Thread by @45thabsurdist

Okay, late to bandwagon but this collective believes in gardening. Sure, it may not replace the global food distribution network, but everything that we grow doesn’t need to be transported, contributes to local food security and means we can feed our friends and neighbors. A🧵

First I love this book. When I was 15 years younger I had friends who lived at the food not lawns house in our town. They had torn the entire lawn out of their rental and raised piles of food. This is the only garden book that also has chapters on how to start pirate radio

These guys form the back bone of the garden they eat bugs and make lots of high nitrogen poop

All of that high nitrogen chicken straw gets mixed with free wood chips from chip drop and together turn into really fantastic hot compost that goes on all of the beds

One of our collective used to be a farmer so our garden on purpose does not resemble a farm at all. Things get tucked in wherever they fit and we use a cover crop of arugula, spinach, mustard greens and radishes to help keep the soil covered and prevent weeds.

Most of the garden beds look something like this: old mustards going to seed tiny cabbages that have just been planted, lettuces, and itsy-bitsy tiny carrots coming up. I think there might be some volunteer potatoes from last year in this garden bed?

This bed just got more seeds tossed into it and a trellis needs to be built for the peas soon but the garlic won’t be ready for another couple of months. Eventually some beans will go in here but they are growing in a seed starting tray for later

But what really makes me happy is not the sheer number of raised beds that we plant but the part of it that has been turned into a Pirma culture garden. While it gets sweetie it requires very little maintenance besides mulching and can really hold a lot in a small space.

I highly recommend anyone new to gardening really try a perennial bed. Strawberries, rhubarb, medicinal herbs, raspberries, fruit bushes, artichokes, asparagus all come back year after year and require almost no maintenance and can be beautiful to look at with almost no work.

Well, that was supposed to say “weedy”. But whatever.

At some point I may update with tomatoes and such but I actually need to plant them and keep them from dying in the tiny pots that I seated them in back in February. Anyway I love to garden share and I highly encourage people to go and play in the dirt.

Oh! I am incredibly excited about this. This experiment is trying to take a tiny shady patch and grow regional edible shade forest plants so there is Ladyfern, waterleaf, oxalis, And wild Ginger

Final note when we do weed we try to help finish the cycle out by tossing weeds and bugs back into the chicken run. The chickens get to eat lots of plants and bugs and everything starts over again.