Perennial Onions

Last fall a friend gave us a flat of welsh onions. I didn't know anything about them but, hey, they were free food so i planted them in the garden. They are a bunching onion. They continually divide themselves making a bunch of up to a dozen stems. In the fall and winter we cut the tops and used them like chives. I wasn't quite sure when or how they should be harvested for the onions which are not bulbs but more like spring onions. In the spring they flowered and i figured the tops would die down after that. But no, they kept on dividing! After the seeds ripened (which i collected) that stalk did die. We started pulling up some bunches through the spring. They have a mild flavor. I left the rest to grow through the summer.
A couple of weeks ago i decided to dig up the remaining bunches, divide them and plant out the divisions. Perennial onions work well as part of a permaculture. With the economy collapsing, gas (when you can get it) getting increasingly expensive and the future in doubt we want to become as self-sufficient as possible. What if we can no longer afford to buy seeds from seed companies in Maine or New Mexico. From now on we are only going to grow these onions. We planted over 100 new clumps from the divisions and potted up a bunch to sell at The Urban Gardener. In the spring we'll sow the seeds and set out some more.
For more information on welsh onions take a look the U. of Florida fact sheet.

What's New!

We transplanted our strawberries from the community garden. We had enough plants to fill the space at the Funny Farm and to pot up a bunch for sale at the Urban Gardener.

Our friends found an abandoned lot in the west end where leeks have perennialized and spread all over. They dug some up and gave us 2 buckets full. We planted one bucket along the new asparagus patch and gave the other bucket to Holly who is planning to plant them in the kids garden at Piedmont Park. Thanks Shannon and Steve.

There is some sprouting going on in the greenhouse which is very exciting.

I harvested some clover and millet from the community garden to make compost with. This is the first time i've had to make compost since last summer. This should be some primo compost which we'll use to make compost tea. I added lots of kelp meal, granite sand and alfalfa meal to the pile. The greens from the community garden are highly nutritious having been growing in the great soil we've made there over the years. I really want to harvest some of that soil and move it out here. I would be a real waste to just leave it for the weeds and whatever future development happens on that property.

Happy Spring everybody!

The Funny Farm Has A Greenhouse...WHOHOOO!

We finally got the greenhouse up and covered. We re-purposed a sales tent from the old Urban Gardener location. We had plastic left over from covering the greenhouse at the old location as well. The only new cost was for screws and staples. The seed order from Johnnys Seeds came today so tomorrow production will begin. We'll be growing baby lettuce and stir fry mix and starting tomato and pepper plants. All of which will be for sale soon.

We will be incubating our reishi mushroom logs in there too.

I hate a thief!

Can you imagine someone stealing plants from a community garden? Well that's what is happening at our community garden right now. We had to close our garden center The Urban Gardener, next door the the garden because of the severe drought here in Georgia and the subsequent complete outdoor watering ban imposed by our incompetent state and local governments. We downsized and moved our business to a nearby neighborhood called East Atlanta Village.
Perhaps the vile villain assumes the garden has been abandoned which it hasn't.
Anyway i have been busy transplanting what the intruder hasn't gotten away with to the Funny Farm. We've added blackberries, pineapple guava, kiwi vine and sorrel. I still need to move the strawberries and asparagus but i have to prepare the beds first.
The bastard even took my paramagnetic energy collector cone i loving carved out of local
granite.
May he or she rot in hell!

Making it Real

Sunday was a very productive day here at the Funny Farm. We had about 30 people here for a workshop on incorporating mushroom growing into a diverse food production system. It is very satisfying to be able to facilitate the expansion of our network of like-minded people. We had people from Inspiring Futures/Bioneers, Southface, Pine Lake, Sowers and Growers garden club, The Urban Gardener, Piedmont Park Conservancy, Oakhurst Community Garden, Brownwood Park Community Garden all making connections just like the mycelia of the fungi we were studying. Out of this we are likely to get a new community garden in Midtown and we now have a atlanta permaculture group on facebook. These gatherings serve to strengthen our community and our ability to change to world for the better. We will be doing other workshops in the future to continue building our community.
At the same time Robin, Emma and Jennifer were busy making all natural soaps and lip balm while sampling some delicious pineapple guava flower hooch compliments of our friend Robert who came out to the mushroom workshop.
Power to the people, by the people!

Moving Forward at the Funny Farm

As some of you know Robin and I are closing our business The Urban Gardener on Christmas Eve at our current location because of the devastating consequences of the deepening drought and the ineptitude of the powers that be to manage the most limiting resource we have, water. Because the government decided to target the landscape industry in their pitiful attempts to reduce water use our landscape crew has had plenty of time to help us here at the farm. We built a cozy chicken house in the barn for a dozen hens. They will be moving in this spring. We look forward to fresh eggs and lots of poop for the garden.
We have been dissembling the garden center and moving materials out here to build stuff with. We made some terraces that will become home to asparagus and strawberries. We leveled out a spot where we are repurposing a tent structure as a greenhouse in which we will be starting veggies and growing reishi mushrooms.
I have been having fun using the dingo (its like a miniature bobcat) to sculpt the back yard to create some plant beds and a gathering space with a fire pit. My friend brought me a truck load of wood chips which i used to cover the bare disturbed earth. The fungal mycelium will do its job turning the chips into rich soil in a year or so. When we get our mushroom production going we will be inoculating the chips with mushroom spawn so the whole place will be mushroom heaven.
So i guess that is the silver lining in the cloud over our heads at the moment.
Sure wish it would rain, though. 30% chance on Saturday. Whooohooo!
Did i mention the pond is almost dried up. Pretty soon we'll need to have a big fish fry.

Reuse, Recycle, Reduce

The Grocery store bags we reuse at our store The Urban Gardener, the glass and cans go into the recycle bin the city picks up ( we don't really know what happens to it after it is picked up but we hope it actually gets recycled) and the food scraps go into our compost pile where it is reduced to essential plant nutrients by our friends the microorganisms.

MO' Money in the Bank

Before it's current incarnation as The Funny Farm, the previous owners of the property had planted lots of ornamental plants for their enjoyment. Well, our philosophy is "if you can't eat it, smoke it or sell it, it has no place here." So in keeping with that we have been digging up the ornamentals and potting them up in anticipation of selling them to our garden center in Atlanta, The Urban Gardener.
We now have over 200 variegated liriope, 100 or so daylilies, 10 premium lenten roses and almost 70 blackeyed susans. Thats about $1000 in the bank waiting to be collected next spring. Of course if it doesn't rain soon and a total watering ban is instituted in our market we'll be out of business. But we can't worry about that now. Don't worry about what you can't control, right?
There are other specimen plants here that we'll pot up a little later into the fall which will be mo' money in the bank.