I got it in to my head when we bought this house that I wanted to make the property completely self-sustaining. I'm not sure what I was thinking except maybe that I wanted to see if I could do it. Since we're not planning on moving anywhere anytime soon I figure I can do things in stages. Step one - learn how to grow food, organically.
There is a huge section in our backyard that was used as the garden area by the previous owner (he was here 40+ years) and I decided I would make my life easy and start there. It's about 100 feet long and 35 feet wide. I spent some time over the winter with a pencil and graph paper and laid it all out. I'm happy to say it's mostly taken shape the way I wanted it too.
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| long, diagonal view |
My son even dug me a pond in the middle deep enough to put fish in. We haven't yet, mainly because I know nothing about how to take care of them and I'm afraid if we put them in there they'll go belly up in 5 minutes. I can kill a plant, but I'd cry if I saw fish floaters in my pond. I did buy water lilies though and a couple of solar pond pumps. I used old bricks to edge the whole thing and it's kind of rustic and cute.
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| that's a water lily |
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This first year I wanted to be able to make salsa and tomato sauce and I wanted to establish the strawberry beds. My husband is a freak for "real" strawberries so this was a top priority. Everything else I planted was considered experimental. I figured that we could enjoy the bounty of what ever manages to survive my budding (har har) gardening skills. So far so good. I've only lost two crops, the red onions and the snap peas, and we've been having fun sampling a little bit of everything else. The tomatoes, peppers and hot peppers are all coming in gang busters and I should be having some fun over a hot stove in a few weeks canning my heart out.
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