Anyone here become an urban homesteader on their small city house block?  Trying to pack it all in on a compact allotment?  I'm interested to hear if you have grown the many areas of homesteading - vegie patches, fruit trees, chooks, composting, bees, solar panels etc  along with your fig trees, and what was it that started you on this journey?  What inspired you?

I live in inner city Melbourne, surrounded by neighbouring properties with concrete gardens or manicured lawns.  I think back to that show I used to watch 30 years ago 'The Good Life' and chuckle. I drew alot of inspiration from the youtube video on the Dervaes Family family urban homesteading over in America and what they can do and produce on their city block.  But my initial inspiration was a combination of self sufficiency, access to organic foods (too pricey for organic in our shops here), access to fruit that I love that has very short stocking store times here (my favourite plum is only in stock less than a week each year here - so I started growing the pips!), access to fruit one can never buy in shops in my city (eg. pepinos  and soon to be fig varieties one day), and a determination to change my health around and start learning about nutrition for healing, superfoods and growing foods, and back to basics I guess.

I have a very compact yard so i come up with ideas to get the most out of it.

what got me to this way of thinking? it all started about 6 years ago. the real estate bubble popped here in the U.S. as having my own drywall bizz the economy went from great to almost nothing overnight it seemed. my savings went poof after waiting for the call from the housing contracter that i did all the drywall for. a call that never came. having three kids and only min wage jobs to be found i had to find a way to make an income from home as i could no afford to pay a sitter. my wife was in managment at the gas station she worked at so i was a stay at home dad. at that time i had two fig trees just to give the fruit a try. a cherry tree that was planted years before, and a row of black berries, grapes, and raspberries. i always liked to garden. a small veggie patch and two rose of sharron bushes in the front yard that were about 20 years old. 

one day while searching ebay i noticed that people where selling seeds and plants. rose of sharron makes lotsa seeds. so i got all the seeds and packed them in packs of 25. i listed them on ebay for 25 cents a pack with 1.00 shipping. in a month i made 200.00. i always propigated my blackberries so i tried to sell live plants and again was sold out in a month and made 500.00 just off of the blackberry plants. 

it was time to do some homework. Royal empress trees offerd the most profit in the shortest time. this tree a very fast growing shade tree with velvet like heart shaped leaves and lavender foxglove like flowers was a big seller. on month for seeds to germanate and another month to two before they were ready to sell. i made 10,000 bucks in one growing season off of these guys alone.

about this lime i had tasted figs from my trees and really liked them, i experimented with propagation and listed the trees that i rooted. i couldnt keep figs in stock. i ran across Jon's email some where on the web and emailed him regarding cuttings. he had told me it was the wrong time of year and invited me to look at the F4F forum. which i did. we had a drought a few years back that killed off my brambles so i decided to grow figs as a hedge (works rather well and saves space). after joining figs for fun through the sharing kindness of the members here over the past two or so years my collection has went from 2 fig trees to 30. i liked selling figs because its a year round income, cuttings in winter and small trees the rest of the time. plants have kept me from losing my home, my kids, and put me through school to become a CNA. i am going to go back to school for nursing.

also as a vet of military service a % of all my online sales goes to charities like children of fallen solders, the wounded worrier project, and childrens miricle network. sence i have been doing this online selling i have been able to donate through sells roughly 10,000 dollars to these charities from my own stock and cutting donations from other members ( no names mentioned but they know who they are). i sold my drywall tools and put up a small green house for controlled propagation. 

now im working as a cna, unfortunatly my fridge went out this last winter and i lost hundreds of cuttings set aside for propagation, so no trees this season. will have cuttings over winter and bought a small fridge just for them. 

thats how i got into it.

now to save on energy i put up a small wind turbine that cuts a bit off of my energy bill but it dont get windy here in summer so i will have to wait to see what fall brings. next spring (tax time) i will be adding a 600 watt solar grid tie system.

Amazing story, garden_wisperer!

Dave / Garden Whisperer - thankyou so much for sharing your story!

You have turned a horrid life situation that was thrust on you unexpectantly around, and developed not only a way to sustain your family with growing your food but also cleverly developed income lines as well.  Your story is really inspiring for me to read.   I wish you well on your new career, your family and homesteading!  

Gen from Down Under

I was just to stuborn to give up. the good lord provides us with everything we need, we just need to open our eyes and see it. somtimes it takes being in a tight spot to see it though, how it was in my case.

Before I moved we had a small urban lot, about 3500 SF all said, including the footprint of the house. We managed to pack a lot of stuff in that yard. Here is the plans we had drawn up. It was a lot of fun. I miss that little yard. It really packed a punch. Edible landscaping was the theme.

Here's the layout we followed. Some changes along the way but you get the idea.
http://niroha.smugmug.com/Landscapes/Back-Yard-Landscape-Project/i-gvtwtxD/0/X3/DSC_0007-X3.jpg

Before
 

During
 

After
Trellis installed for espalier fruit trees (2 pears and an apple)
 

 

my most inspiring home garden is from Australia... I love what he did on this place.

Wow, those are some inspiring example of what can be done with a yard!

