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 sole 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 every 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.