City/Suburban folks, are you out there?

We live in the burbs but grow quite a bit of veggies. We have a VERY large yard and one corner is all garden. Three types of squash, raspberries, aspargus bed, cucumbers, peppers, corn, eggplants. The tomatoes are grown in large containers we got from a farm. We only grow 6 tomato plants one cherry one and the rest different varities.

We are continuing our gardening. Between the community garden and home garden, we've got corn, 50+ tomato plants, greens, broccoli, potatoes, cukes, herbs, lettuce, onions, raspberries, and chard.

I'm hoping to get in on the canning this year and make tomato sauce. DH cans quite a bit, but makes salsa.

__________________
Gardening, conserving and learning in the urban Midwest

I just realized I never answered this...how rude! Thanks for the bump Seedspreader.

I live on .238 ac lot in Norfolk VA, right on the junction of the Elizabeth and Broad river which is tidally influenced so just a tad bit brackish. That also means that most of my lot is in question as to whether it is wetlands, riparian buffer zone or an IDA (Intensely Disturbed Area). I say it is IDA because it has been developed and trashed by Hurricane Isabel and filled with invasive species. They remain undecided.

Urgh. The impact of that is approximately half my backyard is not usable in a human sense. I'm "re-wetlanding" it by hand pruning the invasives and culturing disappeared natives. Very hard work and it has taken 3 years to get 80% of it done, working on some thing, even if only for a few minutes, every single day.

The upside of that is a lush and re-awakening water view filled with ducks and geese and birds. And soon it will be full of cattails and cranberries and other yummies. So it isn't a total loss!

The rest of the back has a combo of raised beds and containers, because it is a flood zone everything needs to be safe up to 6 inches and a few grapevines and blueberries and mulberries trees along with the other non-food trees. Also a teeny tiny squash patch and herb patch. The front is neighbor friendly shrubs and flowers in the bed, with a few herbs and cukes snuck in there so they won't notice.

Chickens not allowed, no matter how much I try to say it is for pet purposes only.

I'll not live here forever though...got a little place in ark I'm moving to when I'm done with the military. Or somewhere else if I find something even more fantabulastic, but I can imagine anything prettier.

__________________
Christy
Growing Human
http://growinghuman.blogspot.com

When wearing narrow lenses of hate and ignorance, is it any wonder one finds it difficult to see clearly? - Me

I grow veggies in containers. They are doing much better since I got syrup buckets from one of the local farmers. The buckets are so much bigger than anything else I had at home! Hope to plant some fruit trees.

well we're almost suburbs at this point. The city is fast approaching us. We're on 1 1/4 acres and have chickens and rabbits. we have a decent sized garden with tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, corn, onions, broccoli, herbs and some plants( comfrey, mangel beets, dandelions, sow thistle) for the animals. I want to put in strawberries and some fruit trees this fall. I'd like to have goats (don't think we're restricted against them) but dh has dug his heels in on saying no to them so far. oh and we have three dogs and a couple cats thrown in too.

__________________
Ginnie..
http://ginniequilts.blogspot.com/
You can say what you want about the South,
But you never hear of anyone retiring and moving North.

We just moved to the city this past month. I'm not sure how big our backyard is, but I have a garden about 1/3 the width and 3/4 the length of it. My husband also garbage picked a wooden bedframe that he is going to make me a 'flower bed' with for our front yard, and I'm hoping to put beautiful but useful plants in it, like herbs, pretty flowering vegetables, and perhaps other plants that I can use for dyes and whatnot.

Our lot is about 40'x100' (give or take) with a 1000 square foot house plopped on it. We are smack dab in the middle of a mid-1960s suburban development, 10 miles from the state capital. We haven't developed as much as we would like, but have about 20 square feet of raised beds, and about another 20 of regular in-ground beds. So far we have:

Corn
Onions
Carrots
Cantaloupe
Zucchini
Peas
Sugar Snap Peas
Parsnips
Mesclun
Spinach
Cucumber
Oregano
Chives
Swiss Chard

and four well established mulberry trees (I just made a pie on Sunday with the berries the birds didn't get), and have a plum sapling that will be planted in the ground next year (it's in a pot right now). We plant enough to supplement our diets during the summer and early fall (we're in the Midwest, and our growing season is pretty short), but would like to have enough to can/freeze and carry us through winter and this foreign concept referred to as, "Spring".

I haven't found anything in our city ordinances that say we can't have chickens, but I'm still leary about getting some. I'd really like to have two laying hens. I think when our son is a little older, and our fences a little higher, we'll investigate getting some.

We have a large (HUGE) compost heap that stays well fed in yard waste and dinner scraps. Our rabbit recently passed away, but his poop also went into the compost heap.

Our goal is to have half of the yard devoted to growing fruits and vegetables, and then replant the other half with clover or some other ground cover that doesn't need mowed. In an ideal world, we'd get a pygmy goat to take care of the grass issue...but since our city ordinance enforcers have been to our house four times in the last two years to "remind" us that our grapevines are considered parasitic/nuisance plants in our area, I don't think they would be too happy about us adopting a pet goat. Eventually the city won and the 12 foot tall grape vines came tumbling down.

The flower beds in front of our home are also used for practical purposes. Our herbs grow out front, and occasionally we plant peppers there, too. Normally we have a few pumpkin vines sprout in our flower bed too, and we just let them go because they look cool.

The husband and I often dream about moving out to the middle of no where on a big piece of land, but on the other hand, we're awfully comfortable where we are now and have put a lot of effort into our home. At this point (and this sounds awful) our near-future decisions really depend on our neighbors. Most of them are the original owners of the homes, and have nothing better to do with their time than measure grape vines and complain about pets (let alone goats or chickens)...but considering they're getting into their 70s and 80s, and their houses will be vacant in the coming years... Basically we're just waiting to find out who is going to move in when they are no longer in their houses, and our plans will depend on that.

We live on the edge of the Puyallup Reservation in Tacoma, WA. Some garden photos here:http://www.xanga.com/Mausheim/657102695/my-garden.html
and here: http://www.xanga.com/jinxmedic101/66...rden-beds.html

Right now we have 7 4' x 4' x 18" beds, 2 4' x 8' x 12" beds, and 1 2' x 16' x 18" bed.

Too much rain so far - we may lose some plants if it doesn't dry up soon.

I live 30 miles north of the NYC border. Love it here, but hopefully we'll be moving in a year or two. I'd like to be in a far more rural location. We have an apple tree and a garden. Not quite enough sun, but it usually works ok, and the neighbors are great about putting up with our crazy gardening ideas.

That's just fabulous DenverGirlie, kudos to you! How inspiring!

__________________
http://tinksquared.com

We are thinking about buying a small house within an urban/suburban area to live in for a couple years, mainly because the price is right. It is nice to see what possibilities exist for us to work with. I've been kind of back and forth on the possibility, mainly because I really want some land.

Can anyone who has had extensive gardens on a small lot tell me how it affected your resale value? What things did people like, and what turned people off? We are considering buying a home that we could pay off in two or three years and then rent out or sell when we moved to the next stage.

Kayleigh

__________________
http://kayleighjeanne.blogspot.com

Kayleigh, I can't say how the gardens would affect resale value, but I think it depends a lot on the buyer. There are a lot of city folk looking to grow more of their own food; I can see that every time I go to the plant nursery and watch people snapping up the veggies plants, fruit trees and seeds. If some of those folks are looking for homes in your area, I imagine extensive gardens could be a big selling point. Of course, if someone is not interested in gardening, they might be a detriment. However, if during the time you're there you're able to grow most of the family's food, the amount saved might make the whole project worthwhile.