The last tenant of my apartment misguidedly put a black nylon tarp in the back yard and covered it over with a three color, sectioned arrangement of white riverstone, red pumice, and brown-chocolate woodstrippings. This was done, I assume, to conceal the myriad rusting Fosters bottle caps niched into all the spaces between the stones. While the stoney backyard could be considered graciously “low-maintenance,” as one of the prospective buyers of the building (it is up for sale by my landlord) told me, it doesn’t make for a very garden friendly site. So today I started tearing up tarp and moving pumice stones to prepare for spring planting.

For starters I am only going to (re)move the pumice stones, since that will give me enough area (about 40-50 sq feet) to experiment with a bit of polyculture, without having to find a place to store all the things I displace. Storage of the stones may be quite an issue, since I have no means of getting rid of the junk that was put in the yard. I am thinking of clandestinely sluffing shovel-fulls of it all into seperate trashcans, 1-2 shovels per can per week, until it’s all gone. But we shall see. Currently, half is piled up on one side of the soon-to-be-garden-bed, the other on the pathway-that -goes-to-nowhere on one side of the house. I am crunching my available space and trying to find a way to work out a viable spot for a compost heap. That may not happen. But I am certainly going to sheetmulch the bed-to-be-planted.

Doing all this without a vehicle proves rather challenging. I “borrowed” my tools from a decrepit looking shed out back (getting my own home from a hardware store bike-back seemed absurd), where they were languishing under- used and appreciated. Finding compostable material in the bulk necessary to cover 40-50 sq ft with 8-10 in will also be a bit tricky, though the nearby Starbucks (not the one I work at) is obliging with coffee grounds. And finally, getting appropriate seeds for polyculture planting might turn out a bit more involved. We shall see what the hipster nursery down the block has to offer.

2 Comments

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  By Grumpyaunt, 22 November, 2006 @ 8:36 pm

  You need an earthworm composter! Easy easy easy, takes up very little space. Try here to start out http://www.cityfarmer.org/wormcomp61.html

  I just started my second one so let me know if you have questions.
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  By livingfossil, 23 November, 2006 @ 5:45 pm

  Hey, thanks for the link. I will look into this: I really wanted to do a compost heap, but I lack a lot of space. This might be a good way to get compost without a mountain.

  I’ll be in touch once I get started making one.

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