Mow Grass, Xeriscape or Garden for Food?

If you are eating in a fast-food restaurant or in a fast-food way, not only are you malnourishing yourself, but you are also unwittingly digesting the values of this fast-food culture. Those values are becoming part of you–just like the food. And once those values are part of you, they change you. You begin to have a different outlook on things, different cravings, different moral standards and expectations. Now your desires and hungers are being programmed by this fast-food culture.” – Alice Waters

Today, wherever there is a lawn, instead, should there be a vegetable garden?

Such a transformation is hardly imaginable but, also, who eats veggies anyway, right? However, let’s consider a couple of today’s absurdities—food in grocery stores and restaurants has traveled to get there an average of about 1,500 miles and, turf is the number-one irrigated crop in the USA!

There are other considerations as well, such as:

  • This very minute, hundreds of acres of productive farms are being replaced by subdivisions interspersed with sprawling lawns.
  • Many doctors and nutritionists prescribe increased servings of vegetables to help both prevent and/or remedy chronic health problems. Contrary to what’s advised, however, seems many of us—sick and healthy alike—would almost rather starve than eat veggies.
  • Typically, those of us who do grow vegetables in our yards complain that gardening doesn’t save us money over buying at the grocery store.

Replacing lawns with productive gardens appears to be impractical for many of us, but how much longer can we expect to engage in present behaviors without dire consequences? No brainer?

Often a rationale for blanketing a yard with lawn is that it gives the kids—and/or the family dog—a place to play. Would it not be much better for children, though, considering our present food and nutrition dilemmas, to learn to care for a garden a few steps just outside the kitchen door? Kids may come to grasp gardening principles and acquire skills that we may all need for survival in the future—and perhaps should be using now to live more sustainably.

Additionally, it seems to be another no-brainer that many types of jobs will continue to be crowded out by machines, that our new normal may increasingly include transition periods while we retrain and/or make adaptations—such as growing our own food—to un-, under- and differently employed.

Are our food sources secure?

Can we afford to tend turf while employment and maybe even society itself are being reshaped by advancing technologies and a changing climate?

Seems, though, that owning a manicured lawn has been integral to the American Dream—with an embedded, insatiable yearning for perceived conveniences and comforts. Included are yearnings for respectability and conformity? However, do we need to wonder, will this ideal soon become as faint as nighttime dreams we sometimes savor and to which we cling in the morning during fleeting moments of slumber? Is a dawn nearing, an awakening to stark realities and possibilities for different sorts of relationships to our food, environment and even to work? Will one of our new survival strategies be to grow food in our yards?

On another note, these days, many mindful people reduce water use by tearing out their turf and beautifying their yards instead with colorful gravel and less thirsty plants. A common term for this is xeriscaping. It is said that a well-designed xeriscape can decrease water usage anywhere from 50 to 75 percent. Perhaps this is the best alternative for yards in many locales.

However, quite likely, there once was a farm before there was a subdivision. Before farms, there were eons-old ecosystems which sequestered carbon into the ground by adding new soil each year. Ecosystems are needed to sustain us, but modern agriculture and our subdivisions rip at them. Yes, in many places xeriscaped yards are a far cry more eco-friendly than green lawns but, we must remind ourselves that the biggest waste of water comes from today’s agriculture, not necessarily to keep our lawns green.

Does it make any sense at all to cover the fertile soil around our homes with decorative gravel, stones and ornamental plants while we are paying factory farmers located hundreds or even thousands of miles away to supply us with picked-before-ripe, reduced-nutrition foods? (Many experts warn that much of the nutrition must be removed from foods for the necessary shelf life during transport.)

The grow-your-own-food challenge is different for each of us. Therefore, my intent here is to offer readers many more ponderables than answers. My own set of dilemmas these days may be similar to some of yours:

  • Many of the vegetables I have found to be healthiest for me are difficult to grow in the conditions native to my yard. (Over the decades, though, some of my decades-ago gardening experiments have grown to become well-established. They continue to flourish, providing an abundance of seasonal fruits.)
  • My drip-type watering system that supplies water to my garden has developed problems and repairs will be costly.
  • At my age (74) the stooping required for gardening—planting, pulling weeds, etc.—quickly gets my lower back sore, and recovery often takes a few days.
  • Now, discouraged by my emerging realities and encouraged by the success of some of my early experiments, I’m considering a different sort of adventure: tests for growing many vegetable plants indoors by replacing direct sunlight with solar-panel-powered LED grow lights and overlaying organic principles atop lots of high-tech gadgetry, probably in my basement. This fantasy seems appealing for the obvious reasons: reducing low-back strain, avoiding weeds and pests, and harvesting year-round. But, also, perhaps if I have successes, these may be a springboard for other, more advanced experiments. I’m wondering whether, eventually, we humans might joint-venture a means of reducing our horticultural footprint, leaving more outdoor spaces undisturbed to regenerate, to revert back to wild.

It was about twenty years ago when my next-door neighbor and I rented equipment and scraped off our lawns. Now, after many experiments in both of these yards, growing veggies, fruits and ornamentals continues to be a work in progress. Like every other gardener around the world, I assume, we still cus at the annual invasion of weeds and pests. And yet, we often grin at having foiled a worthy adversary when we yank out a weed before it drops seeds or smash a snail or squash bug before eggs are lain.

What sort of relationship with sources of food and, more broadly, with all of nature is for you? If you have a lawn, need there be a reason to tear it out and grow food other than that you realize that our supposed conveniences and comforts—to which we cling and assume entitlement(?)—are an absurd dream?

In the coming years, what will a new normal look like? An imaginary soothsayer peers into a crystal ball, grins and answers: we will often enjoy the convenience of stepping from our kitchens to gather dinner from a bounty in backyards —or basements…ha! Ours will be a comfort often envied by royalty—of savoring an ambrosia, tasting flavors and being enlivened by nutrients only available in foods picked when ripe.

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