Welcome to 2009 Prep and Planning Season

Hope all had a wonderful holiday season and the new year is off to a good start for everybody.  It is that time, we have started working the yard to grow more food and less lawn.  I didn't know until yesterday that we have approximately 40,000 square miles of lawn in the United States.  Insane.

Think about how this translates.  That is a lot of mowing that is putting CO2 emissions into the atmosphere.  I know most people send their yard waste to the landfill in plastic bags.  We dump tons of water onto our lawns so that they can look better than the next guys lawn.  We also spend a fortune on chemicals to keep the lawn green, and growing strong.  

Syona, my wife,  and I are in the process of replacing the lawn.  Our primary focus for 2009 will be our back yard.  We are planning a large garden that will reduce our grocery bill significantly.  Once the harvest begins we will begin canning and other food preservation procedures to keep as much as we can through the winter.  We started late last year and got an idea of what we wanted to do, and managed a small harvest of some fresh veggies.  While the fresh veggies were great, we came nowhere close to what we wanted accomplish.  So this year we have started early and planned better. 

We still have a fairly vibrant lawn even after essentially not watering it for three years.  The back lawn received a minimal amount of water from the hose as we watered the few veggies we had last year.  The rain and the snow have been enough to keep our lawn alive all this time.  This past December my front yard was green for several weeks due to the snow storms followed by fairly warm days.

This year we are removing the lawn as we plant the garden.  We are digging beds out of the lawn, which we will plant and mulch to hold moisture and keep the weeds out.  The paths through our garden will be lawn until we can get a xeric ground cover planted to replace the grass.  Lawns are water hogs, and we Americans tend to over water them anyway.  We are thinking of planting Creeping Thyme for our paths and non garden areas.  It can be walked on and abused.  It doesn't need much water, and it's flowers are quite beautiful.

We have a number of trees in the yard as well.  We have two maples one in the front yard and one in the back that have died because we didn't water them.  These will be coming out soon and will be replaced with fruit trees.  We also have a large cotton wood and a large elm tree.  While both of these are water hogs, they are both almost 60 years old and will cost a small fortune to remove.  Both of these trees provide a huge amount of yard debris each fall for us to compost and add to the garden.  They also provide great shade for some areas of the yard and help to keep the house cool during the summer months reducing our energy costs for cooling the house,  so they will be staying around a little while longer.The picture above is our compost pile after we raked the back yard last weekend.  Our Winesap Apple tree is also almost 60 years old and is slowly dying.  We will probably get apples for another year or two before we have to replace it.  This year we are considering peaches and cherries for the yard.

After this year the back yard garden will be fairly well established and the prep time next year will not be as intensive.  We are digging our beds out with a shovel.  I have thought about renting a piece of equipment, but it just adds CO2 to the atmosphere, and frankly Sy and I can both use the exercise.  The front yard will be replaced with an expansion of the driveway.  For this I will rent or borrow a piece of equipment.  Our concrete now needs to be replaced after 59 years of abuse.  We are considering several options and will pick the most environmentally friendly. More on that in the future.  

We are using an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) approach to weed and insect problems using biological controls and non synthetic pesticides.  There is no need to use synthetic pesticides.  The are numerous products in the market that  can handle any pest problems you may have without the damage to the environment and our health.

The 2009 growing season is off too the great start, and we look forward to a rewarding gardening experience.  We will be sharing pictures and progress so please stay tuned.