Charleston Power Family Garden

“We are a mini orchard on a previously vacant lot in St. Louis City.”

Our family’s orchard and market garden is in two locations – our orchard lot in Benton Park West and our yard in Tower Grove South. Our focus is on fruits, but herbs, flowers, nuts and veggies all work together to make our tiny ecosystems whole. On each site we have small spots we leave undisturbed for wildlife use; since we don’t use any sprays at all, diversity is our biggest strength in maintaining a healthy balance and getting a good harvest. 

Sustainable Growing means different things to different people. What it means to us is working with our hands and hand tools to build the soil, allowing that great diversity to thrive both above and below the soil surface. Minimizing our use of plastics in each step of growing and selling along with maximizing our interplantings of flowers to attract lots of different kinds of good bugs (and great bug eaters!) are also important to us. One of our unique practices is forgoing irrigation entirely by mulching and soil building to retain rainwater in the ground as long as possible. By planting directly into the nutritious clay soil, we encourage deep roots that do not need frequent watering and by saving seeds, we adapt them to our challenging conditions. We strive to grow foods that thrive in our region and don’t require a lot from us to survive.

Our ducks and chickens free range daily in our home backyard, and are shut into their house nightly for protection from predators. They are fed a homemade and fermented all organic grain/seed/pea mix daily, as well as peelings and leftovers from both our kitchen and a local food pantry (not all organic). We love their eggs! Besides the great eggs, we also use their bedding in our compost, along with the food pantry extras, our household food waste, weeding, cover crops and collected fall leaves. Because of that, we never need any chemical fertilizers at all and our soil is getting better year by year.

Farm Size

6,000 square feet on two lots

Products

• Eggs
• Baby lettuce
• Tomatoes
• Garlic
• Herbs
• Edible flowers
• Passionfruit
• Fig leaves
• Grape leaves
• Cut flowers
• Berries (raspberry, gooseberry, elderberry, mulberry)
• Cherries
• Peaches
• Grapes

Conservation Practices

• Conservation crop rotation
• Cover crops
• Compost
• No-till practices
• No synthetic chemicals
• Integrated pest management
• Pollinator enhancement plan

Additional Practices

• Avoids plastic
• Prevents soil erosion with a dense permanent plant cover
• Zero irrigation – instead they focus on native species and varieties that don’t require watering beyond natural rainfall, which is collected in catch basins