{"id":24,"date":"2015-09-28T20:31:52","date_gmt":"2015-09-28T20:31:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fivefurrow.net\/?page_id=24"},"modified":"2015-10-16T14:12:35","modified_gmt":"2015-10-16T18:12:35","slug":"backstory","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/fivefurrow.net\/?page_id=24","title":{"rendered":"Backstory"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"IMG_1691_2011_Garden\"<\/a>
The garden, when it was somebody else’s garden<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 2011, I\u00a0was looking for something improbable: a place in Brooklyn, NY where I could live life in the city, and grow my own food.<\/p>\n

After almost a year of searching, and a few mishaps, I set my sights on a place with a little back yard, mostly concrete, but with a few in-ground beds, south-facing light from midmorning til evening, and no neighboring buildings or trees so large that they would make vegetable gardening difficult. It needed work… but the basics were there. I could see some evidence of vegetable gardening happening there, along with a large helping of scraggly rosebushes, shrubs, hostas, and a whole lot of weeds.<\/p>\n

I had been container gardening for a couple of years on and off, sometimes in pretty huge containers, but was never really satisfaied with the results for the amount of work it took. I set my sights on improving this little patch of the city. I moved in in December, a few months after first seeing the place as I first saw it in this photo, taken in July.<\/p>\n

For the first half of 2012, I was renovating the place. I wanted to plant, but the interior was the priority. I planted a few rather large tomato starts towards the beginning of summer when I was finally able to take a break from renovation. I think I got a small harvest that year, but I had started late and had an overgrown garden of shrubs and weeds to deal with as well.<\/p>\n

The next season, I started getting serious about the garden, but there was also more renovation to do. So 2013 might have been the first year where I really started putting some work into the place. Improving the soil, pulling out unwanted shrubs, and generally tidying up the place. I learned a few things and the harvest was more diverse. Towards the end of the year I made sure that the next season would get off to its start unhindered.<\/p>\n

In 2014 and 2015 I’ve been improving the soil constantly, enhancing our seed propagation setup, taking notes in a journal, setting goals and making them happen, building a small community of collaborators and enthusiastic friends, and tracking our harvests to the bean. I have a garden partner now who is into it as I am, which is an amazing blessing to me\u2014and makes it fun as hell, too. We eat almost everything we grow, and the rest we give away.<\/p>\n

Through research and direct experience, I’ve learned an incredible amount in the past few\u00a0years. Now, all I have to do is remember to do is to take a break once in a while, and enjoy the transformation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2011, I\u00a0was looking for something improbable: a place in Brooklyn, NY where I could live life in the city, and grow my own food. After almost a year of searching, and a few mishaps, I set my sights on a place with a little back yard, mostly concrete, but with a few in-ground beds, … Continue reading Backstory<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-24","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fivefurrow.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fivefurrow.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fivefurrow.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fivefurrow.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fivefurrow.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/fivefurrow.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/24\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1037,"href":"https:\/\/fivefurrow.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/24\/revisions\/1037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fivefurrow.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}