Reusable shopping bags and compact fluorescent light bulbs are an easy place to start, once you've resolved to curb your carbon footprint. But why not go for some low hanging fruit that you could actually pick? Growing food in your front yard is a simple and tasty way to combat climate change.
Maintaining a lawn, on the other hand, is an exercise in monocrop masochism. As architect and edible landscape advocate Fritz Haeg wrote in Edible Estates: Attack On The Front Lawn, "...there is nothing remotely natural about a lawn. It is an industrial landscape disguised as organic plant material."
Those innocent-looking, wispy green blades are just a façade; at its roots, a lawn is a high maintenance monster, demanding regular feeding, seeding, weeding, watering and mowing.
And squandered resources are only the start. Gas-powered lawn mowers generate tons of air pollution. Excess fertilizer seeps out of our lawns and encourages equally lush growth in our waterways, where nitrogen-fed 'algal blooms' choke all kinds of aquatic life.
Yet, for so many Americans, a patch of green grass is still the gold standard when it comes to landscaping. As Haeg notes:
In the United States we plant more grass than any other crop: currently lawns cover more than thirty million acres. Given the way we lavish precious resources on it and put it everywhere that humans go, aliens landing in any American city today would assume that grass must be the most precious earthly substance of all.
Why not feed ourselves, instead of the grass? That's the simple goal of Haeg's Edible Estates project. Starting in 2005, Haeg enlisted the help of a small army of grow-your-own volunteers, and began converting lifeless lawns into productive food gardens, one front yard at a time. He's helped folks all over the country plant gardens that nurture themselves and their neighbors, and documented the happy end results in Edible Estates, published in 2008.
Since the book came out, the homegrown revolution's moved full steam ahead, with a big boost from Michelle Obama--not to mention an economy that's got folks growing their own food on a scale we haven't seen in decades.
So it's time for a new, expanded edition of Edible Estates. Are you the proud owner of a once sterile, now fertile front yard farm? Do you live in hardiness zones 3,4, 5, or 9? If so, Fritz Haeg wants to hear from you:
For this new edition of the book (Metropolis Books, 2008) we are looking for more reports from across the country from those that have decided to engage in "full frontal gardening". Have you replaced the lawn in front of your house or apartment building with a completely edible garden? We will be selecting one garden story from each zone, with each contributor receiving a copy of the book.
The deadline for submissions is Monday, August 31st, and you need to submit:
- a 500 word story about your garden - 4 or 5 photos of your garden at the highest resolution - your name, mailing address, size of garden, date established, and USDA Plant Hardiness ZoneDon't know your zone? You can look it up here.Zone 9 includes: Houston, Central Florida
Zone 5 includes: Des Moines, Chicago
Zone 4 includes: Minneapolis, part of Wyoming
Zone 3 includes: Northern Minnesota and Montana
Send your questions and submissions to assistant@fritzhaeg.com. Here's your chance to help wean your fellow citizens off the grass and sow the seeds for our homegrown revolution. Kitchen gardeners of the world, unite and take over!
Cross-posted from The Green Fork.
Follow Kerry Trueman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kerrytrueman
That's a shame.
Some homes only have a front yard, and if you'd prefer that each one be useless and non-offensive to you, rather than a little scraggly-looking and productive, well, I'll have to disagree both with your opinion and your standards of beauty.
They have their lawn sprayed with god knows what once a month and when they offered their grass clippings for my compost pile--I turned them down and told them why. They may never change, but they at least understand why I won't do the same.
In the side yard, I have cucumbers, basil, tomatoes, peppers, radishes, rosemary, parsley, carrots, beans, onions, garlic and broccoli. I'm slowly replacing the remaining lawns with creeping thyme.
My goal is to not need a lawnmower eventually, and just be able to use my rechargeable weed-wacker to tidy things up from time to time.
This is my front view of the sunflowers. The short plants are the blueberry/raspberry bushes.
http://s647.photobucket.com/albums/uu191/gbrooks_photo/?action=view¤t=007.jpg
And this is my monster grape tomato plant. You can't see, but there are strawberry plants all around it, and a raspberry bush that it enveloped:
http://s647.photobucket.com/albums/uu191/gbrooks_photo/?action=view¤t=008.jpg
The sunflowers will not only be food, but they're part of a research study on bees: http://www.greatsunflower.org/
That reminds me, I have some work to do. :)
I keep a bagful of the seeds to replant next year, give part of them to the birds, and I roast the rest and eat them myself and give some as a gift.
I also offered to send out seeds to other folks who are interested in the research project. I haven't heard back from Gretchen (the lead scientist) yet, but the offer's out there!
you live somewhere warm, don't you?
We've had a very mild summer this year and have had tons of rain--especially in July, which was not good for my peppers, but was great for the broccoli! I'm honestly surprised I've had as much luck as I have, considering the odd weather this year.
Sweet potatoes. They grow on practically anything, make a stunning ground cover, and when you get tired of the vines, or they have become too exuberant, you pull them up and harvest the delicious sweet potatoes. They will grow on rocks, and form tubers near the surface, you can't hardly go wrong with them. Plus, they are a super-food, loaded with antioxidants and vitamins. Try to get the ones with the purple flesh, they are the most nutritious. Give your neighbors some cuttings. They take anywhere from 3-6 months, so best for longer growing season areas.
No one has pointed out yet that a nice lawn does bring the ambient temperature down a bit in your yard. However, I'm thinking of replacing part of my lawn with creeping Manzanita (I think that is also called Bearberry sometimes?). It grows well in our furnace-like summers.
I've been trying to outsmart the varmints who think I planted my garden for them. I make lots of mistakes. But I'm having a great time.
I agree that anything more than a small patch of lawn for the kids to roll in is a waste of resources.
it is the farthest north farmers market on the continent and we have some very successful organic growers. Interior Alaska has a good growing season, despite the fact that we are zone zero !
I have a large veggie garden in the back and don't need more to take care of. Let me tell you: a veggie garden takes a lot of upkeep! I love having fresh veggies and don't mind doing it for the size garden I have. Wouldn't want to do it for the front lawn.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/opinion/09barber.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
MULCH!! Create a compost pile! Plant some crops!
I bet you're not weeding your lawn: you're putting poison on it......
And what's wrong with weeding? I love to weed!!!!
My 4 x 8 raised bed has only had to be watered every week or so this summer (given - it has been unusually rainy this year) and hand-weeked opportunistically about every week (a 5-10 minute operation). Similarly, the cucumber vines running up the fence needed only occasional water and some occasional pruning.
Fertilizing happened twice so far, once at planting, once about 2 weeks ago.
So far, a dozen or more tomatoes, a couple of pints of cherry tomatoes, enough cucumbers to fill 10 pint jars of pickles (plus numerous ones that were otherwise eaten), enough eggplant to make a very tasty parmesean + two jars pickled, and numerous (now frozen) pint bags of anaheim peppers.
The patches of oregano, chives, and potted basil, thyme, & tarragon have thrived on similar benign neglect.
The lawn has been far more work. Next year some more of that 0.06 acre lawn is being turned into veggie beds.
it's a prison-free killin' spree, folks.
How about clover if you must have a "lawn"?
Lawn food and pesticides end up in lakes and the ocean.
Get out there and put at least ONE perennial out there
AND, plant a crop or two. You'd be amazed at how beautiful a zucchini
hedge is.
Now, don't get on me if you have too many zucchinis....
http://www.plantmaps.com/usda_hardiness_zone_map.php
It allows you to check your zone in greater detail than the arbor day map