While I don't live in a city plot, I've been trying to make my edible oasis in suburbia.  I inherited a mature landscape when we bought our house, but the landscape devolved due to parent-hood induced neglect, and plants just died from the brutal winter or unknown diseases.  I took that as an opportunity to act on my long-standing desire to have an edible landscape and to provide nutritious pesticide-free food for my family.  These past few years, I've managed to start my landscape experiments with:

6 blueberry bushes along the back of the yard, 5 dwarf blueberry bushes closer to the patio
4 varieties of red raspberries, 2 yellow, 1 purple, 1 black
3 varieties of strawberries, 1 yellow alpine strawberry, and 1 red alpine strawberry
pineberries
Triple Crown and Navaho blackberries
3 paw paw trees
1 goumi bush
3 Juneberry bushes
an asparagus patch

I still have a goji and two elderberries in 5 gallon buckets awaiting preparation of their final in-ground locations.  On my to-plant list are more raspberries (I didn't anticipate just how many my son could consume), a jujube tree or two, and maybe a cherry if I can find a good spot.

As an added bonus, I found out during my research that the Rose of Sharon and Cornelian cherry that were previously planted are technically edible.

Land used to the max, truly amazing.

Nichole,

Are your dogs Staffordshire Bull Terriers?  I have a Staffy, not a very common breed.  I'll have to find a pic and post. 

If you're interested in getting ideas from people who do this full time with multiple urban lots, follow gateway garlic urban farm on facebook.

Thanks so much for posting your photos and plan of your edible landscape Nichole - truly inspiring and amazing what you did to the place.  I can see how you miss it!  
You have masterfully and carefully packed in so much in such a compact space - wow.

This is what I'm trying to do here in Oz at the moment.  I am growing fruit trees both in the ground and about 20 in pots (some bought dwarf stock and some grown from seeds of my favourite fruit that I've bought in shops but couldnt find the plants to buy in nurseries and so have grown my favorite varieties of plums, peaches, apples etc in pots, so in a few years they should bear fruit as they are still quite tiny at present. 

If you were in Melbourne I'd invite you around for a cuppa and sit out in the backyard :-)

regards
Gen

Gen - you'll have so much fun planning and making it all come together. The key things that made it all work for us was planting while planning for mature tree size so you don't over plant and create an unhealthy jungle, planning ahead to know that you'll have to prune smart to keep your fruit trees manageable, use dwarf or semi dwarf root stock, and growing espalier fruit trees along your fence line really jams them in there! Berry bushes and other small edibles can help fill in those spaces.

m5allen - they are indeed SBT's. I have three of them. You are right, they are not common over here at all. Love em to bits!
Tucker (left) is 9 months, Sadie (middle) is 5 yrs, and Violet (right) is 4 yrs
 

Thanks Nichole, yes I’d read the perils of growing fruit from seed, but groceries stores never knew the variety of these plums etc, and so I thought I’m prepared to take the gamble.  Actually thats a VERY good idea to graft these seedlings onto dward rootstock.

Wow Grasa, you have really packed a punch for a city plot!  Thats very impressive what you’ve planted and the diversity too!  There’s even berries I’d never head of before, so am now going to google them (Marionberries, salmonberries).

Jkuo sounds like  you have truly developed your suburban edible oasis – and to have everything so fresh to just pick and give to your son too - and Im going to even google your berries (pineberries,  goumi bush, Juneberry).  You must have a real true green thumb there. 

Very very inspiring...

Nichole,

Here is my boy Rocco - 4 years old.  

You know the drill....most people say to me, "cute little pit bull".   Then I have to explain what a Staffy is.  

 

I love Roco's prick ears. Adorable. And yes, I know that conversation well ;)

I have a small yard in San Jose that is all edible. Here is a pic of the front which I redid this year, little video tour below that:
 

thanks for sharing Ohjustaguy /Kevin, you have truly transformed your front lawn into an amazing edible project.  I checked out your video and then went onto your website, and on your website your May photo just shows how much its truly grown and your July new video shows a food forest!   Amazing work you have done there.  So fresh fruit and veg that you can just simply walk out the front door and pick - sooooo much better than relying and driving to the store for groceries 3 days old.  

oh this is so inspiring.  Thankyou!

Plus you have such a great idea going with the worm towers - i reckon I might try that one...

Gen
hello from downunder 

I would love to go all edible, but I have a huge block!  One and a half acres steep hill, and a cheap hubby, random gophers and assorted pests, plus a verified drought.  He'd rather me drive to the store and buy produce than pay for the water and all to grow it.  I do my best.  I troll daily to make sure the drippers aren't clogged.  It happens.  Soaking two at the moment, clogged with hard water deposits, in vinegar.  Sigh.

Suzi

Well Aussie I got the idea for worm towers from a Aussie/Kiwi video showing them on Youtube. It's really an idea that started in Aussie permaculture circles.... a very easy (i.e. lazy) way to do vermicomposting :)

I switched a lot of my drip from emitters to 1/4" porous tubing to avoid clogging issues. All the tiny holes in that porous tubing means water gets through somehow, even is some end up blocked...

your farm looks awesome.  where do you have your figs?

I don't have before and after.. my yard changes every time I am out there. I cannot confind my plants to the 'boxes'. They sprawl, outgrow their areas, so I keep transplanting them to outside their boxes... Must be the add in me.   Your loquat is adorable. I brought one with me from S.F. and brought in  my carry on bag. It is doing quite well, but not sure it will ever fruit for me here.  Love loquats.

I'll post photos of my attempted edible landscape in summer (december for Australia)