Zone: 5
Location: Cincinnati, OH (community of Northside)
Size Shape: more or less a rectangle with the yard ending as a wedge, most of the yard measures about 20 x 100 give or take on one side and we have a much smaller garden on the other side (not pictured) of about 20 x 40.  Our house sits right in the middle of the plot so all we have are the two side yards, no front or back
First Planting:  Kind of a tricky question, we started the very first part of our garden in spring 2006, if your talking about just this year we have actually had plantings year round with our garlic wintering through and first seed starts in the ground as early as march

My wife and I went house hunting as I was in the midst of school with a newborn.  Our apartment lacked space enough to do...well...anything.  On a limited very limited budget we checked out a progressive community called Northside.  We had heard the community several times before in passing and never thought of it as place to live until the budget we had worked with the houses that were offered.  Eventually we settled on a condemned former drug, prostitute house that had lead hazards and construction hazards clearly posted on the front door with notice to barricade if actions were not taken immediately.  So, with poison ivy literally growing into our halls, a deck about to collapse on top of us, lead paint throughout the site, various weed trees and pieces of parking lot throughout our yard we decided to plant a garden.  In living there for the past 3 years we have seen bikes, fencing and toys disappear from our yard along with a slurry of lewd comments directed toward our family from the drive-thru patrons getting their 40's.  However, not once has the garden been tampered with or vandalized and as the garden has grown beyond expectation so have our neighbors interest in it and the fruit it produces.  Now we get pots left on our front door requests for green tomatoes and even more requests about "what the heck that plant is".  My wife cans enough from our little plot that we have enough for the entire year in terms of vegetable production which made us wonder why more people don’t use the land that have been given to them.  So, we started gardening the drive-thru lot and when we used up all that space on broccoli, cabbage, yarrow, jerusalem artichoke and various other plantings we started gardening the apartment building across the street.  Eventually word got around that we got pretty good at this and we had offers from people to garden their vacant lots in the city.  The curiosity has gotten so immense that people stop on a daily basis just to look at what we have done and chit chat about gardening strategies, food preservation, tips and tricks for certain plant varieties, intensive gardening, etc.  It got to a point where my thesis for graduation was based around using every scrap of land we have to grow our own food and live on what we have to break away from industrial food processes to more natural methods and more nutritious methods of gardening and eating.  Looking back I remember the first words to come out of my mouth as my wife said she absolutely wanted this place...”I have a bad feeling about this”...now I look back at those short three years and realize how wrong I was.

- Adam

 

Zone: 5
Location: Chicago, IL
Size: Our lot is 36 x 125 feet (the house takes up about 20x50). 

In February of this year, my husband and I purchased our first home together in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood. It was a labor of love to get our home into shape. Some people probably would think we were crazy had they seen the original house. After years of neglect, there were missing walls, no plumbing, and holes everywhere. We even had squirrels, kittens, and the occasional bird living with us at different points. Then there was the issue of the yard, which was originally frightening to look at. It was so run down and full of weeds that the house had a slightly haunted look.

Our new neighbors seemed relieved after we removed the weeds and garbage from the lawn, and put siding on to replace the crumbling tar paper. I imagine it was like having an ocean view all of a sudden - they no longer had to stare at the dilapidated house next store. I think it was also appreciated that we recycled the home, as opposed to tearing it down and putting up a brand new eyesore.

Not being a fan of perfectly manicured grass lawns, we set out to grow as much food as possible, using both the front and back yards. We had to start from scratch and lay a tarp over the original soil in order to discourage the weeds. Although, we do let some of the prettier native plants coexist with our new garden. After laying the tarps, we covered it with a lot of mulch. Eventually, the mulch will become the new soil and we can plant all over. Until then, we are using raised beds with purchased soil and homemade compost. We started most of the plants from organic seeds (as it is obviously cheaper than buying plants), and bought a few plants at local Farmers' Markets and nurseries.

