How To Turn A Lawn Into A Vegetable Garden
You may have heard about the new White House vegetable garden, or maybe you have already thought about organic vegetable gardening for a while. In any case, if you too want to get rid of some or all of your labor-intensive, environmentally unfriendly lawn, here's how to do it.
Many people who would like to turn to organic vegetable gardening are put off by the idea that it must be a difficult and time-consuming endeavour, and that a lot of tilling and other back-breaking work is involved. In fact, if you follow some basic permaculture precepts and let nature do its work, it will be very easy work. Unless your lawn is contaminated by a lot of pesticides, you won't even have to remove the grass.
First, delimit the lawn area for your organic vegetable garden with some thread, or with chalk. You can make it as big as the White House veggie garden patch, thirty by thirty feet, or smaller. Water this area generously, making sure that the ground is thoroughly soaked.
Cover the area with a six inch thick mix of sand or gravel, old grass clippings, soil, and some ready-made organic compost or manure. This will ensure a solid nutrient base for your organic vegetables to grow on in years to come. Cover everything with cardboard, or with several layers of newspaper. This cover will eventually become compost too.
Now build a raised bed frame around the whole area for your organic vegetable garden, providing for walk paths if the area is big. It's best to use solid, untreated wood planks. You can add dividing frames if you like. The previous paper layer needs to stick out from the sides of the main frame.
Now fill the frame or frames with organic compost and topsoil. In the beginning you will have to buy the compost, but after your organic vegetable garden has gotten underway you will be able to make your own. Add some porous pebbles or vermiculite to the mix for aeration.
You should now leave everything as it is for at least a couple of weeks, ideally for a month. In this time, your old lawn and the organic materials on top will decompose, with the help of earthworms that will return to the previously sterile earth, and everything will turn into a fertile mixture for your seeds.
Now you can start your kitchen garden, either using seedlings from other plants or from a nursery, or by growing vegetables from seed. In the latter case, it is best to use certified organic seeds. There are several online retailers that sell them if you can't find them in your area.
To make sure that you'll enjoy the produce don't just pick the most typical plants for an organic vegetable garden, go for the ones that you like and that often turn up in your kitchen, and don't be afraid to leave any popular plants out. But make sure that you plant according to season.
If you have kids, make sure to involve them in the new garden from the start. They will love it and it will also be a great educational experience for the. Besides, you are going to spend more time with them and get help tending your organic vegetable garden.
While you're at it, you should start a compost heap. You can use a plastic composter, which are often available for free from local government, or build a couple of wooden frames to start two compost heaps. This will allow you to supply your organic vegetable garden with fresh soil and nutrients by recycling kitchen waste and lawn clippings.
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