Bring on the food…
How it Started
We recently moved from a house that we owned into a rental. There is a large expanse of clover and dandelions with a little bit of grass at our new house. I have a background in horticulture and always wanted to turn my entire lawn into a garden area but my original plan was to plant mostly perennials and this idea grew when we owned our house. Now that we were living in a rental I was apprehensive to put the money into a place that didn’t really belong to us.
Over the winter I was given a book by my good friend Sarah titled Food not Lawns by Heather Coburn Flores. I read through parts of the book and was inspired to add to the land that I called home whether I was still calling the same place home in 2, 3, or 5 years. I was taught as a child to always leave places we stayed better than we found them, this included campsites too. So the idea of it came easy to me, I could help my community by growing food in the dirt surrounding my house. Maybe I would trade produce with the lady across the street for her eggs or maybe I could give someone in need the healthiest food they would eat all week. And when I left this place, someone else would continue to enjoy the freshness that came from this landscape.
We did of course clear an area for a vegetable garden and sooner than later I determined that this just wasn’t enough space and we would turn our lawn into food sooner than we planned. I envisioned all of the things we could plant that would harvest food; raspberries, blueberries, watermelons, the assortment of vegetables that we are all familiar with and more. And then I rethought it and moved boxes around in my mind, re-organized garden beds and even thought of interesting things to plant.
I know some people find it difficult to see the end result of gardens and landscapes and if you are one of those people I want to help you see where the beginning starts and that there is no wrong way to do it. If you are an accomplished gardener then you can follow along, add some of your ideas to the comments and maybe even find some inspiration of your own.
This is the beginning of our lawn to food journey and here is where we started.
-August 2009 -
We were given some raspberry starts during the heat of the summer. They came to us bare root in a bucket full of water. There was not any time to delay the planting of these gems as roots sitting in water will rot so we dug up a small area and put them in the dirt. Although they are wilting a bit from the heat we have them mulched with leaves and we water them well.
Our city has a lot of deciduous trees so we can get leaf drop offs and leaves along with compostable paper bags are what we will be using to kill of some of the grass. It’s the least labor intensive way to do it and the leaves will add great compost to the soil. In the photos above you can see how the leaves are covering a larger area than just where the raspberries are at. This is because we will be creating another bed to plant strawberries and other edibles not yet determined. The 5×4 garden box behind the fence will house two blueberry plants and we will be adding 3 more boxes to the same area. Since we will be saving a lot of money by starting our own seeds and collecting offshoots from neighbors plants we will probably spring for larger 5 gallon size blueberry plants so we can get a small crop sooner.
When we add boxes or garden beds to our lawn we leave enough room to move around comfortably and get the lawn mower through. The last boxes we made were nice and hefty complete with gopher wire. Two boxes cost us approximately $100 in materials and 90% of it was reclaimed wood. This time we plan to make “recession boxes.” When Sammy completes them I will share the details of the material used.
The next action we will take in our transforming our lawn to food will be to add another 5×15 row to the garden and building 3-5 more garden boxes. We plan to add the 5×15 row first since all we need for that is compostable paper bags (i.e. grocery bags) and leaves. The cost for this will be $0. By the end of September I hope to report back with news of garden boxes.
What I am currently doing to transform the lawn to a garden
1. Collecting seeds in the garden from wildflowers sowed last year so I can plant more in the additional beds. Most wildflowers draw beneficial insects to the garden and they are an easy and no-fuss way to add color.
2. We try to spray the leaf piles once a day. Keeping the leaves moist will help them break down faster, giving us rich soil to plant in sooner.
3. We take note of friends and neighbors who have plants that can use dividing or thinning. We are set up to dig out some more nice raspberry stock when the weather is cooler and I collected some Columbine (aquilegia) seeds as just walking down the sidewalk. It was easy, just pinch the seed head right off, all you need is two or three.
Are you ready to transform?
Let us know if you have any questions and subscribe to our feed if you want to stay current on our garden plans. We would love to help with ideas and encourage you to get started on turning your lawn into a beautiful and highly functional area that can sustain you and your family. You can even send us a picture of the area you want to transform with your needs and limitations and we’ll post it to the site with some ideas you can consider.