The front yard currently has several fruit trees, and will include more over the years. The back yard has a variety of vegetables and herbs: kale, chard, tomatoes, basil, cabbage, lettuce, lavender, and the list goes on. What started as almost nothing three months ago is now a beautiful and abundant source of nourishing food. We get a large percentage of our produce in our garden, which certainly helps both our wallets and health.

While it is exciting to reap the benefits of our garden beyond the summer through canning and preserving, it is sad to think of the season coming to an end. I never thought I could do this in Chicago. In fact, I never really thought I could grow more than a few herbs, since my gardening knowledge was limited. Before this experience, I was waiting until I retired and had some land in the country in a more moderate climate. However, I have learned that I have everything I need right here in Chicago. Growing food is possible anywhere and on any scale or budget. I am so grateful for this opportunity and look forward to expanding our garden throughout the years. 

- Amanda

 

Size of Garden: 115 sq ft
Date Established: 2005
Hooksett, NH
Zone: 5

My garden started in 2005 when I purchased my house. The land was mostly lawnscaped and empty. I desperately wanted a picket fence. As soon as my husband made that happen, I wanted more! The yard felt cold and sterile; there was no sense of the quirky charm that I crave. This void motivated me to create the garden I enjoy today.

Slowly, lawn started to disappear to make way for perennials. Veggies started to fill the voids. It took a few summers of transplanting the perennials and digging up grass to get the layout to work but I found it best to have my veggies up against the fence where they had full sun and my perennials in the garden up against my house. This proved to be beneficial to the perennial bed and vegetable garden for two reasons: (1) the perennials had some shelter against the house and bloomed earlier because they are better protected from the elements (2) since the vegetable garden goes into the compost bin in fall, the sand from the roads in the winter doesn't effect the plants. The sand gets tilled into the soil in early spring.

My lawnscape started looking like a landscape summer after summer. I started adding vegetables and fruits into my perennial beds. This kept evolving as my perennials were pushed against the house and the vegetables took over along the fence in the very front of the lawn for all to see. More and more lawn was dug out to make way for row after row of veggies, raised beds, and walkway. The raised beds now house the lettuces, root veggies (carrots, radishes, garlic, turnips), and my favorite, strawberries. The rows generally grow the larger vegetable plants including the beans, cucumbers, peas, and squash. The fences helps in the act of trellising the beans and peas on twine. At the far end, I grow tomatoes in a patch rather than row. It has been my experience that the tomatoes support each other better this way. A compost bin at the end of my driveway is used to add needed nutrients to the soil.

The front yard that had to be mowed week after week was now a place that bared fruits and vegetables for my family to enjoy. Some may think fall brings unsightliness to a vegetable garden; I think quite the opposite. Fall, to me, brings renewal and inspiration to my veggie garden. It is a time for composting the old and tilling the leftovers to make way for the new. I plan the layout for the spring crop to come and add in any necessary additions as the garden is ever expanding.

I come home from work and can go out in the garden, tidy it up and just smile. The best moment for me was one early summer day when a neighbor walked by the garden with her young son. I was washing dishes gazing out my kitchen window only to see her stop and lift him up to see more. He pointed at different things and I watched them talk and small then continue on their walk. That is the best moment I've witnessed in my garden, if the yard had been left a carpet of grass, I wouldn't have witnessed that.

- Ryan

 

Austin, TX
Zone: 8

My name is Jason Minshew and I have lived in Austin for fourteen years.  I own a small landscape company called JBird & Co., through which I am trying to reacquaint Austin-ites with the basic relationship between the garden and food.  I know I am not the only gardener in Austin who has noticed the trend of Victory Gardens taking place.  It is going on everywhere from my block in South Austin to the South Lawn of the White House.  People want locally grown food because it tastes better and is more nutritious.  Eating locally grown food is a positive step for reducing our collective dependence on oil and gas.  Starting a kitchen garden of your own can save you money at the grocery store.  The buzz is present at the farmers’ market, at local nurseries, and in the inspiring words of authors like Michael Pollan and Alice Waters, but now garden enthusiasts are looking for an example to follow.  This is where I have heard a recent calling.  This is my opportunity to show more friends and neighbors my creative approach to this trend of gardening for practical purposes.  By applying the principles of landscape design to plants that offer bounties of fruits and veggies I create thoughtfully designed, productive kitchen-gardens that look like other urban gardens conceived and installed for purely ornamental purposes.

