Farming on a 50' X 100' village lot

[Kaleva]

Just kicking around ideas about what I could do on my lot which has a 26' X 16' two story home with full basement and a 24' X 20' wide unattached garage.

This is never going to happen as my wife would never go along with it but it's a dream. There is also an ordinance against having chickens within village limits.

My idea is that it's possible to have hens for eggs, rabbits for meat, use various parts of the yard for gardens and even raise earthworms and mealworms as food. Not just for myself but for the chickens also.

In future posts in this thread, I'll describe my ideas on how I could maximize as much of this lot as possible for food production.

[ret5hd]

1. I realize that this is completely different than your described set-up...

but here is an idea of how intensely a small area can be "farmed":

https://gardenpool.org

[Nay]

2. Also look at this setup in California. It's fairly famous.

http://urbanhomestead.org/

[Kali]

3. fruit trees and start working to get the chicken ordinance changed

lots of new urban chicken laws have been done (and there is the point that 2 or three hens will provide plenty of eggs for a small family and could be considered pets rather than livestock)

what are wife's objections?

[Kaleva]

4. The garden(s)

Sorry about taking so long to get back to this. With babysitting the grand kids, doing projects around the homes and being just plain tired, I had limited time to measure, think about this, measure again, think some more, observe how much sun areas of the lawn get, think while pacing, to work on this.

To maximize space, I'd go with the square foot gardening system and use succession planting where I could.

There is an old apple tree on the property that produces an abundant crop of long lasting fruit. One year I stored a bunch of apples in the basement and I was eating apples well past Christmas. This tree is located on the south side of the property and about halfway from the main street to the back alley. The back alley is on the west end. Opposite of the apple tree is a lilac bush where I once had a compost bin made of pallets. I would put another bin there as the lilac bush does a good job of hiding it.

Because of the buildings and trees, there are just a few areas that get at least 6 hours of direct sunlight but I don't have any that gets 8. This isn't a problem for plants that don't need full sun such as beets, carrots, peas, radishes and such but is for crops such as tomatoes and cucumbers.

Here below are the number and sizes of plots I can have:

5) 3'X10'
1) 3'X20'
1) 1'X40'
1) 3'X5' perennial bed for horseradish
1) 1'x24' South side of garage to be used for vine crops
1) 1'X26' West side of house to be used for vine crops

Total square footage is 315'. Assuming my wife stays here with me, this ought to be adequate for the two of us. Providing fresh eating during the summer with an emphasis on canning or freezing for the winter.

Here is a list of crops I could plant:

cabbage (to be made into sauerkraut) - 18' spacing between plants
radishes - 16 plants per square foot
carrots - 16 plants per square foot
beets - 9 plants per square foot
bush beans - 9 plants per square foot
pole beans - 8 plants per square foot
sugar snap peas - 8 plants per square foot
edamame soybeans - 16 plants per square foot
horseradish - 1 plant per square foot in the 3'X5' perennial bed
garlic - 4 or 9 plants per square foot
walking onions - 16 plants per square in a perennial bed

As for tomato and cucumber plants, I could try them on the south side of the garage and the west side of the house. If they do well, that'd be great.

I live in Zone 5a so I ought to be able to succession plant some variety's such as plant beets early in the year, harvest an then plant carrots later in the same plots for a fall harvest. And I should be able to get 2 crops of sugar snap peas. I could plant radishes early in the spring, harvest, and then plant bush beans or soybeans and then after harvesting those, plant radishes again.

[Farmer-Rick]

5. So what are you using for fertilizer until your chickens or rabbits start pooping?

I find succession planting and the square foot method need a lot of fertilizer and good rich compost. I find that one compost bin is just not enough for any significant amount of fertilizer. I have 3 plots about 90 x 100 feet each. We plant year round except for the 3 winter months. We got a greenhouse which in zone 7a is a big fat waste of money. But that is another story.

One of the reasons we raise sheep is for their manure. It is easy to distribute and doesn't smell though it tends to have seeds so we compost it for about 90 days.

If you know a pasture raised livestock producer, you could get most of your manure from them probably for free. Be careful of using manure from non organic farms though. I swear the first year we used a neighbor's free horse manure, we couldn't grow anything in it. I thought we were the worst farmers in the world. Turns out he was spraying his manure pile with round-up to stop the weeds from growing in it. Then he added pesticides to it to stop the flies from laying eggs. It was a toxic swill. But we didn't find out until we went over for another load and saw him spraying.

Be careful about the varieties you choose to plant especially in the 6 hours of sun. I find most farm vegetable seeds from corporations are bred for full sun, unlimited water and never ending fertilizers with a heaping dose of bug spray. The more resilient plant seeds can be found through like minded farmers and collecting/breeding seeds yourself.