This is the state of my suburban homestead as of Fall 2018. I plan to write an update on the homestead once or twice a year, as it makes sense.
Food Forest and Side Gardens
In 2018, we were able to harvest fruit from some of the trees and most of the bushes. We also had harvested our annual vegetables and herbs from the side garden beds along the fences.
- The Brown Turkey Fig tree continues to produces a few or two every day. The first fig ripened in mid-August, and the tree should keep producing figs until the first frost.
- The Chocolate Persimmon tree had dozens of buds in the spring, but we had only five persimmons towards the end of summer. All but one fell off by September, and Hurricane Flo knocked the last one down. We were able to eat about half of it, which we did without trying to leave it to ripen. It’s common for young persimmon trees to drop their fruit, so I am not concerned.
- The pomegranate tree produced five or six flowers this summer, but all have fallen off a few weeks after blooming.
- All three apple trees had a few flowers in the spring, but no fruit.
- The two Manchurian Apricot trees really suffered this year. One of the trees just suddenly stopped budding in early spring. I thought it had suffered frost damage, but these trees grow well in colder hardiness zones, so that wasn’t it. It started sending shoots from the roots, and they are currently taller than I am. The other apricot tree suffered apricot borer beetles, and completely dried up. I later found out they are not good candidates for our climate… peach trees do a lot better here.
Early this year, at the end of winter, I ordered sawdust spawn of various oyster mushrooms, as well as wine cap mushrooms, and scattered the sawdust in my food forest. Then I covered the sawdust with a fresh layer of wood chips. However, I have not seen any of the wine cap or oyster mushrooms come up (there have been plenty of other mushrooms, but none that were wine cap or oysters).
Aquaponics Garden and Fish Pond
I had hired a landscaping contractor to redo the aquaponics system. I was very grateful to have found someone who was willing to experiment. However, the experimentation had its cost: there were a lot of not-quite-successful experiments that we did that needed to be corrected. Because of this, the aquaponics system is still not yet functional. The return plumbing needs to be changed and overflow functionality needs to be added for it to be robust. One positive outcome is that all of the lessons learned will be incorporated into the forthcoming design plans.
While working on the system, we harvested two of the three catfish, and put the catfish, two koi, and the goldfish into a relatively small container. When the new fish pond was ready, we transferred the fish into it. A few weeks later, we had dozens (perhaps over a hundred) small koi fry that had hatched. In the middle of the summer, I was able to add aquatic plants to the fish pond, which have since acclimated and are growing in the fish pond.
Composting
The composting system is working well after I added well-decomposed compost in the early summer. Currently, it takes about a month to decompose, although this is an estimation, since we continuously add more food waste to the composting box. Besides kitchen food waste (including paper towels and napkins), we add grass clippings, twigs from pruning, and various mushrooms we find growing in our yard.
We are making compost tea regularly (every two-three months except for winter) and are using it as a natural pesticide and fertilizing spray on all our plants: trees, bushes, grass, veggies, and herbs. You can read more about the motivation, theory, and practice of composting and compost tea here.
Things to complete or improve
I have the following list of things to complete or improve, which I plan to do during the fall and winter months.
- Replace the apricot tree. I will probably plant a peach tree, taken from the local farmer’s market.
- Finish putting up berry cages. Earlier this year, I had purchased large tomato cages that I planned to use instead of a trellis for the berry bushes that tend to sprawl. I had only installed two of the eight cages.
- Work with the contractor to finish the aquaponics system, and plant winter-hardy vegetables in it. I am excited to try growing broccoli raab in the aquaponics system.
- Prune the trees and bushes thoroughly (once leaves start falling off bushes/trees). I had experimented with severely pruning the chicory, basically to the ground, and that worked well. I plan to prune the rest of the chicory bushes within the next month.
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