There are a lot of folks in my neighborhood that have gardens. Utah is actually a pretty good place for that compared to a lot of other largely urbanized areas. I have neighbors that grow tomatoes, cucumbers, squash and peppers. I have a Thai and Chinese family across the street that grows insanely hot chilies and lemongrass, and another neighbor who grew up on property in Wisconsin that grows corn like he was back on the farm. The one crop that I don’t know many folks that grow is potatoes.

Of course I don’t know everyone in my neighborhood, and I’m sure there are those that do, my point is that potatoes, for whatever reason, seem to be one of those food crops that have been relegated to the likes of large farms or at the very least to large lots within the boundary communities.

Last year I tried to grow them in containers in the back yard. They got a great start but just never really did much beyond that. It’s an idea that I’d like to try again, but on a much smaller scale than the ten containers that I tried last year.

Never to be told I can’t do something though, I decided this year that it was time to get serious about this potato growing business; you know, back to basics. That meant rows and hilling. Rows and hilling was something that required space and space is sometimes a tight commodity in the suburbs. So what’s a guy to do when he’s trying to “grow possibilities” in the ‘burbs? Till some new area that’s what.

One of the features of the particular suburban area that I have chosen to urban farm is the accessory parking strip that resides just to the side of our driveways. It’s usually the depth of our driveway and in many homes has been concreted to provide a home for the RV, or the boat. In our case we had a small 14ft, old wooden boat. It sat on that side yard for 5 years and I don’t think it saw the water even once. So, I moved it out of the way, picked up the scrap wood and bits of trash that had blown in there and got to tilling.

We had brought in a full truck bed of compost last weekend for use around the house and a good quarter of it ended up in here.

After the tilling, I got around to aesthetics. One thing you always have to take into consideration when you’re trying to homestead the suburbs. Happy neighbors make for happy farmers OK? I had gotten lucky though and found some salvage vinyl fencing materials from a home that was being demolished around the corner. It took a couple of days and a good bit of creativity, but I was able to find a way to get the vinyl fencing up around the new garden area.

But all that is moot if I don’t have good beds right? Right! So the next step was to make sure I could take advantage of the deep tilled new soil that I had available. To do that I wanted to make sure that I could get in and out of the garden area with the minimum impact possible. I decided to add an access path and to shore up the useable soil onto one side of the garden bed. I had now officially turned the wasted space on the side of our yard into useable, arable, well tilled soil; on to the planting.

After doing some research and talking to the old man at the local nursery, I determined that this past week was the perfect time to start planting ‘taters. I hoed and turned the soil until it was into nine nearly 10 foot long rows. I mounded them up a little, turned in some organic fertilizer and then to each bed I counted out 7 seed potatoes.

After burying them about three-four inches I covered with soil and left them be. In about six weeks I’m hoping to be steaming up some young new potatoes to eat with my peas.

The most important thing is that there’s almost always an extra little bit of land on our property that, if someone were so inclined, they could find a way to make into a productive little piece of garden. Potatoes aren’t just for the farms … well, at least not only for the big farms. With a good bit of visualizing, and a little hard work we never know what’s possible do we?

P~

You can reach Paul Gardener by email, or check his personal blog at A posse ad esse

It seems that GRIT editor Hank Will and I are “on the same sheet of music” this week. He put up a great post about saving money in 2009 by raising your own chickens on the same day I was planning on putting this one up, so I thought I’d give it a day or so before adding my two cents.

One of the first things that many small scale growers and aspiring “urban pioneers” decide to do after they’ve established their garden plans is to look into obtaining some chickens. I know a lot of the Grit readers probably already have them or have had them in their past so this may be old news to them. I’m guessing though, that with purse strings getting tighter all around the country and concerns over industrial food products in the news so regularly, that there’s probably a good number of folks trying to get a good idea about what it takes to get started with some small scale egg production.

First off, and in my mind foremost, I have to say this; these are not just egg producing fertilizer factories. They’re that too and much more honestly, but they’re also a responsibility as would be any other livestock that any size farmer decides to integrate into their operation. The scale may be smaller but the obligations are no less pressing. That said, I think the most important thing that any aspiring farmer should do, regardless of scale, is to make an honest assessment of what they want to gain vs. what they are willing to give for this addition. The second thing that you’ll need to be aware of, particularly if you’re like we are and you’re in a residential area with close neighbors and often times limiting covenants and restrictions, is whether or not you are even allowed to keep chickens. Take heart if you’ve already learned that they are not currently allowed, however, mine weren’t either when I first decided I wanted them, but with a good dose of persistence and some community involvement, laws can be changed, and anything is possible! And there you go … the caveats are out, chickens are great, but they are a commitment, so then, on with the fun stuff.

There are a lot of websites and good books that can help you to make a decision on what kind of chickens would be the best for you to keep at your home so I’m not going to try and reinvent the wheel here. A couple I recommend would be “My Pet Chicken’s” Breed selector tool and of course GRIT’s Perfect Chickens, a guide to heritage breeds of chickens. Whichever way you decide to go, however, this is another point where you’ll just have to be honest with yourself about what it is that you want from your birds. It won’t do you a lot of good to get a beautiful Bearded Silver Polish hen because you like the way they look if you’re looking to keep a family of five in eggs regularly or to be able to possible sell some at the farmers market. Do your research thoroughly and honestly. You’ll be happier later because of it.

Now, once you’ve decided what it is that you’re looking for and how many of them you will need and can have, it’s time to look into the different ways of getting them. You may have a farm store near you or perhaps you’ve seen the cute little chicks at the pet store. These are both potential ways to get your chicks but you may want to check out some other possibilities. There are a number of excellent hatcheries out there that can provide you with day old chicks of almost any breed. Some have requirements that you order a minimum number of chicks however, so if you have a friend that’s also interested in raising birds, you may be able to split an order like I did with one of my neighbors. It’s a good idea to order 1 more bird than you will ultimately be able to keep as it’s not uncommon for one to get sick and not make it to adulthood. You can also order fertilized eggs that you can incubate and hatch yourself. Either way, you’ll need to set up a brooder for your young chicks.

You can probably find a company that’s willing to sell you some automatic self regulating brooder set-up if you’re so inclined but I’d say most of us are probably the make do with what you have type. I know I am! This is the brooder box that I used last spring to raise my two clutches of hens. I just lined an old computer box from work with some wood shavings and notched a piece of pvc so that it would hang from the top of the box. This allowed me to hang a light from the pvc so that I could elevate the light or lower it as the chicks required. Hank goes into the requirements of the brooders pretty well so I’ll defer to his article at this point.

And that’s the basics of getting started with Chickens in my opinion. It’s not rocket science, but it does take some thought and some planning. There’s a lot more beyond this though as the chicks start to grow; too much to cover in just this post in fact. Check back next week, and we can continue the discussion.

P~

You can reach Paul Gardener by email, or check his personal blog at A posse ad esse.