Food cultivation offers numerous benefits over lawn maintenance, providing a multitude of advantages each day.
Transforming Your Lawn into an Edible Garden: A Guide for Sustainable Home Growing
In rural Virginia, Serena Manickam, a freelance editor and writer, sustainable market gardener, and environmental science graduate, runs Fairydiddle Farm – a small market garden where she grows no-spray produce and herbs to sell at a local farmer's market. For those looking to follow in her footsteps and create their own edible gardens, here's a step-by-step guide on transforming a grass lawn into a productive, beautiful, and sustainable edible landscape.
Step 1: Remove the Grass Lawn
The most labor-intensive step is eliminating the turfgrass to prevent it from competing with your new plants. This can be achieved by smothering the grass with cardboard or newspaper layers covered by compost or soil, or by using clear or opaque tarps to solarize the lawn for 2-4 weeks until the grass dies. Avoid digging where possible to preserve soil structure.
Step 2: Prepare the Soil
After removing grass, level the soil with a rake or lawn leveling rake. Amend poor soils by mixing in compost or leaf mold to improve fertility and structure for your edible plants. Alternatively, build “no-dig” raised beds or lasagna beds on top of the lawn, which is easier and sustainable, avoiding soil disturbance.
Step 3: Design and Plant
- Create productive edges: Use yard edges and borders for fruit trees, shrubs, and perennial edibles like cherries, blackberries, figs, and apples, which maximize food production and community sharing.
- Plant food everywhere: Incorporate both perennial (artichokes, herbs) and annual crops (lettuce, zucchini, broccoli) throughout the yard, including front, side, and back areas without confining to a single garden patch.
- Use layered organic matter such as twigs, dry leaves, compost, and food scraps as mulch or soil-building layers for healthy growth.
Step 4: Maintain Your Garden
- Control weeds rigorously, especially crabgrass and other invasive grasses. When using raised beds over mulch chips, allow settling before planting or install root barriers to prevent grass intrusion.
- Use organic gardening principles to build living, fertile soil and avoid synthetic chemicals, improving plant and soil health naturally.
- Water, prune, harvest, and add compost regularly to keep the garden productive and aesthetically pleasing.
By following these steps, you can create a productive, beautiful, and sustainable edible landscape that optimizes space, soil health, and plant variety. For more detailed instructions, consider reading "The Edible Front Yard: The Mow-Less, Grow-More Plan for a Beautiful, Bountiful, Garden" by Ivette Soler or "Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden and Your Neighborhood into a Community" by H.C. Flores.
Additionally, consider planting vegetables in the front yard to enhance curb appeal by using raised beds, stone, paver, or brick borders, and attractive perennials like plum trees, blueberry bushes, or creeping thyme. Pole beans and other climbing plants can be trained up decorative trellises, and planting lettuce or other greens along the edge of a bed as a border can add a finishing touch to your edible landscape.
- Serena Manickam raises no-spray produce and herbs at Fairydiddle Farm, a small market garden in rural Virginia.
- Her edible gardens allow her to sell produce at a local farmer's market.
- Anyone looking to create their own edible garden should follow a step-by-step guide for transforming a grass lawn into a productive and sustainable edible landscape.
- Removing turfgrass is the most labor-intensive step, which can be achieved by smothering with cardboard or newspaper, compost or soil, or solarizing the lawn with tarps.
- Soil should be amended by mixing in compost or leaf mold for improved fertility and structure.
- Building raised beds or lasagna beds on top of the lawn is an easier and sustainable option that avoids soil disturbance.
- Garden design should incorporate both perennial and annual crops, planting food everywhere in the yard without confining to a single patch.
- Layered organic matter like twigs, dry leaves, compost, and food scraps can be used as mulch or soil-building layers.
- Weed control is crucial, with raised beds and root barriers used to prevent grass intrusion.
- Organic gardening principles should be followed to build healthy soil and plants, avoiding synthetic chemicals.
- Regular watering, pruning, harvesting, and composting are important for maintaining a productive and beautiful garden.
- Reading books such as "The Edible Front Yard: The Mow-Less, Grow-More Plan for a Beautiful, Bountiful, Garden" and "Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden and Your Neighborhood into a Community" can provide more detailed instructions.
- Decorative features like raised beds, stone, paver, or brick borders, attractive perennials, and decorative trellises can enhance the curb appeal of your edible landscape.
