For those of you who do not know, Jeremy and I moved from Norman to Tulsa in the fall of 2007 with plans of starting a family. We left behind a wonderful organic garden, 
from which came the most beautiful and delicious squash and zucchini, and some lovely flower beds. Our intention was to move into the house, green it up, put in a garden, add some color to the flower beds, and start a family. But fate had other plans for us. The house green-up was a little more intensive and time consuming than we had imagined and then came Lundeby’s Eco Baby and two puppies. All bets were off, it was a challenge just trying to take care of the store, the laundry, and the animals. The house was rarely clean and home cooked meals were becoming a distant memory. With the passing of time, the clean house and home cooked meals started to return as our new life began to take hold. So now it is time to start some new projects! Enter the beginning of our small urban farm. 
We loosely constructed a compost bin out of some wire fencing and an old piece of wood; not the most beautiful, but it does the job by providing containment and adequate ventilation. In our compost are some fall leaves from the trees in our front yard, vegetable and fruit scraps, eggshells, and rabbit droppings. The rabbit poop comes from Fatso, our house rabbit who is our oldest family pet. 
Behind the compost bin is one of the two 4′ by 8′ plots that we will start this spring. In Norman we constructed a no dig garden, but here we decided to clear the sod and loosen the soil a bit before building the raised bed. The next step was the construction of the raised beds. For which we decided to use cedar wood due to its bug repellent properties and nice warm color. Next we filled the beds with a mixture of topsoil, peat moss, and mushroom compost. Our compost is not quite ready to use yet, but I did throw in a couple of hand fulls for good luck. The cedar post running across the yard will serve as a fence to keep the dogs and their droppings away from the garden and just on the other side is a newly planted peach tree for future shade and fruit.
Now for the fun stuff, planning the garden. Organic gardening is much easier if you plan ahead and utilize optimal soil with a high organic matter content, water conservation, and companion planting. For our Norman garden we used drip irrigation, but seeking to find a watering source with less pollutants than the recycled tire hoses we found an even more efficient source for watering, Deep Pipe Irrigation using bamboo . Our bamboo is here and ready to be prepared for the garden (an experience I will definitely blog about). Companion planting is the practice of placing plants that attract beneficial insects, repelling pests, and or improve quality and flavor of another plant and equally important distancing plants that do not have a beneficial effect on one another. There are many resources for companion planting online here are a couple with a good basic overview Home and Garden Site and Golden Harvest Organics andTinker’s Gardens has a nice easy to follow chart. So far I am planning for beans with rosemary and possibly a petunia; zucchini and squash with marigolds, nasturtiums, and borage; eggplant with some contained catnip (potted and planted), and a few strawberries with some nasturtiums. Currently the plan is to plant the companions near the edge of the raised bed. The plan for bed #2 is tomatoes with collard greens, parsley, thyme, sweet peppers, hot peppers, asparagus and some scattered marigolds. Stay tuned for updates from our little urban organic farm and please shareany of your organic gardening tips and or experiences.