This idea is pretty simple to understand and I think it is a very important model to introduce to the community.  In my work I speak with gardeners every day who are excited to try to grow food.  We look at their established landscape for sunny spots and they ask where we should try a “veggie plot” or a “square foot garden box”.  When I suggest to them that we should just weave the fruits and veggies into the landscape, the most common answer I hear is, “What will the neighbors think?”  After I show them some examples, they are happily surprised at how beautiful a productive garden can be just by ‘thinking outside of the box’.  My vision is that as more people are romanced by this style of designing a landscape with fruit trees and veggies, the important trend of Victory Gardening will make it into more neighborhoods and we will have a new standard for our urban landscape. 

As I said, this idea is simple to understand.  Let me describe the basics.  In a landscape design you build tiers starting with the canopy.  Ornamental or under-story trees follow with shrubs to give the space bones. Flowers and groundcovers tie the design together and provide seasonally changing interest and color .  Shade trees or canopy and a fruit/veggie garden are sort of mutually exclusive, so look for sunny places and start with the ornamental trees.  Some examples of good native, ornamental trees are Mountain Laurels and Yaupons.  They are evergreen, globose, 10’-12’ hardy trees that serve us very well for screening or for anchoring the end of a bed or the corner of the house.  A Kumquat tree has the same characteristics and can provide the same benefits as a screen or even as a specimen tree, but once a year you reap a bounty of sweet-tart Kumquats.  Now there isn’t a single thing wrong with Mountain Laurels or Yaupons, but if you want fruit, just substitute the fruit tree in the design.

For the last 3 years I have had the pleasure and pride of implementing these kind of gardening choices at Habitat Suites Hotel here in Austin.  Habitat Suites is provides a model for Green living and business practices by running on solar energy, using organic cleaning products, and stewarding its three acres of land with organic gardens.  When I was introduced to Habitat Suites the garden was over 20 years old and planted with the usual suspects from that period.  Red-Tip Photinias and Bradford Pear trees were reaching the ends of their lives and needed to be replaced, making room for new possibilities. The pool courtyard gets the most guest traffic of all the the property, so it seemed like the best place to put our example on display.  I started working on that area by replacing some big, unhealthy Bradford Pears (which make no fruit even when they are alive) with Olive and Satsuma trees.  The Chinese Holly and Indian Hawthorn made way for Blackberries, Guava, and Dwarf Pomegranate shrubs.  Soon the ground was covered with Strawberries and Beets and guests started complimenting the management of the hotel for the inspiring changes that were taking place in the garden. Following the success and appreciated  praise of the hotel guests, we now have lush, productive fruit and veggie gardens in three more corners of the property.  The rest of the garden between those spaces is landscaped with natives that require little or no care.

Habitat Suites is doing a wonderful service to our community by providing an example on a  commercial scale for improving our urban space and moving in the direction of sustainability.   Please visit the garden some time, you might get a snack out of it!  If you see me working say, “Hi”.  I would love to give you the tour provide some inspiration. 

My agenda with my work there is to show people that a kitchen garden can be just as lovely and seductive as a garden planted with purely ornamental plants.  I want to help people past the paradigm that food grows in straight rows and that good neighbors don’t plant their vegetable gardens in their front yards.  I am trying to show people that you can apply the same creativity and design principles to plants that provide rewards beyond just ornament.  With the help of some prominent, progressive community leaders like Habitat Suites and Edible Austin, we can expose more Austin-ites to this idea and we might just start a revolution. 

I have my eye on those soccer fields at Zilker Park.

