabit. I love it when people push me into things .It's only a tree. It might die. I can just buy another one.

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