Suburban Farming
No Longer Keeping Up With the Jones’
In Boulder, Colorado, Kipp Nash is one of many people who have uprooted their grass in favor of growing crops. Utilizing every last square inch of their front and backyards, suburban farmers like Nash turn to their neighbors, instead of moving to the country, when they find that their minute acreage is not enough to sustain the farm-size yields they wish to produce. In true co-op style, neighbor bands with neighbor to create checkered plots of crops, which are then harvested and shared among the farmers and their cooperative neighbors.
In terms of sustainability, this is one way that Americans can combat the urban leeching of resources from outlying communities and even other countries that our decidedly unnatural urban-planning has produced. There’s nothing like buying and growing locally to reduce our carbon footprints, especially as resources like food are outsourced to distant lands. As with most sustainable projects, suburban farming is as unconventional as you can get, and as Kelly Spors of the Wall Street Journal reports in the video that inspired this post, some neighbors may not like the way tilled front yards look next to their prized rose bushes, but sustainability has never been about being pretty. Rather, sustainability is about the compromises each of us, and our governments, are willing to make to ensure that our environment is protected and sustained. Sure, a brown front yard may not look like much at first glance, but come harvest season, those crops sure are a pretty site.
I first saw a front yard vegetable garden (instead of a lawn) in front of a house in Conroe, Texas, almost slap against Interstate 45. It was clearly geared to feed people instead of impress them, but I could barely take my eyes off it, and drove by it again and again, wishing I was a friend or neighbor that had the right to wander in through the picket gate for a glass of lemonade and a lazy talk about how things were growing.
I had long coveted having my own kitchen garden, inspired by glossy magazines featuring Napa Valley kitchen gardens, fancy English Kitchen gardens and French “potagers,” and books by Mel Bartholomew (Square Foot Garden books, original and new) and the Lasagna Garden lady. I was also probably inspired early at my own home growing up (Dad laid out brick paver paths in a dramatic contemporary triangle for Mom’s edible garden exploits).
Still, no matter what my hopes and dreams for a garden, the fact remained that we get very little sun in our smallish plot in a heavily wooded community. Farming in my own yard wasn’t likely to be very successful, so I held off on digging any of our lawn, even the scraggly parts. I stuck mainly with things like peppers in pots (practically indestructible, since the heavy rains killed everything else in pots when I first began), and lettuces, cherry tomatoes and basil in Aerogardens.
And here I come to the point…there may be a way to grow plenty of food without digging rows in the front yard! The local Urban Harvest website promotes something called “Permaculture,” so I checked out some books at the library about it. These permaculture folks say it is possible to work WITH nature to create functional and edible landscapes, even in suburbia, and that they are even designed to minimize the amount of work required! Brilliant!
Did you know that whole families in the Philippines can survive on less than 15 square yards (about 12 square meters) of growing space? And did you know that a lot of the “primitive” people who live in jungles actually practice these techniques to create an “edible jungle” for themselves? Did you know that there is a veritable oasis in the middle of a southwestern desert, created by permaculture techniques?
This is appealing on so many levels: you solve the puzzle of your property’s needs with some detective work. You design it, engaging the inner artist and designer. You work in manageable sections, because a giant brown area going to weed isn’t very fun to look at or maintain. You acquire new knowledge and skills. You apply interesting permaculture techniques,like paying attention to your lot’s climates and microclimates, layering, using mutually beneficial plants like nitrogen fixing shrubs (which decrease purchase and labor that go with fertilizer use) along with plants the need plenty of nitrogen, choosing perennial edibles whenever possible, using keyhole beds to maximize growing space in an attractive design, adding deer hedges that feed you on one side, and the deer on the other, creating ponds that house or nurture pest-controlling creatures like frogs and double-duty creatures like ducks, who also lay eggs for you. You end up with a lush landscape with lots of interesting things going on year round, lots of interesting edibles and useful products to make medicines, stakes, fences, meals, flower arrangements, clothing even. Because of thoughtful design, there isn’t a lot of backbreaking labor every single year…as the garden matures there is less work so you can move to a new area.
So I need to focus on edibles that work in our setting, like the wild dewberry brambles that yield the berries I used to make cobbler with, and greens that don’t need so much sun to start with. Our banana tree surprised us with bananas last year, so maybe we could add a few more, and I could figure out ways to use the loquats instead of letting the birds and wasps have them all. My childhood fig tree was a prolific producer and carefree to boot.
I hope this inspires someone else to take their gardening to the next level, whatever that level might be!