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Turn Your Lawn Into Your Own Home Vegetable Garden
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by: SusanHoneywell
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Word Count: 543
Lawns may look good, but they are unproductive, require a lot of care, and are environmentally unfriendly due to the high use of pesticides and fertilizers necessary to maintain them. As even the White House has discovered, turning a lawn into an organic vegetable garden is a much better use for the land.
Don't be put off by the idea of organic vegetable gardening being a strenuous and unrewarding physical activity involving lots of tilling. If you follow this easy guide and some easy principles, you won't have to do any tilling and you'll turn your lawn into a garden with real ease.
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.
Next you need to add an area of ground mulch that contains some slow-release nutrients. A good mix is half-finished compost, grass clippings from the lawn, manure, rock phosphate, and sand. Finish off by covering the whole area with four to five overlapping sheets of newspaper.
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.
The frames of the raised beds for your vegetable garden need to be filled with more organic compost, this time mixed with normal organic soil and some vermiculite for aeration.
Next, let everything be for a month or so. The lower layer will decompose, insects will arrive, the grass underneath will die off, and the whole area will naturally turn into a healthy and fertile ground for your organic vegetable garden without any need for tilling, ploughing or other hard work.
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 kids, make sure to involve them in the new garden from the start. They will love it and it will also be a great educational experience for the. Besides, you are going to spend more time with them and get help tending your organic vegetable garden.
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.
About the Author
OrganicHerbalGardening.com is the premier resource for organic gardening on the Net, with guides on matters such as how to organic fertilizers, as well as on preparing herb beds, choosing the right plants, indoor growing - click the links above to find out more!
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