2. GOALS ARTICULATION
The goal of my garden is to provide my home (myself, my boyfriend,
and my roommate) with nutritious and delicious food grown in a
sustainable manner. I want to take myself further off of the traditional
food-grid by supplementing my food-related purchases with as much
homegrown produce as possible. I’m also looking to give back to the
environment, at least locally, by promoting native pollination and
biological diversity.
In the process, I’m excited to take a relatively ragged and certainly
underused space in my apartment building and turn it into something
beautiful for my neighbors and passersby. Exercising my creative
capabilities both with the design of the garden and building structures
for it will be a lot of fun and a wonderful project for this summer.
3. SITE ANALYSIS
Spending quality time with the small and scruffy patch of grass to the left of my front
porch has taught me a great deal about how underutilized a space can be. What initially
seemed like a mess of overgrown weeds quickly became a flourishing garden when I
looked at it through the right lenses.
• The small space requires intentional use of every square foot, including trellises to take
advantage of growing produce vertically as well as horizontally
• After some digging, I discovered a foot and a half of concrete that lines a portion of the
back of the garden. I was pretty discouraged for a bit because I’m already working with
such a small space but I quickly realized that I can build a tiered shelving unit and
perhaps place some potted plants on top of the concrete instead of letting that space
go to waste
• Space gets full sun and there aren’t many shady spots aside from shadows cast by the
shrub in the middle of the garden once the sun is up and over the house
• Raised beds will eliminate the problems caused by sloping ground
• There is great potential for a recycled water source once I figure out the best method to
collect water from the storm drains
6. PRODUCE TO BE GROWN BASED
ON CONSUMPTION AVERAGES
• Winter Squash
• Carrot
• Potato
• Onion
• Garlic
• Cucumber
• Greens: Spinach, Lettuce, Mustard, Arugula
• Cabbage
• Kale
• Nettle
• Peppers
• Peas
• Rosemary
• Lavandar
• Basil
• Lemongrass: mosquito repellant
• Thyme: repels whiteflies, cabbage
loopers, cabbage maggots, tomato
hornworms
• Mint
• Fennel: repels aphids, slugs, and snails
• Oregano: general pest repellant
• Chives: repels carrot flies, Japanese
beetles, and aphids
• Borage
Source: https://www.mnn.com/your-home/organic-farming-gardening/stories/12-plants-that-repel-unwanted-insects
7. WINTER
Due to the fact that I don’t have
a greenhouse and the use of
hoop houses would be relatively
ineffective, I’ve decided to plant
cover crops over all of the beds
and herb box during the winter.
The soil in my garden isn’t the
best so a few years of crop cover
that then gets turned over into
mulch during the spring will
benefit the soil quality over time.
8. PERMACULTURE PRINCIPLES:
GET A YIELD
Getting a yield from my garden is definitely my top priority. A ‘yield’
to me, however, does not start and stop at the harvest season and it
is not applicable to only me. I like how Bane put it: “a system that
cannot provide for its cultivators is bankrupt in the short term” (31). I
recognize that I am not the only cultivator in my garden and
therefore, I am also interested in the yield harvested by helpful
insects, bacteria, and fungi and for the birds and small animals that
interact with the garden as well.
By taking care of the smaller cultivators in my garden, I end up with a
better yield of harvestable produce each season and will spend less
money and energy applying things like fertilizers and pesticides.
Source: Backyard Homesteading, Peter Bane
9. PERMACULTURE PRINCIPLES:
MAKE NO WASTE
Vermicompost will play a major role in my garden. As an apartment dweller, building and
maintaining a vermiculture bin is an easy and manageable way to turn my kitchen scraps
into valuable nutrients for my plants. As I discovered through my research for the
Livestock Yields project, worm bins attract many other decomposers such as mites, pot
worms, and black beetles and, if they make it to the soil with the compost, are great for
the plants as well.
Ideally, I’d like to build my own compost spinner but I fear that due to my amateur-ness,
I’ll unintentionally attract all kinds of city pests to my garden and home. I’ve been looking
into buying a compost spinner that I can keep outdoors during the spring, summer, and
fall (I’m afraid it would be too cold out there during the winter to keep it up)
Last but not least, I feel that the notion of ‘making no waste’ applies to the aspects of each
plant that I won't necessarily ingest but will benefit from in another way. For example, the
only part of the borage plant that I’m going to consume is the flower, but I know that they
make fantastic bed-ends to attract pollinators and house predatory insects.
Source: Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen, www.growingagreenerworld.com
10. PERMACULTURE PRINCIPLE:
INTEGRATE, DON’T SEPARATE
Building upwards as well as across the land will be pivotal to increasing the production of
my garden. I can utilize horizontal structures in two ways: shelves and trellises.
Herbs grow just as well in shelved beds as they do in the ground so, in order to take up less
precious space in my raised beds, I plan to grow most of my herbs in a four-tier shelving
unit. The area that I have decided to place the shelves gets shade for just a smidge longer
from the shadow of the house which I hope will help some of the more sensitive herbs from
getting sunburnt during the peak of the summer.
Trellises can easily be built alongside the house without disturbing anyone on the first floor.
Over the course of the day, the side of the house will store and radiate heat from the sun
which will greatly benefit the peas, beans, and other legumes I’ll grow in that space. Peas,
beans, and legumes are also great soil-fixers and will help improve the soil quality as well!
“Integration is the key principle we must observe to pack small systems with enough life
and vigor to support us” (Bane 37).
Source: Backyard Homesteading, Peter Bane
11. CONCLUSIONS
In order to achieve maximum production, the design
plan with four beds and a trellis is going to be the
best choice for me.
