Home Garden - Food Forest
A collection of stories from our urban homestead in Portland Oregon.
Our Home Garden Food Forest Stories
Starting Plants from Seed
Starting a Garden from Seed Starting plants from seed is the most economical way to grow a garden. Buying plants from a nursery that are ready to be directly planted into your garden beds may save time or be good for a first-time gardener. However, if the goal is to...
Propagating Fruit Trees and Shrubs from Cuttings
Propagating Fruit Trees / Shrubs from Cuttings Propagating fruit trees and shrubs from cuttings is an important urban homesteading skill. If you want free plants or low-cost plants, learning to propagate your own plants is critical. In general, most berries and...
Soil Amendments
Soil Amendments Soil amendments enhance the productivity of the native soil. There are a large number of different soil amendments available to adjust the nutrient and mineral levels in your gardens and food forest. However, before you start adding tons of different...
May 2021 Garden Tour Through Our Food Forest
It's early May and everything is leafing out and full of blooms. The garden and food forest are in full spring mode. Can't wait to get to enjoy all the marionberries and peaches that are to come. We wrap up with a little tomato planting. We put in brandywines, black...
4 Reasons to Grow Comfrey in a Urban Food Forest
We grow a bunch of comfrey in our urban homestead food forest. They grow very well in our climate with no watering necessary and with the variety they do not spread by seed or run super far, it stays clumped up where we plant it. It is an excellent source of flowers...
Lady Bugs are Food Forest Friends
Ladybugs Natural Aphid Killers I noticed a couple of days ago that there were several aphids around the Artichokes that were popping up. We plant artichokes in many of our fruit tree guilds as the pollinators love them. I could have come through and sprayed them with...
Oyster Mushrooms from the Garden Enjoying the Harvest
Enjoying our first garden oyster mushroom harvest. Mushrooms are an excellent option for urban homesteaders looking to maximize the potential of their food forest gardens. We planted mushrooms in buckets of straw and directly into the wood chip mulch around plants in...
Harvesting Snow Peas & Broccoli at the Community Garden
Today we harvested the first round of snow peas and some of the broccoli that we planted earlier this year in our community garden plot. We love planting late winter crops such as these and getting to enjoy the harvest in early spring. We have sugar snap peas, Oregon...
Grafting European Pear to Quince Trees
I tried a couple of different grafts of European pears to the quince trees in the backyard food forest and had limited success. This graft took though and I think will work out well even though it is a little ugly, the branch is growing well. I am going to try and...
Peach Harvest in Urban Food Forest
We are harvested tons of peaches from our urban food forest in our front yard. We thin the fruit trees in order to make sure the fruit that grows gets large and ripe. The peaches started to ripen up last week and there is a faint smell of delicious peach when you get...
Harvesting Marionberries in our Food Forest
We harvested marionberries, raspberries, and blueberries in our food forest for the past several weeks. We love growing lots of berries. There are few things better than vine-ripened fresh berries. We grow our marionberries on a simple trellis in order to maximize...
How to Thin Fruit Trees in a Food Forest
Learning how to thin fruit trees in a food forest is important for anyone interested in growing a thriving backyard orchard. This is an important food forest task that most people don't think about when dreaming of growing a big backyard orchard. Due to the large...
Trellising Marionberry Vines
A simple system for trellising our marionberry vines to keep them off the ground to avoid plants rooting in the ground. Marionberries grow on second-year vines. It is important to remove the previous vines and manage the growth for the production of future fruit. A little management goes a long way for fruit production.
Propogating Marionberry Plants
Marionberry plants are super simple to propagate, even a toddler can help out.
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