We live in a little loft in downtown Tacoma, and as much as we’ve tried (sorry about those tomato buckets on the roof, landlord!) it’s a little bit difficult to grow food in the space that we have. We do have a 6′ x 3′ closet by our kitchen that we’ve been experimenting growing food in with a grow light, but it’s been a little tricky. Our cherry tomatoes are currently about 10 feet long as they’re  s  t  r  e  t  c  h  i  n  g  to reach more light. Our poor pepper plants have been hit by a plague of aphids now for the second time, despite a dish soap + garlic water spray and the purchase of 1,000 lady bugs. We haven’t given up yet because I think it’s important to work with what you have and I also think that people grossly underestimate how little space you really need to grow a significant amount of food. (holla, WindowFarms!). I also think it’s unfortunate that we’re so out of touch with where our food comes from and how it makes its way from the ground to the table.

Enter some of our best friends, Kass and Eowyn. They bought a house in the outer ring of Tacoma and because of that have a great little backyard that has huge potential. We’ve (Kass, Eowyn, Me, Scott, and now Scott and Jacqui, too!) all decided to work together to build a little farm and this year it’s off to a promising start! (Last year wasn’t quite as promising. For a perfect recount of last year’s disastrous garden, head over to Eowyn’s blog post)

I’m trying to take more photos of the process this year and here’s the beginning of it!

Plantin’ some seeds

I started some Green Zebra and Cherokee tomatoes in our closet garden early this spring. Jacqui and I were talking about how we always feel like we’ve been duped because we follow the seed packet’s guidelines for when to plant, but our seedlings are always tiny and everyone else’s starts are GIANT. Not this year, buddy!

Most of the building materials for this entire project have been sourced from free pallets and it’s turning out to be a perfect resource, even though they kind of suck to take apart. BUT, we’re building all of our raised beds, compost bins, and chicken coop out of these babies.

New raised beds in the garden plot. Last year we tried to till this space and then sift the 50 gabajillion rocks out of it. This year we’ve gotten a little wiser and have decided on raised beds + tagro.

We dug up last year’s strawberries so we could replant them in the raised beds:

Tagro!

Landscape fabric down. WAY WAY better than tilling + sifting.

Peas that I started in our closet garden:

Can’t wait!