September of 2020 Update

September, pretty much the exact same as August, just more food that keeps growing and cooler weather.  The urban farm continues to challenge my ability to harvest produce at its peak then either eat it, preserve it, or give it away before it goes bad.  I'm getting pretty dang good at that game (and it is a game) but alas there's still a small amount of food that goes bad such as the cucumbers that I couldn't give away to save my life (it's a long story for another time).  The largest single day harvest happened, which was a whopping 205.8 pounds (93.35 kilos) of fresh, beyond organic, hyper local food grown right in my very own backyard.  That was right before a snow storm rolled in so I harvested everything I could find.  That storm did bring snow however the majority of the plants survived and I kept getting food after that storm.  It seemed that since it was so warm before the snow, the ground was able to keep roots warm and emit heat to keep the bases of the plants warm with the weather that just dipped below freezing while spitting snow everywhere.  More composting happened in September, I've really been trying to stay on-top of composting as much as possible.  There's been a lot of black gold (compost) produced this year.  Here's what was harvested in September:

Plant that Garlic!

“Garlic is divine. Few food items can taste so many distinct ways, handled correctly. Misuse of garlic is a crime…Please, treat your garlic with respect…Avoid at all costs that vile spew you see rotting in oil in screwtop jars. Too lazy to peel fresh? You don’t deserve to eat garlic.”
-Anthony Bourdain

My seed garlic for the 2021 year that I grew in 2020

Now that your urban farm / garden is planned out and your utilities are marked, we need to get rocking by ordering and planting garlic!!

Right now (October) is the time to be planting your garlic for the 2021 season.  The 2020 season just finished (actually still ongoing for me at the moment), it's not even winter yet, but we need to get the garlic in the ground ASAP!  Garlic loves the cooler weather, needs it to grow properly, and is extremely hardy.  Garlic also just so happens to be the easiest thing to grow!  Garlic can be planted in the very early spring if you don't want to plant it just yet.  If your ground is currently grass then it's certainly preferable for it to be tilled / broadforked before planting the garlic.  Right now, time is of the essence and we don't have time for that at the moment.  If you're feeling adventurous though just plant it right in with the grass, it'll grow, but you can't mow the surrounding grass once it starts growing.  You can also wait to plant the garlic until after you've tilled / broadforked or until the early spring, but it's preferable to plant that garlic before winter!

Plan Your Urban Farm / Garden

"Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating."
— Wendell Berry

Here we go people, it's time to get a rough plan together for your Urban Farm / Garden!

Before anything can be done (the garlic does need to be planted ASAP) you need to have a rough idea of where you are going to plant everything.  We just need this to be a very rough idea of where you want to plant / not plant and in which direction the rows are going to go, etc.  At this point you do not need to know exactly what you're going to plant, we can figure that out later.  Just knowing where everything is going to go is key at the moment.

The easiest way to do this is to draw your yard on a piece of paper and mark which areas you want to plant / not plant in, like this:

Map of where to grow food!

How to Urban Farm

 "Hey Urban Farmer Guy, this is all cool and everything but how in the world can I do this myself???  Where do I even start?  What do I do?  How do I Urban Farm?"

That is a fantastic question and it is exactly what I'm going to delve into next on this blog.  Now that you've had a chance to follow me for a season and you have a better idea of what I do.  I'm going to show you how YOU can do this too!  The time to start planning for the 2021 gardening season is NOW!  You can't delay it at all and you certainly can't put it off until the spring, that is wwwwaaaaayyyyyy too late to start thinking about it (although it is precisely what I did in my first season).  The planning needs to commence and the building blocks need to start right NOW.  It's actually already time to plant the garlic so we are even a bit late to the game and behind for the 2021 season but fear not!!!  It'll be okay, we'll get there!

You can do this too (yes you)!