Urban Homesteading

This is something I’ve been doing for years on a small scale, but I didn’t realize until much later that it actually had a name. 

So what is urban homesteading? 

Basically it means that people who live in cities or suburbs, and not on a lot of land, are using what land they have to make themselves self-sufficient, at least at some level.

We have just 1/3 acre, but I have planted fruit trees -- kind of hard to see here, but there are 3 small trees: two are apple, which need each other to pollinate, and one is a peach, which doesn’t need a pollinator.  The smaller two are “dwarf” varieties, which don’t get too big or take up too much space, but still bear regular-sized fruit.

I have just finished planting my garden for this year.  It is 8’ x 16’.  This is the first year I have used a trellis, which saves space, as things grow upward instead of taking up ground area (peas, beans, cucumbers).  I also have broccoli, carrots, radishes, lettuce, peppers, potatoes, tomatoes and a few herbs.  This picture was taken in the late afternoon.  It gets full sunlight for most of the day.

I let Cooper plant some sunflowers.  I think it will be exciting for him to watch them grow.  Hopefully he will get bitten by the gardening bug too.  ( :

Behind that is my strawberry patch.  This is the second time I have used this planting method.  The last one lasted 4 or 5 years before it got overrun with weeds (while I was pregnant and couldn’t bend over to weed it) and killed the plants.  I think they need to be re-done every few years anyway.  By the second year last time, the silver rings weren’t even visible; they were completely covered by the plants and I had oodles of strawberries!  This is an 8’ x 8’ square, and the rings in the pyramid are 6 feet, 4 feet and 2 feet.  I ordered this setup.  The rings are just strips of metal which can be rolled up and re-used.  I got 25 strawberry plants for about $6.  I also had to buy several bags of garden soil.

I have 3 blueberry plants, which haven’t actually produced anything so far.  They get berries on them, but they disappear before they get ripe.  We suspect the birds are eating them.  Oh well.

I planted this rosemary  in a shady spot in my front landscaping several years ago, and it has done wonderfully!  Whenever I need a bit of rosemary for cooking, I just step out the front door and snip a piece off.  It has done well through the winters, though I have heard rosemary doesn’t always make it through winters in areas colder than Zone 7.

I also have a compost pile.  (I’ll spare you a picture of that.)  I don’t keep it up as well as I should, but still get some compost, which I use to fertilize my garden.  We just throw fruit and vegetable waste (peels, etc.), egg shells, coffee grounds, and other organic things in there (I don’t put meat in there, so it won’t smell bad).  It builds up faster if you add grass cuttings and leaves, which I rarely do.  You are supposed to turn it (stir it up) regularly, which I don’t do as much as I should, but anyway . . .

My next door neighbors are even more into this than I am.  They actually have 3 chickens.

Every now and then, they’ll bring us some of these.  Cool!

Some people do this on a much larger scale than I do and have bigger gardens, or multiple smaller ones wherever they have space around their yard.  Their landscaping may consist of blackberry or raspberry bushes (something I’d like to do in the future), or a grape trellis (something else I want to do eventually).  Some people even keep bees or goats (I recommend doing some serious thinking and research if you’re going to undertake those endeavors).

So all in all, in my way of thinking, this type of thing is fun, offers great exercise, saves money, and provides you with the freshest of produce.  You can do it on whatever level you want to.  A small garden with a few vegetables is a great place to start, and you can add more from year to year.  I highly recommend it!