Crop Rotation - Rotate, Rotate, Rotate

"The farmer whose soil produces less every year is unkind to it in some way; that is, he is not doing it what he should; he is robbing it of some substance it must have, and he becomes, therefore, a soil robber rather than a progressive farmer." -George Washington Carver

Urban Farm in September of 2017

We're going to jump ahead for a quick minute and get you thinking about the future.  Your urban farm is now planned out for this year, think about next years growing season, just for a few minutes.

For subsequent years, you aren't going to plant everything in the exact same spot you are planting them this year, you need to ROTATE everything.  Assuming you did an okay job the first time around with your crash course into companion planting, just rotate everything clockwise.  Your goal should be to not plant the same plants in the exact same spot for another 5 years.  You take your map from this year, rotate everything clockwise so you're not planting anything in the same spot, then hopefully in 5+ years your back to your original map and you just keep that going until the end of time.

Don't Forget About the Flowers!

"I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers." -Claude Monet

Bees on a Bachelor Button Flower

Flowers, Flowers, Flowers...

Are one of the most important aspects (yes, I do say that a lot about a lot of different things but it's equally true for all of them) of having your very own urban.  Pollinators, such as bees, butterflies, etc. need flowers to survive.  Flowers need the bees to survive.  Your veggies ALSO need these pollinators to survive.  Without pollinators you wouldn't be getting any tomatoes, peppers, etc.  and our society as we know it would basically be doomed without pollinators as food production would plummet.  New research suggests that your everyday pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, etc. are in-fact bad for pollinators.  While these chemicals don't kill the pollinators instantly, they do over longer periods of time.  Providing chemical free flowers for your neighborhood bees and pollinators to enjoy is of the utmost importance to not only these very same pollinators but your veggie production, your neighborhood, and the world as we know it.  Lets save the world with chemical free flowers, shall we?! 

Continue to Plan and Dream!

"Gardening simply does not allow one to be mentally old, because too many hopes and dreams are yet to be realized." -Allan Armitage

Aerial View of the Urban Farm - July 2020

You have a rough plan for your up and coming urban farm, your garlic is planted (or will be soon in the early spring), you know what you're going to do for tilling / broadforking, your compost piles have been started, your seeds are in the mail to you, you have a plan drawn up for drip irrigation, and you have a plan for keeping the weeds at bay, what could possibly be next?