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We founded Hipster Homesteaders in late 2021 to chronicle our somewhat different approach to urban homesteading on our ~0.13 acre lot in Pittsburgh.
Our goal here is not to be 100% self-reliant on food grown in our yard, but rather to maximize our urban gardening as best we can while supplementing it with local produce (via CSAs), local meats (via area farmers), and cutting out intermediaries when supporting other non-local businesses (such as buying seafood direct from fishermen in Alaska over factory farmed products in the grocery store).
Now that we are winding down our fourth seaason after launching this site, we thought we'd review everything we have added to our homestead in the past year!
What We Started Year Four With
Our project began year three with the following:
- Container gardens on our deck for tomatoes, herbs, peppers, and cucumbers
- A raised bed planter on the side of our house for root vegetables and/or greens
- Our total gardening space was approximately 50 sq ft
- Ten(+) fig trees, one cherry tree, two kiwi vines, 30 black raspberry vines, 50 strawberry plants, three hops vine, three maypops vines, three rose bushes, a key lime tree (container), a Meyer lemon tree (container), a Santa Teresa lemon tree (container) a blood orange tree (container), a kumquat tree (container), a longan tree (container), a pink guava tree (container), an Alphonso mango tree (container), a yuzu tree (container), a dragonfruit cactus (container), and a passionfruit vine (container)
- Four bee hives
- A composter and rain barrel
- Kitchen tech like sous vide, coffee roasting equipment, a dehydrator, and pressure and water bath canning equipment
- Indoor grow light tower to start seeds
What Has Changed in Year Four
Our fourth year of homesteading was pretty terrible in almost every category, and things got worse before they got worse.
Although our winter was relatively mild, most of our fig trees died back to the ground. But in the mid-spring, we did see some signs of life, and our fig trees grew quite voraciously in the ground. But with spring rains and fall drought, many of our figs struggled to ripen, and we had maybe 25 at best when I was expecting more like 500. Conversely, our early ripening black raspberries were perhaps the only thing in the ground that did well, and we got about 750 or so in between the bad weather.
I realized that my raspberry plot had a mix of red raspberries and a Japanese variant that was not as enjoyable as I would've liked, so I ripped those out and intend to replace them with more raspberry vines here soon. Our blackberries also started producing as well, and we probably got 50-100 or so fruit from that to snack on, too.
We started expanding our kiwi production, as well as building a botanical garden for making amaros and infused spirits, and the fall heat wave killed more or less everything we put into the ground this year. Boo! But we also did get some of our first maypops, and we're seeing our first prickly pear fruit on our cacti as well, so there is some progress all the same. I also impulse purchased a self-fertile persimmon tree that we'll get to revisit in, oh, about 5 years to see if it fruits.
We did overwinter some garlic and harvested a few, but most of those will be replanted to expand again next season rather than enjoying in food this year.
Our container gardens started off strong, but most tomatos and peppers barely set any produce due to the season's bad weather, although we are getting a second flush right now that is a race against time before it starts freezing out. We'll see!
Although I said I'm tapped out on potted tropical fruit trees, I scored a deal on an Australian Finger Lime and expanded our collection. These trees are all doing surprisingly well, with our key lime, calamansi, and kumquat trees all being completely covered with fruit. We have one yuzu on that tree waiting to ripen, about 30 pink guavas in the wings, and our lemon tree is flowering and setting fruit for the first time, too!
That said, I did notice that my passionfruit vine was again not setting fruit, and I realized I bought the wrong variety that required two to produce fruit, so I ripped it out and replaced it with two species that are self-fertile but benefit from each other. They're flowering, but haven't set fruit yet. Our dragonfruit cactus also flowered some massively beautiful flowers, but it did not set fruit either. We are still waiting on the mango, longan, and Santa Teresa lemon to start flowering for the first time, too.
We planted more hop rhizomes and got a small harvest of our two oldest bines, but due to the heat wave the yield was really low there, too.
I also tried growing Japanese wasabi from cuttings and, well, that went terribly. Out of about 25 or so cuttings, only one successfully rooted. We also added some outdoor horseradish and rhubarb as well, which seem to be the only things really holding on right now.
On the beekeeping front, I knew 2025 was going to be a bad year as we started the season with only one hive. Between splitting, catching a swarm, and buying bees we were back up to four, but the bad weather during nectar flows made for a terrible year, and we also lost one hive along the way. We harvested about 20 pounds of late spring honey, 8 pounds of summer honey, and 8 pounds of fall honey which was, as with everything else, sad (but very delicious).
On the home front, we did not do any major projects apart from buying furniture as we're saving up for repairing our deck, terracing our hillside (we did get a quote!), and finishing our attic. But we're not quite ready for that yet, but in the meantime I bought a ton of raised bed containers I hope to set up over winter to get more production next year.
Suffice it to say, we're ready for year five.
A Running Inventory of Our Homestead to Date
To date, our homestead has the following plants and other food-producing items. Some of these are producing fruit, and others are still growing for future production:
- Container Garden: 50 square feet
- Four (4) beehives
- One (1) Meyer Lemon tree (container)
- One (1) Key Lime tree (container)
- One (1) Passionfruit vine (container)
- One (1) Blood Orange tree (container)
- One (1) Pink Guava tree (container)
- One (1) Alphonso Mango tree (container)
- One (1) Kumquat tree (container)
- One (1) Longan tree (container)
- One (1) Yuzu tree (container)
- One (1) Calamansi tree (container)
- One (1) Santa Teresa lemon tree (container)
- One (1) Purple Dragonfruit cactus (container)
- One (1) Australian Finger Lime tree (container)
- Three (3) Maypop vines
- Six (6) Prickly Pear cacti
- Ten (10) Fig trees
- One (1) Cherry tree
- One (1) Persimmon tree
- Four (4) Hops vines
- Three (3) Blackberry vines
- Ten (10) Raspberry vines
- Thirty (30) Black Raspberry vines
- Five (5) Kiwi vines
- Three (3) Rose bushes
- One (1) Wasabi plant (container)
- Two (1) Horseradish plants
- Two (2) Rhubarb plants
- One (1) patch of an assortment of botanicals (but so many have died im really not sure what is left)
What We Hope to Achieve in Year Five
Given how terrible this year was, we are in a good position all the same. We're learning from our mistakes, getting into best practices, and our fruit trees are getting the one thing they need to start really producing- time.
So, was it a bridge year? Sure. Did it stink? Yes. But we're still moving to growing in the long-term, and we're here for it.
I am going to focus on building out our container gardens over winter and hopefully getting some of our fruit trees into full production in year five (our key lime and pink guava are kicking butt right now and the rest are growing into it). But beyond that, we really don't have any major projects on the horizon- just waiting and saving up money for the next phase.
What do you think we should add to our homestead in year three? Comment below to share!