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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 third proper season after launching this site, we thought we'd review everything we have added to our homestead in the past year!
What We Started Year Three 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
- Seven fig trees, one peach tree, one cherry tree, five grape vines, ~100 ramp bulbs, 30 black raspberry vines, 50 strawberry plants, one blueberry bushes, two kiwi vines, two paw paw trees, one hops vine, three maypops vines, two rose bushes, a key lime tree (container), a Meyer lemon tree (container), a blood orange tree (container), a kumquat tree (container), a lychee 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 Three
Our third year of homesteading was a bit of a holding pattern as our plants and projects are still getting established. Many of our new fruit trees only started producing fruit, and the rest were growing for future fruit, so we felt like this was a waiting year while also adding to our collection.
We had a mild winter so many of our outdoor plants survived and grew- especially our fig trees (of which we added two more in the ground from cuttings). We ended up getting a great harvest from both these and our black raspberries as well, which will likely only get better as more of our trees and vines mature- about 1,000 black raspberries and 100 figs wasn't too bad of a harvest start!
What we thought were grape vines started producing fruit, and we found out that they were not vinifera grapes and instead another species that is generally considered edible, but not delicious- so we ripped those out and will likely replace them with more kiwi plants in the future. Likewise, a few of our in-ground trees did not do so well with the incredible heat we had this summer, and our peach tree (grown from seed) and a pawpaw tree both died. The latter was replaced; however, we did not replace the peach tree as we realized it was in a poor location.
Our experiments into overwintering potatoes and garlic went well until an early heat wave killed a lot of the growth, but we did successfully harvest a handful of garlic bulbs which we will likely pass through to planting again this fall.
We added more tropical fruit trees to our container collection including a longan (replacing the lychee which died), an Alphonso mango, a pink guava tree, a yuzu tree, a calamansi tree, and a Santa Teresa lemon tree- the guava and calamansi tree already set fruit, too!
We're also anticipating regular fruiting of our orange, lemon, and lime trees plus dragonfruit cactus here in the next season as they all have become quite large. Our key lime is covered with flower buds that we hope will stay on for the winter. I also purchased about six or so cold tolerant prickly pear cacti to put in front of our beehives as well, but do not expect fruit from them for 5-7 years if not longer.
Most of our hop rhizomes failed to grow over the previous winter and were replaced by the company, but the one hop vine that survived grew all the way to the top of our deck and produced hops this season as well. We are now up to five, and we hope that next season will be prolific!
Our bee hive expansion went from two hives to four last year, and then collapsed down to two over winter. But that was quite fine since beehive splits make it easy to expand, and we successfully turned them back into four in the spring. That said, buildout of the honey supers has still been slow this year, and I realized was because I was incorrectly placing my queen excludes on before the frames were drawn out. I caught this mistake after the summer flow, but rectified it before the fall flow, and we ultimately had about 8 pound of honey in summer and 50 pounds in fall- expecting an even better harvest next year!
On the home front we did not do any major projects inside this year aside from expanding a wine cellar and buying some new furniture. We're still building up our savings after our massive kitchen renovation in year two before we move on to other larger projects like redoing our deck, terracing a hillside, or finishing our attic. Long-term projects require some crazy money!
So while it seemed like this year was a bit of a holding pattern for growth, we are still quite happy with the progress we've had to date.
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)
- Three (3) Maypop vines
- Six (6) Prickly Pear cacti
- Nine (9) Fig trees
- Two (2) Pawpaw trees
- One (1) Cherry tree
- Four (4) Hops vines
- ~One Hundred (100) ramp bulbs
- ~Fifty (50) Strawberry plants
- Three (3) Blackberry vines
- Ten (10) Raspberry vines
- Thirty (30) Black Raspberry vines
- Two (2) Kiwi vines
- Three (3) Rose bushes
What We Hope to Achieve in Year Four
Now that our kitchen has been renovated and our budget has freed up a bit, we have a few goals we hope to hit in year four:
- I'm pretty tapped out on room for container trees, so year four will likely be filling in some remaining space in our outdoor garden- particularly kiwis, a few more fig cuttings, and getting our pawpaw struggles under control.
- I'd like to start making more planters outside for annuals as well- maximizing production of garlic, potatoes, melons, etc.
- Ideally we hope our bee hives to start reaching full production this year as well now that we've learned from past mistakes with undrawn supers being filled in.
- We are looking to expand operations of more fermentations and will be setting up more (and larger) batches over the winter.
Phew. That is a lot, but we are excited to see where we go form here!
What do you think we should add to our homestead in year three? Comment below to share!