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Gardener's Notebook - A taste of edible landscaping

The Yorkton and District Horticultural Society will be having their next meeting on Wednesday, March 19, 7PM at SIGN on North Street.

The Yorkton and District Horticultural Society will be having their next meeting on Wednesday, March 19, 7PM at SIGN on North Street.  This will be our first meeting of 2020, and it will be nice to get together and “talk gardening” again!  Everyone is welcome; you don’t have to be a member of the group to come to the meeting. Visit us at www.yorktonhort.ca to see what’s “coming up”!

Let’s sit down with a cup of tea and chat about the upcoming garden year.  I think I told you once about a book I read long ago called “Edible Landscaping” by Rosalind Creasy.  This book was mentioned in an article by Rosalind in Mother Earth News, where she was talking about how much produce she was able to grow in a five by twenty foot garden.

I know we talked about how many delicious garden flavors we can grow in containers or very limited space, but it bears talking about, because how often do we hear “oh, I have no space for a garden” and people just give up on the idea.  So just for fun, I’d like to share some numbers with you.

Rosalind said that she had the following plants in her five by twenty foot garden: two tomato plants, six pepper plants, four zucchinis, four basil plants, and eighteen lettuces.  It doesn’t sound overwhelming, does it?  Her aim was to have a garden that not only gave her fresh garden produce, but looked good, too.  

So what did this humble collection of plants produce?  Her harvest one August day was 49 tomatoes, 9 peppers, 15 zucchinis, and three clumps of basil.  When she priced this out at the store, it came to $136.  Remember, this was in 2008, and she lived in California, where produce no doubt cost less than in other places.

Now the amazing part.  Total production from this little one hundred square foot garden:

Seventy seven pounds of tomatoes; fifteen pounds of bell peppers; fourteen pounds of lettuce; one hundred and twenty six pounds of zucchini; and two and a half pounds of basil. Almost $700 worth of fresh, delicious garden produce, and from not very much space.

Last year, we tilled up a small part of our lawn, probably about five by twenty feet, more or less, and had an amazing crop from that new patch.  The lawn was not missed at all, and the new garden patch was actually less work and looked much better than the scrubby lawn.  

I love some lawn space.  Lawns do great good; they breathe and give us good air and refreshing, cool places for children to play and for us to relax.  They also create beautiful settings for our homes.   

I read some information saying that the average homeowner spends 150 hours per year caring for their lawn, and more than forty billion dollars is spent each year on lawn care in North America.  Some people like the golf-green look, but for most of us, we’re happy just to get the lawn mowed!  But as always with gardening, there is a happy medium, and a way to have nice green space in our yards, as well as a space for a garden, in some form whether a garden patch, raised beds, or a collection of containers.

And if it comes down to a question of space, well, as my Dad used to say, you can’t eat your lawn!  So think about it.  If you are wishing for more garden space, maybe relinquishing a small strip of lawn might be the answer.  Or consider installing raised beds, another great way to have garden space, and one that is easy to maintain and looks wonderful!

Lots for us to think about before spring!  Have a great week!