What's the point of this thirsty green lawn?
Way back in 1989, Michael Pollan wrote an essay in the NY Times entitled “Why Mow?” in which he outlined the case against lawns. Now more than ever, the time has come to re-think the value of our suburban lawns.
You might be surprised to learn that grass is the most common irrigated crop in the US. We grow 3 times more grass than we do corn! 30% of our drinking water is used to water this grass. 70 million pounds of pesticides per year is used on this giant lawn of ours.
Global weirding is shifting our weather patterns, last summer saw record droughts. This winter in the northeast isn’t even a winter while in Rome, the Colosseum got 8 inches of snow yesterday. These shifting weather patterns can play havoc on our food supply. Here in suburbia, the average irrigated lawn can consume close to 90 gallons of water daily and doesn’t produce a single serving of food.
It’s time to grow food, not grass.
Even if you don’t have a green thumb to transform your lawn into a highly productive vegetable garden, there are people in your community with these skills. Many small farmers are looking for land, if you have an acre of sunny lawn, it wouldn’t be hard to set up a win-win situation with a local small farmer.
I’m not the only one with this brilliant idea and desire to turn the lawn into a food producing oasis. Here are two books I’d like to refer you to.
Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn was published in 2010 by Fritz Haeg His book and website has beautiful photos of edible transformations, click here.
Food Not Lawns by H.C. Flores
Food Not Lawns is an organization that was founded in Eugene, Oregon in 1999 by a small group of activists who had been cooking Food Not Bombs (free meals in the park) for several years and decided to start gardening too. The book, Food Not Lawns came out in 2006, its an inspiring resource to turn your yard into a garden and your neighborhood into a community. There are chapters of Food Not Lawns all over the world, click here to find out more.
I hope this will be the year that more thirsty lawns are turned into veggie gardens. Everyone wins with this green strategy. With skyrocketing gas prices and wacky weather that show no sign of slowing down, for now on the best food will be grown closest to home.
