OC Great park Workshop...

I went to my first workshop at the OC Great Park Farm & Food Lab located on the old El Toro Marine Base. It was a wonderful and very informative workshop about Spring planting. I learned some very valuable tips like how to support your melons as they climb a trellis...

...pantyhose of course!!!! (see the small watermelon nestled in the polka dot stocking?) Such a great idea. Now I know that I can plant some melons in the garden and not have to worry about them growing out and spreading...I can train them to grow up a trellis :) I also like that small box in the picture that the master gardener built...I might want to use that design for my raised beds, just on a bigger scale. Here is an example of a raised bed that uses the square foot planting method:

This way of planting keeps things very neat and organized and i really like that idea. I might keep that in mind when we build the beds. One thing I would really like to try to grow is artichokes and they had some beauties there...

YUM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The First Post

For a while now I have been talking about starting a farm in the backyard but have not done much about it besides research. So it is my hope, that by starting this blog I will actually get out there and break ground on our little urban farm. So let me start by showing the before picture of the location of the garden:

This is the southwest portion of the backyard and everything seen here will be ripped out to start anew. The garden area of the yard will be roughly 15 feet by 27 feet and will be fenced off to keep the dog out and later on, the chickens in :-) Yes we plan on getting 2-3 chickens to have fresh eggs. In the garden there will be 8 raised beds that are each 3 feet by 6 feet and this will be where the magic happens!!!!!