I am wrapping up my fourth summer at my current location, and my fourth summer of serious gardening to feed the family. Looking toward the fifth summer (next season), I am hoping to integrate more permaculture practices, including more perennials, and got a bit overwhelmed trying to sort it all out, so I decided to try doing the 1h consultation with Paul. It was suggested that I might start a forum thread to document the current status of things and what I'm thinking about going forward, so here it is.
I will start with a written summary and add in diagrams and some photos over the next few days.
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In 2021 my grandmother was moved out of the house she and my late grandfather, along with her parents, built, and went on hospice. We decided to move back to Minnesota from New Mexico and buy the house, which I have been visiting my entire life. We are settled in our life/career situation and have invested heavily in this property since buying it. This is all to say that the location comes first, we do not ever plan to move from here, and the suitability for permaculture comes second. That said, I think it's a decent spot for permaculture, aside from being inside the limits of a city which has a fairly robust list of ways to Make You Sad. We were recently bumped from USDA zone 4b to zone 5a.
We have nearly 2 acres in a long, narrow rectangle. The house is on approximately the first 1/5 abutting the road. 2/3 of the way back there is a street that dead-ends on the property and a path that has been there for decades allowing people to walk through to the adjacent park, which for the moment effectively splits the property into the 2/3 on the house side and the 1/3 behind the path. That 1/3 ends in a bit of woods that extend into a city property behind, also woods. We have the legal option to close that path (I would prefer to keep it available) or move it wherever, including to the back perimeter of the lot, which I may do at some point to make the entire property contiguous.
The portion of the yard from the house to that path 2/3 of the way back is fenced to let our dogs run free. It is shaded by a lot of trees and we intend to keep them. Beyond that fenced area, I have a double farm gate where the additional road dead-ends on the property, and some welded wire fencing to keep people and animals out of my plants. Inside that fence I have 4 4x8 raised beds, an approximately 5'x100' strip of in-ground garden along the outside of the dog fence, and have started building a hugel in the area beyond the path. I have three 4x8 raised beds in front of the house next to the driveway which were our first beds and primary garden. All of those areas are drip-irrigated from collected rain using moisture sensors and automatic valves/pumps.
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We had square-foot gardened a bit in the St. Paul area before we moved to New Mexico, but the first year went great and the second year was a mess, and then we moved. In New Mexico we didn't have water rights and were on a community well so we did not garden. When we returned to MN we hired a local service that helps people do urban organic gardening. Their practices were heavily inspired by square-foot gardening, and they really helped us ramp up production. Under their guidance we started doing succession planting throughout the season and amending the beds each year with compost. They use a nice simple and cheap bed/trellis design where each 4x8 bed has two 4' wide by 6' tall nylon trellis nets on 1/2" conduit frames, where the nets can easily be raised out of the way at the beginning/end of the season.
This year the 3x front beds are all the usual annuals. We are heavy users of peppers, tomatoes, lettuce, basil, broccoli, and cucumbers which are out there this year. There are currently no perennials in those beds. In the front yard as part of a screen hedge we also have several black aronia bushes which have been producing nicely the past few years. We use the berries for jam, syrup, etc. We have a few crabapple trees in the front as well, which we have not harvested from yet.
Just behind the house, looking out our back kitchen window, we have a very productive crabapple tree which we did harvest last year and my wife made a lot of crabapple butter, and even some fruit leather.
We have a fenced area off the side of the house for our three laying hens, we are not allowed to have roosters and are limited to 4 hens. One of our dogs is unfortunately a chicken killer so they can't graze the entire yard unless the dogs are locked in. We had a lot more chickens (including roosters) in New Mexico and are pretty well-versed in chicken keeping at this point.
I have two pallet-built compost bins nearish to the house and all of our appropriate kitchen scraps go to the chickens or into those bins, as well as shredded leaves in the fall, weeds I've pulled, garden stuff that's been trimmed/pulled, etc. Basically anything organic on the property that's not meat, dairy, oil or other problematic compost things.
We started some saskatoon berry bushes along our western fence but they have had a lot of trouble with all the rain the past few years and rabbits this spring. They are protected better from the rabbits now but still not very happy. This is one I need to dig into and sort out.
