front lawn feast

 We finally found the sweet spot for our veggie garden. For four years now, we’ve tried again and again to make our shady backyard garden thrive. Alas, the only things that seem to grow well there, aside from spring crops (peas, onions, lettuce), are powdery mildew and vine borers. We’ve finally moved on and thank goodness because our veggies are going nuts in the sun-soaked front yard. I’ve mentioned our front lawn reclamation efforts in previous posts so I’m going to dedicate this post to showing before pics, the process, and how it’s looking in early June. We live in Hyde Park, which is in midtown Kansas City in an older neighborhood. It’s not a snooty area so we have not met much resistance with removing our lawn to grow food. Most of our neighbors are pretty into it… especially when we share our goodies. I’ll start the little photo show with a before picture:

 

Taken late last June. We removed the yews to create some space to grow more food.

We began on a soggy April morning by uprooting the yews, fixing the soil, and sowing spring crops.

Even though we’re in a laid back neighborhood, one of our main concerns was keeping the front yard attractive while we expanded our veggie garden. By mixing herbs, veggies, fruit trees and flowers, we were able (so far) to maintain a nice aesthetic and deter unwanted creatures. In fact, companion planting is one important tool in the organic gardeners arsenal against all kinds of pests. For example, I intentionally planted nasturtium and dutch white clover around our apple trees. The clover is both a green manure, which means it feeds the soil, and it attracts predators of the wooly aphid. Nasturtium, a pretty edible flower, attracts predatory insects and deters harmful bugs.

 

After checking with the city, we tilled the compacted soil between the sidewalk and the street. We planted apple trees with nasturtiums in the root zone and surround them with a green manure, dutch white. clover.

Mid-May we regularly mulched beds with mown grass/clover. Growing chives, chard, lettuce, perennial flowers, in front yard flower bed.

Early June - rainbow chard, spinach, lettuce, nasturtium, kale, leeks, cilantro, chives, peppers, flowers.

I’ll have to continue this when my toddler temporarily runs out of energy… For more pics check my flickr stream.