Today we have officially owned our house for 2 years. We’ve come a long way since then and have done a ton of work. Some of you may be familiar with what we acquired when we bought our place. Basically we had a field with lots of very poorly maintained trees. We cut all the…
The Holy Grail of Seed Catalogs. The Ultimate Seed Porn. The Baker Creek Heirloom Catalog is out! I just got it in the mail and I’m so excited! It means it’s time to start planning next year’s garden. For those that aren’t familiar with this catalog, it’s an amazing, 130 glossy-paged book of thousands of…
Our garden 3 1/2 years ago We’ve been slowly building up our urban farming operation over the last 4 years. We started with gardening and slowly grew our farm – moving to chickens and then acquiring goats and then rabbits. Soon we’ll have our own bee hives and we’re looking into doing pigs, chickens and…
Prior to 1900 there were over 8,000 varieties of apples. 8,000! That’s an amazing amount! But the vast majority of those varieties have become extinct and the others are quickly fading away. There appears to be only about 700 varieties left in private and public collections. Such a shame! Arkansas Black Apples I’m picky about…
Gardening is always a learning experience. Sometimes you learn from your mistakes. And sometimes you don’t. This fall I knew not to wait too long to get all my fall veggies in the ground. Did I do that? Nope. My second planting of crops has been a complete failure. So this time I’m writing everything…
That starchy tuber – the Potato. I love digging up potatoes. It’s like a treasure hunt. This weekend we extended our potato bed and planted a new set of seed potatoes. We are fortunate to have a mild winter, so while the plants may freeze, if we put enough straw over the bed, they will…
Living in California I definitely take Pomegranates for granted. We can grow them here and they are pretty common. Every nursery around here carries them. I’ve even used them in planting plans on model homes for developers. In the late spring and early summer the small, multi-branched tree becomes covered in these bright red flowers…
My seedlings are taking a hit. What’s strange is the seedlings planted closer to the house and activity are suffering the most from pests. The ones planted near the end of our lot seem relatively unscathed. The squirrels have been digging up my carrot seedlings to bury acorns. The birds have been eating my seedlings’…
I like Summer because there isn’t much to do other than harvest and weed a little. Fall and Winter are when we have the most chores. Fortunately after all the hard work we did last year with double digging our beds means we have less to do this year. Right now we’re cleaning out our…
Well, it’s that time of year. Major transitions in the garden are happening. As crops wither they get pulled out. The soil gets renewed with a layer of chicken and goat compost and loosened up a bit before the next crops go in. The squash and pumpkins are all harvested and getting cured. Melons, cucumbers…
Dog Island Farm is a small urban farm in the San Francisco Bay Area.
