Edible Curb Appeal?

Remodeling the front yard to be primarily a vegetable garden with curb appeal offers some unique challenges.

The most efficient approach seems to be to begin with the structure of the garden--the planters, the trellises, the fountain (?), the fences--with an eye to the crops and plants that will live around and in these structures.

Should we use a fountain as a feature in the front yard? Should that water feature be a central focal point or should it be tucked into a corner to be discovered by the visitor? Should this and all other elements of the garden be placed to please those who look out from the house or for those passersby who look in from the street, or for both? A little of each, perhaps?

A picket fence across the front seems to be the consensus at this point. Trellises will do the work of fences along the driveway. Raised beds will be common throughout, even for the perennial plantings, and walkways will be covered with either bark or gravel--no mowing, and little if any weed whacking.

The citrus will remain as foundation plants, while an olive and a macadamia will be added. Artichokes come to mind as an additional perennial.

In the summer months, nasturtiums, sunflowers, and cucumbers will add some color, as will the complementary yellow and purple flowers of okra and eggplant over the sea of squash and melon leaves.

In the fall, peas, favas, kales, cauliflowers, and cabbages will add their variety, as will lettuces and other "greens" like beets and chard.

We're learning as we go. There are several good books available to show you how. Our current favorite is Yvette Soler’s The Edible Front Yard: The Mow-Less, Grow-More Plan for a Beautiful, Bountiful Garden.

More Efficient Means More Self-Sufficient

We have several improvement projects currently in progress on our place. All these and almost all of the projects planned are to make our micro eco-systems more efficient or to make our work easier or more effective. Our goal is to work smarter, not harder. This will allow us to become a little more self-sufficient in the space and time we have available.

For example, we just finished making some portable fence sections so that we can keep the fowl away from some new crops we intend to plant this week. Most of the time a low visual barrier is sufficient to keep the water fowl out, but the chickens often require a bit more, especially in height. Prior to our getting some Marans chickens, our chickens rarely, if ever flew over our four-foot picket garden fence. The Marans, however, have taught everyone in the coop to fly up to the top of the fence and then to fly down on the other side. Time to either clip some wings or make the fences a little higher, or both. So we made some lightweight fence panels that hopefully will do the job.

A month or so ago, someone left the garden gate unlatched and the geese found their way into the garden and ate every single new transplant--cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli--down to the ground! So we replanted the garden rows. A week or so later, we had a day or two of gusty winds which blew the gate latch apart. The geese helped themselves again to every single new transplant, and some not-so-new plants. So we put a new, better latch on the gate and replanted the garden rows. So far, so good: humans are happy, geese not so much.

We also are putting fence around the patio (again to keep the fowl at bay) and new siding on the fish tanks that will be more aesthetically pleasing than the makeshift siding we have had (the siding keeps the sun off of the tank so that algae doesn't grow). Because the fish tanks and aquaponic grow beds are at the edge of the patio, this siding also will be incorporated into the fence around the patio. While we're at it, we will need to design and build a better solar water heating system for the fish--last winter the water stayed just a little too cool for them. They survived just fine, but they didn't thrive or grow much during the cooler months.

We'll be updating our worm bins from the plastic storage containers we started with years ago, to a single more permanent arrangement. The worms turn our kitchen scraps into compost in a very short time. They also become food for the chickens, ducks and fish (and when we go fishin’ they also make for good bait).

We also have plans to consolidate three compost bins into one larger bin over and around which we will put up wire and wood to house chickens. The idea is to let them turn the compost with their scratching, as they live mostly on the kitchen and garden trimmings we throw in for them. This seems to be a very efficient use of resources--time, space, and waste. We have also designed an automatic chicken waterer that we’ll be putting into service in the next few weeks--we have to do some plumbing first, but it will be worth it when we’re finished. Details will follow.

In addition to these projects we are putting in some raised beds in the front yard to increase our growing space. We're looking forward to the Spring when we'll be able to look out our dining room window over a sea of winter squash vines--green like a lawn, but with edible produce....

As soon as we have finished these projects, we’ll find some more. This is a great hobby. We encourage you to try it. Just as in any other hobby, start small and work up to the bigger projects.

Finding More Space

Last week we spent a few days cleaning out the garage and some corners and edges of the yard.

As far as the garage goes, the plan is to make plenty of room to set up an aquarium for a breeding colony of tilapia. We want to be able to raise our own on a continual and constant basis--more sustainability from home. If possible, we also want to have room to put in a fish tank to hold the rest of the tilapia during the cooler months where it is easier heat the tank, while we grow trout in the outside tanks. The trout need the cold water. We'll see what happens.

As for the yard, we cleared some brush and some wood piles and trimmed some trees so that we can have a little more planting space, or more space for our poultry. Between the new beds in the front yard and the space gained in the backyard, we'll be adding about four hundred square feet of growing beds. We'll also be adding some shelter for the ducks and geese for nest boxes and some pens for keeping them confined when we want or need them to be out from under foot.

Do you have a sunny lawn in your front yard? Why do you have a sunny lawn? You water, weed, fertilize, and mow. Why not put in edible landscape in that sunny spot in your front yard? With a strong hardscape (the structural elements: walkways, fences, planters, trellises, etc.) and the right choices of plants, you can water, weed, fertilize, just as you would with a lawn, but instead of mowing grass, you can harvest fruits and veggies that are good to eat.

Although we have had herbs and dwarf fruit trees in our front yard for several years, we are just now putting in raised beds and trellises for growing garden vegetables. We’ll be posting details along with photos of our experiment as it unfolds.

There are several good books available to show you how. Our current favorite is Yvette Soler’s The Edible Front Yard: The Mow-Less, Grow-More Plan for a Beautiful, Bountiful Garden.