It’s time for the Greenville Urban Farm Tour again!

When? This coming Saturday, May 12th, from 9am – 5pm. Tickets are $8 per adult (children under 12 free) and there is a group rate available on the UFT website.

This year there are 31 sites to visit, 16 free workshops at the UFT’s headquarters (Crescent Studios), and bicycle tours offered by Bikeville of Greenville. There’s also a pre-event gala & concert on Thursday, 5/10 at Zen if you’d like to meet some site owners (including us) in advance.

You can buy tickets in advance on the UFT website or purchase them the day of the event at Crescent Studios.

Photo Caption: We now have 3 hives in our apiary. Two were from caught swarms and one was a purchased nuc, pictured here.

We’re happy with the progress we’ve made on our site. As evidenced in our ugly garden post, it was an uphill climb to finish before the May 12th deadline. We were able to check off more from our todo list than we expected, but there are still some loose ends.

Two things that weren’t available last year are our mature chickens and our three-hive apiary. Our chickens have been laying around 3 dozen eggs per week and our bees are building up their hives so that we can harvest honey next spring.

Photo Caption: May is a month where the garden is transitioning between cool weather to warm weather crops. Our snow and snap peas are in full swing, but most other crops are either young seedlings or aging spring crops that need replacing.

Visitors can expect to see our budding summer garden with warm weather crops like tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, potatoes, peppers, eggplants, and squash. We’ve left the remnants of our cool weather crops in place even though they are starting to look a bit ratty. The brassicas and lettuce are bolting… but it looks pretty! Other food plants include mature figs, pears, Asian pears, peaches, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, asparagus, and herbs. We haven’t planted the pawpaws, goumi, goji berries, hardy citrus, loquats, hardy kiwi, gooseberries, elderberries, horseradish, sunchokes, hops, prickly pears, and persimmons but they’re sitting outside the back door in pots. We have planted the blueberries and pineapple guavas in our front yard, but they’re still very small.

We’re not sure how far along we’ll be with our irrigation goals, but we will have mushrooms, vermicomposting, composting, container planting, intensive space growing, vertical gardening, and displays on canning and beer brewing.

We’ve been working hard on our educational signage — the plant labels and printed blog posts we set out were popular last year so we’ve improved and increased them for this year’s tour. We’ll also have a “Ask the Site Owner” table where we’ll be socializing with guests.

Photo Caption: We may sell our extra vegetable transplants if the plant inspector shows up in time.

PLANT SALE INFO: It turns out we need a plant inspection to be allowed to sell veggie starts. I’m waiting to find out if the plant inspector assigned to check out my transplants will be able to get here before the tour. If he does, we’ll be selling oddball and heirloom tomato starts, passalong pomegranates, basil, and some odds and ends. We’ll also have some non-living items for purchase such as local honey and organic bay leaves. Bring cash or checks if you want to take something home.

*UPDATE* – The plant inspector came today and we’re good to go. We don’t have as many plants as last year so we’ll probably sell out.

It was so much fun showing everyone our urban farm last year! We hope you’ve already purchased your tickets and can’t wait to see you on Saturday!