The Fukuoka Farming Website Oscar Romero Catholic Worker House |
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1524 NW 21st
Oklahoma City, OK 73106
We are a small intentional community located in a working class neighborhood close to downtown Oklahoma City. The
neighborhood was built in the 1920s, we have a duplex and a small house on the same lot. The yard was most grass,
but there were some mulberry bushes and day lilies established close to the duplex, and behind the house is a mature
pecan tree. The property is about 220' long and 80' wide, running north and south, with the buildings located
against the east property line. We are on a corner. We began our project in the summer of 1999.
Our goal is to create a "forest edge" no till garden on our former yards.
This past summer we grew more than 100 different varieties of useful or edible plants, about 65 of them are
perennials we have established. This is a
GENERAL DESCRIPTION of our project, including a plant list. And this is an
ONGOING DIARY of our progress this
summer (2002).
We are not strictly a Fukuoka style project, but we are completely organic. There were two mature elm trees on the
property when we moved here, both were taken down by ice storms over the next two years, and we have used all of
them in the garden. We shredded small limbs and leaves for mulch, and have used the trunks and larger limbs as the
sides of raised beds. We did not remove the turf before creating the raised beds (they are not the
John Jeavons/Ecology Action style of double dug raised beds), and this has caused an ongoing problem with grass,
which however is getting better. In the main part of the yard garden, we have just about eliminated the Bermuda
grass. To make the beds, we first put down layers of cardboard and newspaper, then mulch, then a bit of topsoil,
and then more mulch, and we planted into that. We do use compost which we make on site.
Besides the perennials we have planted, which include a variety of fruit trees, salad crops, herbs, edible flowers,
and berry bushes/cane fruits, we raise a number of annuals, with a goal of developing self seeding annual beds. We
are successful in this with arugula and amaranth (grain and ornamental), and have several nice patches of them
growing. We hope that in the spring we will have radishes, various lettuces, tomatoes, and black eyed peas as a
result of self sowing.
We have a number of links regarding forest gardening at
OUR GARDEN WEB PAGE.
-- Robert Waldrop