- Jason

 

Zone: 9
Location: Ocala, Florida
Garden Size: 20' x 20'
Established: September 2006

To my husband, Tim, and me our front yard tells the world that we are proud to grow our own food.  We hope to be an example to neighbors and friends alike.  I love to cook, so I thought I would like to grow my own herbs and vegetables.  Nothing crazy, just tomatoes, bell peppers and your basic herbs.  I attempted a container garden on my back deck.  The herbs did ok, but the tomatoes and bell peppers never gave me any fruit. Tim decided to help me by "figuring out" why my plants were not doing well.  He decided we needed to make an above ground space for the plants.  Tim determined the best thing to do would be to build an above ground, lasagna style, garden plot.  We tried to find the perfect spot in our backyard, but we just had too much shade.  Rather than give up our dream of growing our own, organic fruits, vegetables and herbs, Tim soon discovered that the best area of our home to grow a garden was our front yard!  We talked about it and decided we really did want to grow our own food, organically.  Tim, a local teacher who helped spearhead a campaign at his school to raise environmental awareness - including the inception an environmental club, decided that he is not afraid to live out the principals he teaches his students right out in our front yard.  What better place to show our peers that we believe in growing our own food, organically right out in the open?  Tim tends the garden religiously, figuring out what works and what doesn't work based on our location and zone.  He has turned our front yard into a mini-farm, growing broccoli, eggplant, okra and onions of all kinds!  Tim tries different techniques and we grow what we like to eat - beans are a particular favorite.  I cook with everything from the garden and we get so excited to eat it all because we grew it from seed!  The quality is unlike anything we have ever eaten, even or ganic food from a grocer or farmer's market.  We’ve grown to have two 5 x 8 plots, an onion patch, a bean teepee, fruit trees and many containers in our front yard.  Planted in the front yard are a peach tree (which has made itself into a peach bush) and a key lime tree.  We have a bean teepee along with black beans and black eyed peas in containers.  Tim uses zero pesticides in the garden. He uses marigolds to keep away predators like stink bugs and picks off each caterpillar and grasshopper that threatens our garden.  He "fertilizes" with a compost tea he makes out of earthworm castings he gets from a local farm here in Central Florida.  We compost any food waste appropriate, which Tim also uses as fertilizer for the garden.  Even though we’ve been only doing this for three years, we look forward to each season as a learning experience.

- Nicoletta and Tim

 

North Hollywood, California
Garden size: 25' x 40'
USDA Hardiness Zone: 9
Vegetable garden side established: 2009
Succulent side established: 2006

My front yard was once a large, undifferentiated expanse of lawn, unattractive and unused except by passing dogs.  It sucked up too much water from an inefficient old sprinkler system.  When my daughter and son-in-law moved in with me 4 years ago, they convinced me to get rid of it.  

In 2006, we dug up and replanted the right side with small succulents, many of which were cuttings from my father’s garden in Santa Cruz. I added a dwarf Black Jack fig tree a year later, which is now providing a wonderful annual crop of sweet, delicious figs.  The succulents filled in quickly, and today that side of the yard uses a fraction of the water it used to, and looks beautiful throughout the year.

In early spring 2009, we tackled the left side.  My backyard is too shaded for a vegetable garden, but the south side of the front yard gets full exposure and we decided it would be the perfect place for raised bins.

In phases, the lawn came out the hard way – slowly digging out sections, shaking the soil from the turf, raking out rocks, pulling weeds.  This was a communal effort:  two neighbors across the street helped with labor and a truck to haul away turf and bring in soil, compost and bark for walkways.  My son-in-law and I put the bins together, and three generations of us planted the garden in early May – my parents in their 90’s, my sister, my daughters and my niece.

We planted ten kinds of tomatoes, zucchini and patty pan squash, hot and sweet bell peppers, eggplants, beans, corn, cucumbers, basil and parsley, and have been able to harvest some of almost everything.  The tomatoes were the most successful:  planted intensely, they provided more shade and sun protection for each other than the others which, by mid-July, were getting crisped by the hot San Fernando Valley sun.  The corn developed ears but insects got to it before we did.  The watermelons flowered and fruited, but stopped growing after they got to the size of softballs.  We’re still harvesting herbs and tomatoes and chili peppers. 

