Hoes Replacing Lawn Mowers as Favorite Tools for Front Yard

Maybe it's the water restrictions. Maybe it's the shaky economy. Dotted through our neighborhood are houses where lawns have been replaced by vegetable gardens.

According to Time magazine, the trend was sowed in the summer of 2005 by Los Angeles architect Fritz Haeg. He saw the manicured front lawn as an American icon that cut across politics, social classes and economics. But he also saw it as out of date.

Vegetable gardening is certainly not new. The Victory Gardens of World War II were encouraged to relieve pressure on scarce food resources. In 1943, about a year after the campaign began, Americans had planted 20.5 million Victory Gardens, which produced a third of all the vegetables eaten in America that year.

What's different about the food gardens I've been seeing lately is:

They are planted in the front yard rather than being hidden in the back yard.
They often replace the traditional lawn.
The layout of these gardens is often more ornamental than farm like. The plants become objects d'art or sculpture.

There are many blogs or books such as Nan Chase's Eat Your Yard: Edible Trees, Shrubs, Vines, Herbs and Flowers for Your Landscape, that explain how to make the transition. It's really not that complex.

I once tried to make a map of the areas where I walk my dog noting which had fruit trees or herb bushes for urban foraging. It was a good reminder to watch for the changing seasons and the places where fruit was going to waste because no one was harvesting it.

Perhaps my next challenge should be the edible balcony garden.

Comments

Know Your Soil For Best Garden Results

I've always taken soil for granted. It was there. You put seeds into it. You put water on it. Plants grow and produce flowers, fruit or vegetables. Gayle Weinstein, author of Xeriscape Handbook; A How-To Guide to Natural, Resource-Wise Gardening , takes a different view: “Soil . . . acts as a highway between life and death, land and atmosphere, plants and animals.” It stores water, air and nutrients and makes it possible for an exchange of elements and chemical reactions to occur, she adds. She describes soil as being animal, vegetable and mineral combined. Here are six tests Gayle recommends for getting to know your soil. Grab a shovel and a quart jar. Dig up two cups of dry soil two-to-six inches deep from the areas you want to test. Gather a glass of water, dish washing detergent and paper towels. A soil pH kit, a meter or litmus paper will be needed for the final test.

Away With Holey Leaves: Offing the Pests

I can't stand the tell-tale signs of garden pests: the leaves with holes, the failure to thrive. I believe in early assault with organic deterrents. Kate has great faith in plants' commitment to survive. She considers holes in leaves to be a mere cosmetic blemish. Like politics and religion, getting rid of pests in a garden is sure to cause a community donnybrook (or at least rapid words over ice water in the lounge chairs). To do organic warfare against pests means using one or more of these tools:

Water saving ollas

When you're saving water, the first step is to get the water where it's needed in the most direct way possible. No sprinkler heads rising like swans in a ballet to spew water 18-inches above the ground, splashing sidewalks and gutters. No sprinklers nodding back and forth sending sprays of water as tall as a child. Nope, it's irrigation dripping directly at the base of a stem or water bubbling at dirt-level. You can't get much more direct than an olla (pronounced oy-ya ). In the irrigation world, an olla is a clay pot, usually with a round bottom and a longish thin neck that is planted in the dirt next to plants that need water. The dirt is mounded around the pot so that only the end of the neck shows. Water is poured into the opening to fill the buried pot. The clay absorbs water that in turn is absorbed by the dry earth surrounding it. The plant gets a slow steady supply of water. Because the pot is buried, there's little exposure to the air and evaporatio...

The Fink Farm Dirt

Search This Blog