Last Year's Lawn, This Year's Garden

I'm not the biggest fan of grass, and when I bought my house in 2005, I managed to kill the whole lawn in a few months. Yellow grass is really depressing to look at, and Brian and I knew it had to go. So we embarked on a great earth moving project that has consumed two whole summers and more calories than I can imagine. In 2006, we ripped the dead lawn up by hand and replaced the whole thing with gravel. Sod takes up a whole lot of space, but lucky for us we had a compost bin the size of a VW bus in the back corner of our yard.

The results were good, but I had no idea what on earth we would end up doing with several tons of dead grass. But that's the great thing about a compost heap. I didn't do a thing, and the whole pile magically transformed itself into really rich soil over the winter.

Thus began phase II. I picked up Square Foot Gardening earlier this summer, and Brian and I decided that veggies were the way to take our soil. So every weekend for the last few months we've been building planters boxes, moving soil, and planting things. The first round of boxes didn't get done until mid-July when average highs were hovering above 100 and there wasn't a drop of rain in sight. I couldn't imagine any plant being able to fight through that and survive, but they did. We managed to get a full crop of beans in about a month's time:

Beans may not seem like something to get excited about, but they taste delicious right off the vine and they're great for the soil. All the nitrogen they're fixing will make next year's crop even better.

We also planted the side of our driveway with tomatoes, peppers, and strawberries in mid-June. Peppers are a great plant that I had never thought to try and grow. It's a nice change from the ubiquitous tomato, and it's similar in the care and conditions that it needs. The crazy thing is how the plant manages to stay upright with big peppers sprouting out left and right:

With all these veggies, it feels like I'm hemorrhaging water, but my bills have been a third of what they were when I was trying to keep the lawn watered. According to Tree Hugger, lawns are actually the most irrigated crop in America. Funny... I don't see anyone eating it. Maybe someday we'll figure out a way to power our cars with all the lawn clippings we toss in trash, but I doubt. In the meantime, I'm a convert to the Food Not Lawns movement, and I'm not the only one. Read more about it here and here.

Great produce, a low water bill, being green... those might seem like enough reasons for taking on a project like this, but we got more. The crowning glory of this whole process has to be this:

The compost pile is now gone, and we've gained back a whole huge chunk of space in the backyard. We also were lucky enough to come into a hammock that a friend had laying around, and the two work exceptionally well together. All those weekends of moving dirt were totally worth it.