You can’t eat your lawn

Growing up in Coxsackie, NY we always had a garden, a compost pile, and a lawn.  The house I grew  up in sits on a couple acres of land, surrounded by trees and rocks that at one time Native Americans lived on.   It’s absolutely beautiful.  Growing up there we had chickens, rabbits and my mother’s kiwi plants.  Plants she was convinced would bear fruit in 2, then 4, then 8 years.  Then she decided she had two female or two male plants, that’s why they never once produce a kiwi.  I don’t think they liked the weather.

I miss the greenery of that home and the things you could do with the land.   I’m limited to what I can grow because I rent and only have so many planters that I can grow so many plants in.  A while back my mother told me that she took her front lawn and converted it to a garden.  Now that’s on top of the gardens she already had in place.  I asked her why and here response was “you can’t eat your lawn”.

You’re right, you can’t eat your lawn.  Each day I drive by suburban homes with perfectly manicured lawns that require fertilizers, maintenance and occasionally the city to enforce the unsightly/neglected lawn complaint.  But why are they so highly regarded?  I don’t see children playing on them, people are not sitting on porches or sun bathing on front lawns.

Why not convert lawns to gardens?  For my mother and her husband (except for beef and milk) they can eat straight from their lawn breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Oh I almost forgot – the chickens.  Soon they will be laying more eggs than they can consume.  I’m hoping to get baked goods out of all of this.

So what’s my point? I guess my point is this, before you spend large sums of money for a green unused area, think about the options, a garden is just one of them.

The front yard after the transformation

Young chickens

The front yard after some weeks of growth

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