Cante's Urban Croft - an adventure in Community Supported Agriculture

I'll soon be posting more pictures of my maturing garden croft. Its quite amazing how the earth brings forth a variety of plants we can eat, that our ancestor's "tamed", cultivated, and nurtured into the foods that we love and enjoy in 2008. I have the largest variety of vegetables and herbs growing in my garden then ever previously attempted! I'll try to list these here, not in ABC order, but off the top of my head as I visualize my urban garden:

I'm growing: several varieties of lettuce, red cabbage, green cabbage, spinach, cilantro, Kentucky pole beans, yellow pole beans, onions, black cherry tomatoes, pumpkins, zucchini, sugar snap peas, rhubarb, broccoli, radishes...., purple bush beans, garlic, Swiss chard, rainbow Swiss chard, collard greens, basil, spaghetti squash, winter squash varieties, tomatoes and more tomatoes - several varieties, carrots, egg plant, tomatillos, turnip greens, sorrel, ground cherries, green onions, yellow onions, baby bok choy, brussel sprouts, dill, fennel, beets, Yukon gold potatoes, red Pontiac potatoes, blue potatoes, green beans, several varieties of hot peppers, Hungarian sweet peppers, Chinese greens, a couple varieties of heirloom beans (yard long, Hmong, Lakota) for seed, Jerusalem artichokes, cucumbers, parsley, corn, kale, and asparagus. (Radishes and I seem to have "bad karma"....not very successful in getting those things to bulb up).

All of the above is in the "vegetable section" of my garden planted in either the raised beds, a couple kiddie swimming pools, or in containers.

The herb garden has a number of items, also: a couple varieties of basil, chocolate mint, apple mint, spearmint, horehound, marjoram, oregano, fever few, lemon balm, chives, parsley, tarragon, thyme, horse radish, ...and a couple other things that are escaping my memory.

So...there you have it!

Oh, my yard also has raspberries, plums, apples, cherries, grapes, pears....but the harvest of these is quite variable, having dwarf trees. The raspberries will be coming ready soon, however!

The extensive number of items is due to deciding to try my hand at Community Supported Agriculture. My friend, Maria, has indicated I am the ONLY CSA in our county. She also believes I may be the only URBAN CSA in the state of Wisconsin. So, what is a CSA? I may have mentioned it previously, but in brief, it is an agriculture effort (in my case a garden) where folks from the community purchase "shares" in the farm or garden. I describe it as folks who have taken out a "subscription" to my garden. For an up-front 20-week fee, each subscriber gets a weekly package of a variety of the vegetables that have come into season. The "share" provides meal-sized portions, meant to help folks to "eat locally". So.....I'm "piloting" the CSA idea via my backyard URBAN garden, and having a very good time with it.

One of my subscribers told me this week: "We love getting the grocery bag of items! Its like Christmas, full of pleasant surprises!"

Unlike some of the larger, established CSA's that post what a share is likely to hold, what I harvest and put into the "share" each week is a surprise to me, also, as I wander through my garden and harvest samples of items that are ready. Luckily, due to my style of French raised-bed gardening, things are going well as I was unaffected by the heavy rains earlier this month.

My little CSA seems to be getting a bit of attention. Looks like I may be hosting a tour in September, and also getting some other curious inquiries from folks embracing sustainability locally...

2008 Garden - June 30th

Another 7-days, another 7-days bigger! Look at these plants grow!!!! I'm loving it!!



Note, I've removed the straw bales from around the "giant" tomatoes. I've also made use of the space around them.
The beans, broccoli, cabbages, lettuce, spinach beds...doing very well. I'm harvesting lettuce and spinach. The peas are almost shoulder high, the beans now have flower buds. This is like watching a pot come to a boil..."a watched pot never boils".....I am so eager for beans and peas!!!! (careful what I wish for...I have 2 beds of peas, 3 beds of beans!!)

The lettuce/radish container garden is doing very well.

2008 Garden - June 23rd

Seven days later - whoa, is this garden growing or what?

