January 2010 Update

I feel like I’m cheating by titling this with the month of January. We are so close to February I do not deserve the timliness that January brings with it. Ah well. The earth grows slowly at this time of year so there is no rush. Our lawn to food project continues and we are even nearing the remodel of our dog house that will soon be a chicken coop. Pictures will come soon.

As for the food…we had our city deliver some leaves to our house this year. We don’t have much room on our lot so we had them dumped in the driveway and on the lawn. We had to get the pile off the lawn first otherwise it would kill off the grass and just look unsightly. It took us a few days to get it done but we did it. We’ve got 5′x20′ area covered in cardboard and topped with 3′ of leaves and we are still adding compost into the pile.

Some people ask us why we are using leaves. The main reason is that we want to do it as cheap as possible and leaves do turn into soil. Rich soil. Our house also sits on an old spring bed so it’s quite rocky and it would take a lot of time to get all the weeds out of the ground. I feel that this is going to give us the best growing medium while using the least amount of monetary resources. It may take a bit more time but with some attention to detail and an active approach to helping the compost along I think we will have a really great spot to grow food in.