Urban takeover mwahaha

They keep plowing houses under here...we are taking over.  We bought the three city lots behind us and slowly converted the land to a food forest.  Now within a half of a block from my kids, they took down the whole block!  We posted signs and are staging a food forest takeover!!!  We learn things every season.  Polycultures are good, but identifying plants in said culture is important!  I planted a salad polyculture with greens, carrots, radish etc.  There was also calendula which at the time I could not identify in preflowering stage.  I kept eating it and thinking it wasn't very good until it finally flowered and I realized the error of my ways.  Thankfully it was at least an edible!!!

That's great! What other sorts of polycultures do you plan to bring in?

Mike, we use the term Polycultures for things like the salad blend, but we mix all kinds of things up.  We tried 3-5 sisters with limited goodness coming out of that since the ground started off as straight city fill clay...and corn and squash weren't too impressed.  We have lots of mini guilds withfruit trees as central object, we mix perennials with annuals, we now tuck calendula everywhere as we have a little herbal business and it makes the best tinctures, salves and oils.  I mixed California poppy, watermelon and chicory in one sunny bed and they were all quite happy.  

I have been encouraging people to switch from spending their money on keeping an unproductive lawn into making a garden out of their yard. Since you are buying up city lots it may be ideal to plant the lots with plants that will restore the soil and remove toxins for a time before harvesting plants for food use. The history of the lot is unknown and their will be remnants of building materials in the soil. Repurposing the lots is a great idea!