Along the back fence, last year I did winter wheat and it was a bit of a disaster, too many weeds/non-wheat grasses got in. I have little experience with that type of growing and struggled. I got a small box of wheat heads but never did anything with them. I also planted two reliance seedless grape plants along the fence from bare roots, and those are establishing finally. I planted hop roots twice but they've never grown. This year I did pole beans all along that fence in the 5'x100' bed and bush beans in front of them. Rabbits kept coming after the bush bean plants despite my efforts and we didn't get a lot of them, but the rattlesnake pole beans have been great producers for green beans and it looks like we'll have a ton of pintos as well. We have some black turtle and light red kidney beans from the plants the rabbits didn't destroy. I've got some finer fencing and other supplies to seal them out for next year. I also planted asparagus crowns there but they did not come up.
In the back beds this year, I had a bunch of garlic, and then a bunch of potatoes (most of 3 of the 4 beds with potatoes), as well as tomatoes on the trellises. I had some trouble starting seeds this year (long story, I've got it sorted out now) and so purchased some started yellow onions, but got them in too late and we didn't end up getting many. We use a TON of onions so this is definitely an important area for me to improve on next year. The potato harvest is looking pretty robust though the plants haven't really stated to die back yet. We did purple viking, yukon gold, and russet this year. We got rhubarb established last year in one of these beds, and this year harvested some, we have three large plants.
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As context for the following, my wife is not into gardening but she is happy to do much of the cooking and lots of canning. The garden/yard stuff is often a one-man show but I rent machines or hire friends/family to help when necessary.
My minimum goals for 2026:
300lb of tomatoes, primarily paste for canning
Lots of onions (200 maybe?)
30-50lb of dry beans, mostly kidney and pinto, but also black turtle, and probably 5+lb of chickpeas (which would be new for us)
Probably 5 broccoli plants
Lots of lettuce, basil, assorted other annuals
Lots of peppers especially big jim for NM-style green chile sauce
A few cucumber plants but we are getting plenty for canning this year
Lots of potatoes again
I would like to do sweet corn again. We did it last year but not this year
I am interested in adding grains so that we don't have to buy as much of those
These are geared around what we actually will cook and eat. We used to grow more variety but found we were often struggling to use it and short of the things we actually used. We like to stir-fry. We are open to adding more perennials to the mix though! I have been shifting to a GAMCOD-like focus trying to really ramp up the calories we consume from the garden. Potatoes and beans help a lot in that regard, whereas tomatoes, lettuce, and cucumbers will not add much.
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Looking forward:
The next area I am working on is beyond the park path, in the back 1/3. I had two 80 foot ash trees back there that died due to emerald ash borers, and I took them down with a chainsaw and a boom lift. I used most of the logs and branches from those to start building a hugel (rented a skid loader) which is currently 4-5' tall. I sadly have six more dead ash trees to take down. I have also been getting chip drops this summer including logs and some of that went into the hugel as well. They have been primarily ash. The smaller logs have been cut to length for firewood for our solo stove and my woodfired sauna, and are being dried in a solar kiln I built. I would like to build that hugel higher and start building more of them in the same area. I am also interested in putting in some fruit trees back there, perhaps small ones (read the Grow a Little Fruit Tree book) including apples, pears, plums. We would also love to add strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries.
There are a bunch of wild blackberry canes back there which didn't really produce this year, as well as some dewberries that did produce. I have not attempted to manage them yet.
I don't get grass clippings as we have robotic mowers which just mulch the small trimmings back into the yard, which is a microclover/fescue mix. I have instead been buying ez-straw to mulch the gardens and using wood chips everywhere else. I know Paul doesn't like wood chips but so far they are one of the most practical options for me. I am interested in growing some stuff (rye? buckwheat? idk) specifically for mulching. I am interested in growing more stuff to feed the chickens instead of buying laying pellets.
I am limited in my options for adding structures due to city code, but I am planning to build a second garage/accessory dwelling unit just inside the back fence and hope to include a greenhouse and maybe space for a small tractor there, and make it as energy-efficient as I can within the code requirements.
There are other things that have been popping into my head, I will note them here as I remember them.
I attach a photo of my wall of cucumbers in the front with a crabapple tree behind to get things started. I'm planning to do a walk-around video today to make all of this easier to visualize.
