Existing Components

Due to my love of gardening, I am fortunate to hit the ground running in a sense.  I have a few things in place already in my back yard to help get the food production machine going.  Let me give you a quick overview of what have going already.

First of all, for this area, we are blessed with a very deep back yard.  Our house faces east, which means the back yard has good sun exposure throughout the day.

Over the past few years we have added a few plants that provide us with food every year.  We have two cherry trees, a nectarine tree and a recently planted apple tree, which was a great find, combining four apple varieties on one tree.  Two years ago I planted some raspberry bushes along the back fence in my small garden area, and a black berry bush as well.  And, we planted a grape vine in front of our shed.  I have a few strawberries growing in a side bed but not nearly enough to produce an appreciable amount of food.  I have plans to add more this year.

And, we have an existing garden area that I have been working with for the past few years, although the raspberries and blackberries have taken up a bit of the already somewhat small space.  In the past we have grown tomatoes, lettuce, peppers, cucumbers, corn, radishes, summer squash, green beans, spinach, carrots, potatoes and winter squash..... although not always in the same year.  This is a great resource at the moment because we have been "building" this soil over the past few years with copious additions of grass clippings, leaves, manure, and compost.  The earth worms love this area and my yard in generals o I am blessed with was is some very fertile garden soil.

It is from this humble beginning that I embark on this journey into back yard homesteading.  Don't worry if you don't have these types of components in place.  Just start adding them to your yard where they make sense.  I think I maybe payed 15 or 20 dollars each for the fruit trees.  This means of course that they were small when we started and it was at least 2 or 3 years before they produced any appreciable amount of fruit.  In fact, last year was the first year that the cherries did anything.  It will probably be a year or two before the apples do anything of consequence.  Just get a few that you think you will enjoy and get them in the ground.  Fruit is one option, but nuts are also great additions.  The most important thing is to get started somewhere.  If trees are not an option for you then keep checking back as I plan to detail other ideas a projects that you can add to your yard and often incorporate into your existing landscape with ease.

Happy Living