I have a friend who related a conversation he had with a Chinese friend, the conversation went like this.
“I don’t understand you Americans”
“Why?”
“You have big yards, every weekend you put down fertilizer and weed killer, mow the grass, bag it up and throw it away.”
“So?”
“In China, we would have a vegetable garden, and keep chickens and pigs. That yard would feed 10 - 12 people.”
I’m probably paraphrasing the conversation, but the guy makes a good point.
When I was much younger, my parents always had a garden in the backyard, probably 200 to 300 square feet, we always had green beans, tomatoes, lettuce, radishes, squashes, onions, pumpkins, watermelons and other assorted vegetables. Whenever we stayed at my grandmothers house in the summer we’d go to the local produce farms and orchards, to pick bushels of green beans and peaches. Whatever we didn’t eat right away, my grandmother canned and put away for later, it seemed like she had endless amounts of those in the fall and winter. I later learned that the peach orchards were killed when the oil companies started injecting salt water into the wells which contaminated the ground water, and the produce farms were later turned into housing developments.
I have a big yard, 1/3 of an acre, and I probably spend 6 or so hours a week maintaining it. I don’t use fertilizer and weed killer, my mower mulches the cuttings, any leaves that I rake up usually go into the compost pile, but I still spend time mowing and watering to have a good looking yard. We usually have a small vegetable garden, a couple of tomato plants, peppers and maybe onions.
With the rise in food prices, mainly due to fuel prices, we’ve started looking at expanding our garden to include other fruits and vegetables. I look at it this way, every square foot of garden is one less square foot of mowing. And if the garden gets big enough to start canning things, we’ll move in that direction too. So for our reference here are a couple of sites.
Texas A & M Vegetable Gardening
If you have any other links that you’d like to share, please do so in the comments, along with any gardening successes or tips.
adamsemail said,
July 30, 2008 @ 3:44 pm
It’s interesting though, isn’t it, that the size of your garden almost directly corresponds to your commitment to the earth? People who buy small houses on large plots, tear them down and build McMansions, leaving no room for any type of lawn, are consumers. They are brand conscience and their self esteem is established through the things they consume instead of conserve. They live shallow, un-enriched lives and while their debt increase, my savings increase. Yes, gardening and being plugged in to the planet is better than buying your produce at the store and being plugged in to the hype.