In September, we’ll dig some homemade compost into the soil and plant a winter garden of greens, onions, beets and broccoli.  Then, next spring, we’ll try again with summer crops, this time with some shade.

My garden has attracted a lot of comments from neighbors and drive-bys, many of whom slow down to look and ask me questions.  My neighbors have followed the garden’s progress with me, and shared in the bounty they helped make possible.

- Sherry
 

 

Zone: 9
Location: Petaluma, CA
Established: 2007

In September 2007 we buried our front lawn under recycled moving boxes and unwanted waste such as free wood chips, horse manure, coffee grounds from local shops and local compost. Since then in our small urban front yard we have planted 25 fruit trees and over 80 varieties of perennialized polycultural delight, self-sowing annuals and organic vegetables. We have planted dwarf and multi-graft trees including an apple fence and we utilize beneficial plant guilds that accumulate nutrients, fix nitrogen and attract beneficial insects in this fledgling food forest.

While most of our harvest comes from the front yard, we have planted over 200 varieties of edible and medicinal plants and trees on site. We installed the first permitted single household greywater system and constructed wetland in Sonoma County, a 1,500-gallon rainwater catchment cistern and we have 3 beehives and chickens. In less than 2 years, we have produced over 1,500 pounds of food, mostly in the front yard and have added 18 tons of recycled organic matter to improve the soil on our 6,250 sq ft lot. In 2008 we harvested and composted 2,500 lbs of local coffee grounds. By canning and fermenting more of our harvest and gleaned food, we have reduced our recycling by over 50% through glass reuse. Most site elements from the chicken coop to our cob bench and oven are made from recycled, onsite and local materials.

Of course this is about more than one garden. Being the director of two non-profit organizations with limited time, it took a community to do all of this. So to grow more such models of self-reliance and support, we have started Project Homegrown and are creating a network of integrated garden models while swapping skills, sharing food, building community and burying lawns. Across the street from our house we just replaced a 3,000 sq ft. community center front lawn with another food forest that passively harvests rainwater with earthworks, while empowering 150 citizens with the skills to replace their lawns with food. This edible landscape will save 67,000 gallons of water this year from replacing the lawn. On October 24th we will install a delectable, edible, multi-beneficial perennial foodscape and community garden at Petaluma City Hall.

While we LOVE growing vegetables we aren’t just planting gardens. We are growing community self-reliance rooted in ecological resilience. We are growing ecosystems that produce food, fuel, fodder, fertility, fun, fecundity, farmaceuticals and feline felicity because even our kitties like to get high on life. So we planted catmint for them and the bees. We are nourishing and inspiring neighbors and strangers with gardens that feed us; birds and bees as they build soil, influence green policy, transform waste into fertility and sequester atmospheric inspiration out of strangers and thin air. It is truly astonishing the food we have eaten, things we have learned, friends we have met, and richness this garden creates, inspires and draws in.

- Trathen

 

Zone 9
Location: Mountain View, California
Yard Size: 32 x 48 ft.
Established: 2009
Panorama photo

Our Silicon Valley front yard food garden began with a dying pine tree.

Removing the pine—the tallest around—offended some neighbors. We were newcomers dramatically changing our block's character.

With the pine gone, my husband and I debated what to do with this now sunny space. Our first thought was to plant another tree.

Time passed. We got distracted. Every so often, however, we would drift through our now weedy front and daydream.

During one of those precious daydreaming drifts, we discovered, nestled against an iris, a small but sturdy volunteer cherry tomato plant.

That fruited. And ripened.

So we picked. And ate.

The first sweet-tangy bites of those grown-by-accident-out-front, dry-farmed tomatoes were a carnal revelation. As I gloried in those tomatoes, and watched my young daughters enjoy them too, I suddenly knew the possibilities of a front-yard garden: togetherness, connection, pleasure.

