Urban Garden Tour for Food Production, Beneficials and Ornamentals
Gardening is one of the most time consuming, rigorous and rewarding efforts around the house. That said, I am pretty sure the only way I can confidently know the provenance of what goes in my family’s body is gardening. Provenance? Who uses that kind of word? sorry…. Back to the storytelling. I had the opportunity to attend a class by Houston’s Urban Harvest organization. We were able to tour 3 different urban homes in or near the loop and see how they have managed to provide all or part of the family’s vegetables, citrus, herbs and ornamentals with high density gardening.
Several common gardening themes were present at each location:
- They have all been gardening for 5+ years (mostly 10+)
- Raised beds are essential for small dense plots
- Beneficial plants were well planned and cultivated
- Water catchement, swales, and drip lines were second only to making sure you had successful drainage
- Each gardener had a passion and openness for their success, failures and willingness to share (thank You!)
From Master Gardeners to hobbyist and educators, each grower had multi-year experience on the same garden plot and were still discovering what would and wouldn’t work. My typical devouring of knowledge and feeling like I could master something just by reading will *Not* work here. This will take patience, patience and lots of luck. Not sure why I thought this would be a good idea? Oh yeah, health.
Either way, the pictures were inspiring and thank you to each gardener who opened their yards for strangers to view, ask questions and gawk at their efforts. I was inspired.
Seriously, isn’t this just beautiful? If it hadn’t been for the amazing heat of deep summer, we would have stayed all day and started working!
The gardener of the above nearly apologized for only have six very large beds in rotation with a calibrated watering system from rain catchement barrels. Amazing. Yes, I think I will be doing some planning and more learning, but I have to start doing. I have several plants in the backyard in containers we have been moving around. But, now we are more settled. There will be dirt flying this coming weekend.
Now, go plant something!