2008 Garden - Containers Everywhere

Since I'm taking my garden to new production levels, I needed additional space for planting. I don't really want to get out the tiller and chew up more sod, deal with weeds, and all that other "making a new garden spot" work. At the encouragement and advisement of my friend Maria, I'm using all sorts of containers to make additional space happen. Here's a sampling of the various "growing ons" in my 2008 garden:


Above are pictures of yellow bean plants growing intensively in pots, cucumber plants in hanging basket pots...which will eventually be hanging, strawberries in a pot-tower, lettuce and radishes growing in an under-the-bed container, various bedding plants growing in newspaper pots in the garden flats, and pumpkins.


I planted pumpkin plants in Halloween Candy buckets. These are for selling at the market, but I think what is going to happen is I'm going to have quite the "field" of container grown pumpkins. These are the Cinderella variety! Could get very interesting.

The 2008 Garden, June 16th

The following pictures were taken a little over a month from the previous ones. First, you can see that the barren bit of land has blossomed with life. Secondly, you can see that I've "tamed" the area with my "French-style" raised beds, and am coaxing an assortment of vegetables to grow to grace my table, as well as supply other folk's tables.

Note, the straw bales are surrounding my "giant" tomato plants. I purchased several from a small greenhouse in Crivitz, WI. These were half-grown when I got them. The weather was so cold, that I decided to surround them with bales to try and bring some warmth to them, blocking the chilly breeze that just kept blowing here in our lakeside region by Lake Michigan.





After reading about Urban Gardening projects in Milwaulkee and Chicago using children's swimming pools for containers, I have planted 2 of these to add space to my backyard garden growing area.

The 2008 Garden's Beginnings

In early May, I started working on this year's garden. It's been a slow start of getting things done, as we had cold weather, snow, rain, and more cold weather. Not really "ideal" for getting a garden going, let alone plans for an intensively grown, large backyard garden.

My efforts started May 5th, and continued off-and-on across May. Here are pictures of the prep, the re-establishing of my "French-style" raised bed.

Okay, Okay, Okay...yeah, its been awhile

Well........I think the title tells it all. It has been a long long while (April 29, 2008) since I posted here on my blog. I've been a busy gal! Fact is, there are other Blogs, now maintained by my friend Maria, that tell of our various ventures and adventures!

Of course April 29th marked the near end of the college school year, and since that is now a few months past, yes, the papers got graded, the grades got posted, and graduation happened, and so forth. Oh, I still have cleaning and sorting and other stuff to do. In fact, have to have "my" classroom ready for the janitor and floor cleaning this next week - July 7th to 11th. I'll have to make a quick trip to the college and move boxes and materials to other locations so the furniture can be moved about and the carpet cleaning machine be run.

As the semester came to an end, I made a vow to myself that I was going to find some things to do that would help me "avoid" the blues and blaaaas I typically fall prey to when my life slows down with the coming of summer break. As a teacher, I go full tilt for 9 months, and then "boom"....everything that had me busy suddenly stops. My mind and body and spirit tends to get very confused by the sudden void...so......

This year I have "RAMPED UP" my gardening! (No, I didn't build a ramp...haha) I made a decision to take on having a farmer's market booth. Maria then suggested I "fill the void" of being a "Community Supported Agriculture" garden, so I did that, too. I'm "piloting" that....and all of this has brought new life to my interest in gardening, as well as my creativity. Rather than write it all in this post, I'll post some photos and other comments here, so you can enjoy my summer journey! I'm having a blast!!!!

Soozee

Long Winter....

It seems that my BLOG and I just really disconnected after the holiday season rambled by, and the twinkle light deer ambled back into storage...hopefully. (My neighbor down the street, however, STILL has Christmas decorations in the yard.....yikes...its nearly May 1st).

It has been a long winter of snow, gray days, snow, cold....and economic worries. Although sunny days are now becoming a bit more frequent giving rise to a late Spring and hope for Summer, as well as planning the veggie garden, and so forth.....the worries are also rising inside me. In 2005 I wrote a BLOG about Peak Oil.....that at that time was really an eye0pener for me. Now? Gosh...go back and read my old post and see what you think?

So......it is a time of Spring renewal, as well as each of us taking a serious look at "Spring Cleaning" of old energy consuming habits to new patterns of behavior that lead to sustainability, surviving shrinking $$ resources in light of prices of everything, and so forth.

Times are changing...time for changes.

S~