Bang's garden. Food, medicine, etc

[James Bang]

If I'm not changing diapers or trying to mess with car audio, I'll be in the garden

It's the most rewarding hobby I've ever had. To see plants flourish and to taste such fresh produce is amazing.
I started with mainly veggies and herbs and am now adding berries, fruit trees, grapes, and now medicinal flowers/plants.

With the little space I have, I'm trying to grow as much as I can, to need the supermarket less and less.

I'm mostly growing in the ground and some fabric pots here and there.

Most plants are grown for consumption, but there are some plants that aren't edible to be used for biomass, fertilizer/mulching, or to attract pollinators.

I'm in zone 9a so some annuals can act like perennials here. Mediterranean climate. Dry.

Here's a picture from last year

A more recent one:

The garden is about 3 years old now.

Here's the beginning on 2021:

 

[James Bang]

Here's the Mediterranean Herb section:
In the picture, there's some fenugreek, rue, rosemary, marjoram, sage, lavender (English and French I think), and some thyme. Oregano growing elsewhere.

 

[James Bang]

West side of the house is where some random herbs that don't need full sun is grown:

Lemon balm, more sage, catnip, basil, perilla, parsley, some swiss chard. The far end has some black berries and a baby fig tree growing. To the right of the picture, you can see the passion fruit vine growing up a trellis so it can shade the west wall of the house to lower my cooling costs during the summer. Helped a whole lot.

 

[James Bang]

To help with fertilization and for delicious eggs, I decided to get chickens.

Such easy creatures to care for and they give eggs. Almost 1 per day per chicken. I start with 4, my child accidentally killed 2, then we got 4 more, so 6 now. The 4 new ones haven't started laying yet.


DIY:d my own coop as they can be pretty pricey. All free wood. Just needed the hardware and hardware cloth.

Added a longer enclosed run. I've since incorporated my compost pile to far right of the run. No pictures though.

Neighbor lady gives me her green bin full of food scraps she gets from volunteering at food banks

 

[James Bang]

To help feed the chickens, I farm black soldier fly larvae (BSFL). BSFL eat just about everything, except carbonous stuff and bones. They eat every thing else my composting worm farm doesn't. Dairy products, fats, means, even literal shit, they will devour.
Unlike composting worms which produce worm castings, which is amazing for microbes, BSFL just get big and fat and then self-harvest to be fed to the chickens who love them. Just about half fat and half protein.

They crawl upwards when they reach a certain age and size, to get out of the stanky food to hopefully hatch and get their wings.

The up ramp gets funneled into a hole, which they drop into a harvest bin where they wait to get eaten.

Life is good.


They also get the salad bar

https://i.imgur.com/UkpbsDN.mp4

A local micro-brewer also gives me his spent grain which the chickens eat.

 

[naiku]

Awesome garden and use of the space you have there. I want to get a veggie garden going, but just find I never have the time to actually tend to it and so it goes to crap.


[QUOTE = James Bang]
Such easy creatures to care for and they give eggs
[/QUOTE]

They do give eggs and taking care of them is pretty easy, but at least here, it can be insanely stressful trying to keep them alive. We have had them snatched by -
Bears - just bent the fence over and snatched a chicken.
Foxes - During the day we let them free range on the property, not uncommon to realize one is missing and eventually find a pile of feathers in the woods.
Hawks - Just snatch them.

Came across a big black snake snacking on the eggs one day, just left him alone to finish his meal.

 

[James Bang]

Sucks to hear about all the predators you have eyeing your chickens. I hear about people having a few dogs to help ward of the likes of foxes. Some say having black chickens and fake crow statues somewhat ward off hawks.

As for maintaining veggies, I would highly suggest timed irrigation, so instead of the plants dying if you slack off, they'll go out of control instead, which is a better problem to have. If anything, the stuff will go to seed to save for later, can be used as chicken fodder, or biomass for the compost pile.

 

[James Bang]

Topical Salves and Balms

Things to do with the stuff grown (or bought):
Dried herbs and flowers can be used to infuse oils to be used topically to make use of the plants' benefits. Plants can be anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial, anti-septic, and anti-microbial to help protect and heal issues that can be treated topically.

How to:
Toss dried herbs in glass jar
Cover with oil of choice
Heat for ~6 hours, not going above 140 degrees F. The longer the better for a stronger infusion.
Strain.

I use a thermostat controlled outlet with a slow cooker to make things easy.

Now you're left with infused oil, which can be used as-is with cooking or on the skin.

To make a salve to use topically, melt beeswax and add the infused oils. 3:1 or 5:1 oil to beeswax ratio works well.

 

[James Bang]

Re: Topical Salves and Balms

After setting up the back yard, I needed more space for more plants, especially fruit trees. The previous owners replaced half the lawn with a landscape of rocks and huge concrete pavers, and under it was mostly sand. The other half was dying grass. I hate grass.
Rocks and weed barriers were removed and plants were planted.

Here's a before:

And Afters

 

[James Bang]

Re: Rain water harvesting

Plants need lots of water, myself as well, so I harvest the rain and use it for later

That 40 gallon barrel won't do much, so more was needed. In comes the ibc totes

Black giftwrapping to prevent algae

First flush filter

Two more stuffed behind my shed, a once useless space.

Wifey thinks we have enough, but I disagree

If/when shtf, the water will be filtered by the gravity ceramic purifiers so we can drink.

Some 55 gal drums are placed here and there as well to give me about 1600 gallons capacity.
I wish I had the land to fit a dedicated cistern instead, but doing what I can on this 7k sqft lot.

 

[Grinder]

Very cool and innovative! So much great stuff going on there, in such a short time, and so efficiently in such a compact space!

I have slacked off posting in my garden thread, but I plan to post again after I get everything planted this year. Zone 5a, so I usually wait until after June 1st.

 

[James Bang]

I'm a little spoiled here in zone 9a with a very long growing season where we can get some succession planting going. I had a few pepper and chili and even tomatoes that overwintered.

I'm slowly learning more as I go and there are a few things I'd like to experiment with.

Brassicas I need to start much much earlier, around late August or Sept.
An experiment is like to try is growing cherry tomato varieties during the fall and winter. They just might be able to produce some.

I have grown a few comfrey plants from seed and now have quite a few after root dividing a bunch after the first season. I've since made some salves out of it, but I hear it's makes for some good fertilizer. I've chopped and dropped some around the garden to feed the soil, but time to try some diy liquid fertilizer with it to give plants a direct boost.

Another thing in the works is a BSFL breeding cage. After attracting smoke wild BSFL to lay eggs on the stanky farm, I'll have them pulpate nad hatch in the cage to mate.

 

[James Bang]

Very cool and innovative! So much great stuff going on there, in such a short time, and so efficiently in such a compact space!

I have slacked off posting in my garden thread, but I plan to post again after I get everything planted this year. Zone 5a, so I usually wait until after June 1st.

Let's see those lush garden pics when the weather permits.

 

[James Bang]

40% Shade cloth added to the garden. It's about a constant 100 degree dry heat here all summer. Last season tomatoes didn't want to produce in such hot weather, so I'm hoping the shade with help with that

 

[James Bang]

New BSFL farm build.
This one will help with containing the black soldier flies that hatch so they can procreate and lay eggs into the rotting food below.

The wood needs to be sealed and window screen mesh added. It's warming up now and the larvae are active again. The wild larvae should start hatching soon as it heats up more.