How to Turn Your Lawn into a Food Forest
By Joshua Burman Thayer
You can't eat gold or silver!
Organic Gardening
Get dirty, have fun and grow more food with great gardening tips from real-life gardeners.
How to Turn Your Lawn into a Food Forest
Demanding Lawns
There she is, needy, lush and green. Each weekend
demanding that you pay attention to her, lest she grow wild. For those
of you in drier areas, perhaps the city has limited water and she just
lies there now dry, brittle and useless. Either way our lawns control
us. Saturdays that could be spent harvesting berries and fresh greens
are instead consumed in the toil of pushing a machine. Unless you are an
avid yogi, baseball player or picnicker, lawns are a bit passé. And
yet, we as a nation spend over $26 billion per year on lawns. How might
we redesign our spaces to create edible abundance?
Not only are our lawns expensive and time consuming,
they also are insatiably thirsty. According to the Los Angeles Municipal
Water District, the average lawn requires the equivalent of 84 inches
of rain per year. For much of the nation, that exceeds what nature
brings. In drier areas such as California, where I reside, that
disparity is striking. Dry brown hills surround green oases of lawns in
the urban areas. The average Californian uses up to 130 gallons of water
per day, of which half goes to the garden outside. If you are ready to
transform your lawn and your outdoor living space, read on.
The first step is to properly remove the unwanted lawn.
Many permaculturalists claim that one can simply lay cardboard and mulch
on top of an existing lawn and that this will eventually smother it.
However, in my experience installing over fifty gardens, it is best to
be thorough when breaking with a stubborn lawn.
Start by removing the grass the old-fashioned way, pick
and shovel. Dig down 8-10 inches will to loosen a row of grass tops;
first by picking and second by prying with the shovel. Then come back
through and beat the grass loose of the dirt to retain as much top soil
as possible.
Move on to the next row until you have separated the
grass material from the soil. The grass can then be fed to the chickens
who will enjoy the treat. Do not add this grass to your compost. This
process is extremely laborious and I recommend hosting a garden work
party. All who help will learn hands on experience and create good will
with friends.As an incentive, rotate on consecutive Saturdays to others
yards to help transform multiple gardens. This can be the new version of
a barn raising.
After the lawn has been dug out, go back through and
rake the soil back to level. Take care to go over any edges a second
time as root sprouts near the edges of the planting area are likely to
creep through the mulch layer and cause problems if not dealt with
before hand.
Step 2: Earth Works and Cardboarding
If your lawn happens to be on any sort of slope, now is
your opportunity to create on-contour “swales” that will catch and hold
rain long enough for the to be edibles to soak up. (Note: my next blog
will be on “swales and earthworks” at the end of June.)
If no slope is involved the next step will be to lay
cardboard. Cardboard serves several purposes in installing a new food
forest. It reduces weeds and retains moisture. As an area that was just
a healthy lawn the possibility for lawn to resprout is probable. The
cardboard helps to reduce weed penetration by up to 90 per cent. I like
to collect the large cardboard from appliance and bicycle stores, as
the larger sizes are easy to install and readily available.
Before installing the cardboard, broadcast ½-inch of
compost on top of the bare soil. Use ½-inch metal irrigation stakes to
secure the four corners of each cardboard as you “Tile in” the whole
area to be planted.
Step 3: Planting Your Food Forest
What is a food forest? There are several ways in which a
food forest differs from a conventional orchard. A food forest involves
a diversity of crops. If your goal is to have a large, uniform apple
harvest for example, then one type would suffice.
However, if your goal is to have home grown apples for
as much of the season as possible, the harvest can be extended by
planting several varieties, each with their own harvest time. A food
forest has multiple layers which are able to coexist. Rather than have
just the main fruit tree crop, a food forest is designed to have an
upper story (large fruit trees), and secondary upper-story (dwarf fruit
trees) a shrub layer (berry bushes) an herb layer (leafy greens and
veggies) and a ground cover layer (strawberries and low herbs). In this
way, one creates a dynamic polyculture that has diverse crops in
production. This makes sense if our intention is to grow for our own
community.
A food forest also plants the fringes. The gaps between
production plants are great areas for nitrogen fixing beans and peas.
These plants feed the soil and create a living mulch. The marginal areas
can be planted in flowers and pollinator attracting native plants,
serving as magnates that attract beneficial insects into the garden.
Arrange your largest fruit trees into your new space.
These get planted first and will act as the structure of the lower
areas. Cut a circle out for each tree through the cardboard and dig your
holes, amending each hole with compost. Next plant your shrubs in the
same manner. Each fruit tree basin can be then planted with annuals such
as squash, arugula and carrots.
Step 4: Irrigate and Mulch
After planting, run drip irrigation throughout the planting. Drip irrigation saves water as it targets direct to each plant. Finally, mulch with wood chips 4 inches on top and around the entire area that was recently a lawn. Be sure to not pile mulch up around the trunk of each tree.This design approach works whether you live in Alpine, Mediterranean, Desert or Tropics. Choose plants that work in your bioregion and enjoy the fruits of your labor.
How to Turn A Lawn Into A Garden
Bonus article:
EMP Preparedness: You Only Really Have 2 Options
What would an EMP attack really look like on US soil? How bad could the destruction be? What are your EMP preparedness options? What the heck is an EMP anyways?
Electrical Magnetic Pulse…sounds technical. Sounds complicated. Doesn’t really sound all that scary…sounds like something you used to hear your boring physics professor talk about…right?
Today I want to discuss the following:- What An EMP Is and How It Works
- What Weapons Can Cause An EMP
- How Much Damage and Chaos An EMP Will Cause
- What Will A EMP World Look Like
- What Your Only 2 Options Are To Prepare For An EMP
Related:
http://tradcatknight.blogspot.com/2015/06/these-17-survival-food-and-water.html
http://tradcatknight.blogspot.com/2015/06/prepper-10-useful-items-to-survive.html
http://tradcatknight.blogspot.com/2015/07/12-skills-for-preppers-that-money-just.html
TradCatKnight Radio (MP3) orderoftheeagle.wordpress.com/mp3/
Please share blogs and help spread information Crusaders!
TradCatKnight is the most viewed
& followed traditional catholic page worldwide.
This is the HOME of the New Crusade
keeping you up to date on the latest Endtime
News stories worldwide as we head closer to the GREAT CHASTISEMENTS foretold by the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima.
TradCatKnight Mobile Apps For
Download:
OR Search TradCatKnight
on App sites on your phone!
Please Help Keep TradCatKnight Alive
& Growing:
Donate below for a chance to win a
gift via TradCatKnight’s
Monthly raffle. Minimum contribution
is 20$ for the raffle.
Winner announced on every last radio
show of the month!
Thanks for the informative post.. I heard that horticulturalsolutionsny provides good lawn designing services.
ReplyDelete