My Front Yard Garden
Hello beautiful! I’m sharing a post I wrote about My Front Yard Garden, back in my youth. This was the first real post I wrote on Reimagine an Urban Paradise and I wanted to show you how much food we were getting from a space that was usually just pointless grass.
Make Your Yard Produce Produce
Even though this is from 2009, there has never been a better time in the United States to convert your decorative grass farms into food production! I didn’t know the first thing about gardens or tools or anything, I just knew food was expensive and we weren’t using our yard for any other reason.
Might as well make my yard produce produce. Without further adieu but plenty of dew,
My Front Yard Garden
“Last year I dug up a 3′ x 8′ spot of grass in front of my house between the sidewalk and planted basil and sunflowers. We had a major surplus of basil and it was enjoyed by all of my many housemates and neighbors.
This year I decided that there was absolutely no reason for us to have useless, inedible, ugly, wasteful grass in our front yard when we could make a much better use of the space by growing food.
Because I had an excess of time and limited financial resources, I removed all of the grass and weeds using a shovel and a hoe rather than renting a tiller. It was exhausting, dirty, painful, and incredibly rewarding to finish.
Instead of grass, I planted…
39 cilantro plants
33 basil plants
25 baby lettuce
19 mustard green plants
20 sunflowers (I actually only planted 10 and the other 10 grew on their own from seeds that dropped from last year’s sunflowers). Yesterday there were 59 actual flowers! At least two are over ten feet.
14 tomato plants (60+ tomatoes so far!)
11 kale
11 spinach (planted yesterday)
9 bean plants
7 Egyptian walking onions
3 habaneros
2 jalepenos
1 cayenne
1 thai dragon pepper
Growing mostly from seeds the garden cost less than $20!
It’s easy to do, ask me if you are interested in doing the same...”
Ahem, back to 2026
Rude, I know. I’m sorry to bring you back to the present day.
Even though it’s the end of August as I’m writing, it’s still possible to start growing many types of food, depending on where you live. It doesn’t have to be a big investment, even though it won’t be nearly as cheap as 2009.
This is not going to be a blog just about gardening, even though there I may share occasional posts about growing our own food.
There are tons of ways we can live creatively and sustainably without spending tons of money, let’s do it!
Do you grow your own food?
If so, what was your favorite thing to grow? What was the easiest? And the hardest?
Is there one or two ESSENTIAL things you wish you knew when you were just starting to grow food?
Please pass on the knowledge in the comments!