But could we keep up with the work once the excitement faded?

My husband never worried that growing food out front might be considered fringe or déclassé. But I worried that food out front might dampen our daughters' social futures. As for our stunted relationships with our neighbors, I reasoned that we had already “killed” a beloved tree. Compared to that, what was planting vegetables?

From January to May, we put in five 4 x 6 ft. raised beds, a melon bed, and an 8-foot tall cucumber-bean teepee. In went a half-dozen fruit trees. Later, snap peas, potatoes, tomatoes, corn, carrots, cucumbers, pole beans, bush beans, Brussels sprouts, chives, nasturtium, calendula, squash, eggplant, tomatillos, peppers, and basil.

Carl next door lent us his rototiller. Emmy across the street, who had mourned the pine, brought us pizza the first Saturday we worked all day. Ben down the block gave us an article on gardening. Passersby advised gopher wire. Tio João helped us plant. Dan welded a rusty-pipe trellis for melon vines. Kid-friends planted corn.

We met more and more neighbors. They complimented our progress. Time out front got even more social when a bicycle bridge went in nearby. Cyclists and walkers streamed past on weekends. Many slowed down to look, some stopped to chat, others even to taste and eat.

The harvesting has enhanced friendships. Kids giggled digging potatoes for a playdate. I push cucumbers and green beans on folks. One August morning, with neighbor kids' help, we brought 18 lbs. of vegetables to a local food bank on their Garden Day. That's how I met Candace, who's taught me about squash beetles, spider mites, and direct seeding. Last week, I made a neighbor's day when I gave her a fragrant Galia melon. Tonight, Charlie and Linda stopped to say, “We're so proud of you. It's looking so lovely.” They left carrying basil and a pepper.

What began as us upsetting the neighborhood has evolved into free entertainment—and often fresh food—for neighbors, friends, and passersby: our edible front yard. Full frontal gardening is changing us for the better as much as we've changed the landscape.
Perhaps the best benefit—our kids grow up expecting this.

- Carrie

 

Zone: 9
Location: San Carlos, CA

Our full frontal garden was fully established this spring but we began working on it in October 2007 - when we stripped away grass to be replaced with pumpkins, sunflowers and peppers.  We are in Zone 9 (Northern California), our garden is about 900 square feet.  Here is our story:

My back hurt. Something hard and pointed dug into my abdomen. My left calf cramped. Blood seeped slowly from a small cut on my pinkie.

I really shouldn't be doing this, I thought, as I leaned further forward and flexed every muscle in my body. Where was my husband or the kids? Or a neighbor? I cocked my head scanning the street. I needed help!

I shifted my weight slightly, contorting into the Reverse Warrior. Slowly, I eased my hand under, stretched out my fingers and, with my thumb deftly snapped the base of the cherry tomato.

Reaching to the left, I set the full basket on the stone walkway - next to three other full baskets. What was I supposed to do with all these, I wondered. In the distance, I heard a car engine. Darting over the picket fence and onto the sidewalk, I hoped to God it was a neighbor or a friend. The car slowed down as it passed but didn't stop. A stranger. I debated running after the car for help but decided I could wait. My neighbors had to come home or emerge from behind their closed doors at some point. When they did, I'd be waiting.

I sighed and crouched back down, angling under a lime green branch that had escaped the vanity cages in my front yard. I'd opted for wrought iron pyramids over the traditional cages because they would look prettier in my front yard garden. As I stretched for a low hanging branch of tomatoes, mingled in between the pumpkin leaves and cayenne peppers, I doubted if vanity cages were the best choice.

Last year, my front yard was mostly tame. True, sunflowers and pumpkins roamed along the sidewalk strip and the side yard, next to the driveway, buzzed and undulated in black, yellow, purple and red. A busy pollinator garden. But still, directly in front of the house, stretched a subdued greenish-brown lawn, peppered with dandelions and devil grass.

