If you have a lawn, you probably wondered often enough why you keep up with such a useless, time-consuming and expensive piece of outdoor landscaping when you could instead have a healthy and productive organic vegetable garden. Now that even the White House is starting a garden, it could be the right time for you as well!
Oftentimes owners of a lawn would like to turn all or part of it into a nice organic vegetable garden, but they don't because of the perceived workload, especially because they are put off by the idea of having to do all that ploughing. But there is a much easier way.
First, use chalk or some other system to mark off the area of your future organic vegetable garden. You may make it as big as the one of the White House, which can feed a dozen people or more with its eleven thousand square feet, or smaller, according to your needs. Once the area is delimited, water it well.
Cover the area with a six inch thick mix of sand or gravel, old grass clippings, soil, and some ready-made organic compost or manure. This will ensure a solid nutrient base for your organic vegetables to grow on in years to come. Cover everything with cardboard, or with several layers of newspaper. This cover will eventually become compost too.
Next you need to build a simple raised bed, made of planks, which you will put on top of the newspaper or cardboard. In due time the paper will decompose and become part of the organic base, but at first you will need it as a barrier between the early plants and the high-quality soil that you will now add.
Now fill the frame or frames with organic compost and topsoil. In the beginning you will have to buy the compost, but after your organic vegetable garden has gotten underway you will be able to make your own. Add some porous pebbles or vermiculite to the mix for aeration.
You are now done with the preparation of the organic vegetable garden patch. Leave it be for three or four weeks so that small burrowing insects have the time to come back and to turn the former piece of sterile lawn into a rich patch of good quality soil.
Now you can start your kitchen garden, either using seedlings from other plants or from a nursery, or by growing vegetables from seed. In the latter case, it is best to use certified organic seeds. There are several online retailers that sell them if you can't find them in your area.
Regarding the herbs and vegetables to pick for your lawn turned new garden, go wild and take whatever you prefer. Don't be afraid to leave out some common plants and go for lesser known crops, the variety of plants available to the home grower compared to the supermarket is staggering.
If you have any children, make sure to involve them in the project early on, you will find that they will be very interested and fascinated by organic vegetable gardening, and will probably enthusiastically participate in the work, which is also going to be very character-building for them.
Starting a compost heap is just as important as the other steps to a perfect organic vegetable garden. For that you need to pile all your garden clippings and non-animal kitchen waste into a wooden frame or a special composting box and water. After a while, you will have more compost for your plants.
Oftentimes owners of a lawn would like to turn all or part of it into a nice organic vegetable garden, but they don't because of the perceived workload, especially because they are put off by the idea of having to do all that ploughing. But there is a much easier way.
First, use chalk or some other system to mark off the area of your future organic vegetable garden. You may make it as big as the one of the White House, which can feed a dozen people or more with its eleven thousand square feet, or smaller, according to your needs. Once the area is delimited, water it well.
Cover the area with a six inch thick mix of sand or gravel, old grass clippings, soil, and some ready-made organic compost or manure. This will ensure a solid nutrient base for your organic vegetables to grow on in years to come. Cover everything with cardboard, or with several layers of newspaper. This cover will eventually become compost too.
Next you need to build a simple raised bed, made of planks, which you will put on top of the newspaper or cardboard. In due time the paper will decompose and become part of the organic base, but at first you will need it as a barrier between the early plants and the high-quality soil that you will now add.
Now fill the frame or frames with organic compost and topsoil. In the beginning you will have to buy the compost, but after your organic vegetable garden has gotten underway you will be able to make your own. Add some porous pebbles or vermiculite to the mix for aeration.
You are now done with the preparation of the organic vegetable garden patch. Leave it be for three or four weeks so that small burrowing insects have the time to come back and to turn the former piece of sterile lawn into a rich patch of good quality soil.
Now you can start your kitchen garden, either using seedlings from other plants or from a nursery, or by growing vegetables from seed. In the latter case, it is best to use certified organic seeds. There are several online retailers that sell them if you can't find them in your area.
Regarding the herbs and vegetables to pick for your lawn turned new garden, go wild and take whatever you prefer. Don't be afraid to leave out some common plants and go for lesser known crops, the variety of plants available to the home grower compared to the supermarket is staggering.
If you have any children, make sure to involve them in the project early on, you will find that they will be very interested and fascinated by organic vegetable gardening, and will probably enthusiastically participate in the work, which is also going to be very character-building for them.
Starting a compost heap is just as important as the other steps to a perfect organic vegetable garden. For that you need to pile all your garden clippings and non-animal kitchen waste into a wooden frame or a special composting box and water. After a while, you will have more compost for your plants.
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