Late fall, I got a honey bee in my hand-knitted bonnet. We put in a fence, an arbor, a path and sheet mulch. Spring brought tomatoes, peppers, pumpkins, a grape vine, watermelons and more.

Today, our front yard is a raucous orgy. The tomatoes tango with the cucumbers which intertwine with the peppers which lurk around the basil and beans which saunter next to the crookneck squash and so on. Zinnias, cosmos and marigolds pop up in odd places. Between the collard greens. Behind the pumpkins. Next to the potatoes and berries. Butterflies skitter over the yarrow, bees wander drunkenly from squash blossom to borage flower and bright yellow finches flit in and out of the sunflowers.

There's nothing tame here. Not even the amount of fruit and vegetables one year of gardening can produce. I'm picking over four baskets a day of cherry tomatoes. Think twice before dropping by the Green Bean household. You'll go home with full hands. Very full hands. Watermelon and pumpkins balloon in between the vines. Beans wave from their perch atop the black metal pyramid. I beat back the basil daily but cannot keep up with its slow onslaught upwards and outwards. It's wild here. The garden buzzes and churns with endless energy. It requires picking and wending and creative thinking and new recipes. It also invigorates and regenerates and lightens the step even as it fills up the baskets.

Uncoiling myself from in between the giant pumpkins and Early Girl tomatoes, I pick up my harvesting baskets. A neighbor pulls up across the street and makes off with a basket of my sungolds. Another neighbor brings her parents over to see what is growing. A passerby whips out his camera phone and snaps a photo. A landscaper working on a house up the street stops by to quiz me on the varieties of squash I'm growing. And, I hand off some basil to a friend dropping my son off from camp. My son in turn hefts up a basket and I, smiling from ear to ear, carry the two remaining as we walk back to the house.

I open the door for my son and then turn back to look at the buzzing, breeding garden. Life where once there was only lifeless lawn. Food where once there was empty space. Hope and happiness where once there was nothing. I square my shoulders and head inside to make dinner confident that everything is in order down on the farm.

- Michelle

 

Size of Garden: 500 sq ft
Date Established: 2010
Location: North Hollywood, CA
Zone: 9

After a discussion a friend & I had about gardening on my front lawn, she sent me, Edible Estates. It fueled my fire to make use of that wasted space, & I tucked it away for "someday." Recently, when I saw straw bales as a medium for vegetable gardening, I knew I'd no longer have to put off my garden until I had enough funds. I could slap some bales right on top of my lawn without digging it up, or building containers.

Despite one neighbor's warning that my veggies would get stolen, or another neighbor's insistence that my food would taste like stinky, wet straw bales, most of my neighbors are delighted & curious & excited to chat while I tend my garden. And no, there's been no pilfering or nasty tasting veggies. I think I might have made some front yard garden converts too.

I started conditioning my bales mid April 2010, & started seeds in paper towels at the same time - a late start, so my veggies are just now ripening as of mid July 2010. We have tomato, cucumber, onion, butternut squash, carrots, spinach, peppers, cantaloupe, honeydew melon, sweet potato, onion, garlic, & sunflowers in the bales. I've also snuck in some corn, watermelon, & pumpkin into the flower beds.

As much as I love the straw bales for their convenient container-&-compost-in-one design (not to mention the lack of weeding, absence of most pests, & minimal watering,) I'm dreaming of a more permanent garden design. Some bales are failing in structural stability. It looks like I will need containers for my "containers." And as aesthetically pleasing as my garden is to me, function was my priority over design. Since we still have grass, I planned wide, simple rows, so a lawn mower could fit between.

This process has been an adventure for the whole family. From my husband's surprise at coming home to find 24 straw bales attacking the lawn, to my hope that the joke wasn't on me - that plants would actually grow, to my children's delight in watching "pickles" emerge on the trellis, we have all learned a great deal in these past few months. I am not paralyzed by fear, but prompted to advance in the battle against tradition for tradition's sake. I am a steward of God's good creation, & hope for a "well done," when called to account for my responsibilities.

-Sarah Redding