Edible Landscapes: How to Grow Food in Your Yard
By: Wesley Sexton, Client Relations Manager
Growing Interest in Edible Gardening
The past several years have seen a revolution in the American relationship to food.
For decades, farming trends saw more and more people outsourcing their food production to fewer and fewer farms. As the average acreage of farms increased, as did the use of GMOs, pesticides, herbicides, and unsustainable growing practices.
In more recent years, the pendulum is swinging the other way. Obtaining food from smaller, locally supported farms are becoming trendy. One Ohio State study found a 52% increase in the number of small farms (10 acres or less) over recent years.
An Our Land Organics landscape design and installation that includes edible raised garden beds
At the same time, many Americans are taking matters into their own hands and striving for self-sustainable food production in their own yards. The National Gardening Association documented a 200% increase in the number of homeowners growing their own food in recent years.
Whether you are aiming to reduce exposure to grocery store pesticides and herbicides, create a meaningful experience for you and your family, or simply make the most of your space, creating edible landscapes can be an infinitely rewarding endeavor.
From raised beds to edible hedgerows to berry-producing ground covers, from chickens to espalier and crop rotation, there are numerous ways to introduce food into your landscape. This post offers a quick guide to food gardening so you can start using your yard to serve you.
Photo credit: normanack
Why Grow Your Own Food?
For much of human history, the predominant task of human beings has been to feed themselves. Our ancient ancestors spent most of their days hunting, foraging, and growing food.
Fast forward through a couple thousand years of industrialization and market-driven specialization, and the way we live and work now looks drastically different. We have outsourced our food production to a shrinking number of farmers, and the work we do on a daily basis often has no direct relationship to the task of survival.
For some, the practice of growing food is meditative, a way to reconnect to the Earth and to what it means to be human in the most fundamental sense. Anyone who has ever so much as picked a bucket of sun-ripened strawberries knows how much better locally grown food can taste than what is available for purchase under LED lights.
With Americans funneling more of their entertainment dollars into the burgeoning industry of agro-tourism, the need for this type of slow down and return to the basics is downright quantifiable.
For others, growing food is a more pragmatic solution to the real threat of food shortage posed by the pandemic in the short-term and by climate change in the long-term. Some projects, such as soil amendment and propagating fruit trees, can take several years to accomplish, and there is no time like the present to begin.
Whatever your reason for wanting to grow food in your yard, Our Land Organics is here to help! Let’s walk through some common food growing practices and cover a few do’s and don'ts along the way.
How To Grow Your Own Food: A Few Options
An Our Land Organics edible landscape design and installation. Rough cut cedar makes an excellent raised bed and provides rot resistance without the use of pressure treated wood. For the win! Photo by Jeff H.
Option 1: Raised Garden Beds
As you’ve likely noticed in your around-town wanderings, raised beds are an increasingly popular answer to the question of food production. Their trendy influence is not without cause. Raised beds offer a couple key advantages over other common types of food production.
The Pros of Raised Garden Beds
You can fill your growing space with new, freshly amended soil. Depending on the soil conditions in your yard, this can be a quick alternative to the lengthy and sometimes tedious process of soil testing and amending.
Raised beds offer easy access to your crops by positioning them in contained spaces off the ground. This is very useful for anyone with mobility limitations. For homeowners planning to age with their garden, raised beds reduce the amount of bending and squatting required for maintenance, which can pay off in a huge way as the years tick by.
The Cons of Raised Garden Beds
For every successful raised garden bed project, there is at least one abandoned box in someone’s yard, grey soil spilling over the split sides of a hopeful weekend project and thistle growing up triumphantly to mock the well-intentioned weekend warrior.
Raised bed construction appears simple, and there is no shortage of quick, simple design advice available across the DIY marketplace that is the internet. In reality, your raised garden bed needs to be well crafted to support the large amount of heavy material with which you will be filling it.
The fact that your raised bed will live outside exposed to damaging weather conditions further endangers what should not be a hastily conceived structure.
While DIY building a raised garden bed is certainly possible, it pays to rely on someone with experience and craftsmanship on your side. At Our Land Organics, we have years of hands-on expertise with the design and installation of raised garden bed projects, and we are happy to help!
Photo credit: Josh Evnin
Option 2: Dig up the Lawn and Grow Vegetables in the Ground
Despite its irrelevance to the human diet, grass is the most commonly cultivated crop in America. For many, the lawn is an ingrained part of the American Dream, a symbol of wealth and status carried over from feudal Europe, where spending valuable acreage on the inedible resource hog of a lawn was viewed as an ostentatious display of wealth.
Opinions are changing, however, and many Americans are looking for productive ways to use their yard.
The Pros of In-Ground Vegetable Gardening
Growing food directly in your own backyard requires that you cultivate healthy soil. Soil amending is an ongoing process that takes science and patience, but the good news is that working to improve the land around you will pay dividends down the road.
Getting your soil tested for its existing composition and pH levels will help guide your amendment regimen. As a general rule, you can begin by adding organic matter and creating a livable environment for soil-building microorganisms to flourish.
The Cons of In-Ground Vegetable Gardening
While they offer a different type of beauty, in-ground food gardens do not always accommodate the manicured aesthetic standard we have come to expect from our lawns. While proper maintenance can maintain a healthy sense of order, a food garden will inevitably change in appearance as different crops come in and out of season.
If a tidy garden is important to you, however, don’t let that steer you away from in-ground food gardening. With careful crop selection and a proper maintenance regimen, it is possible to create an edible landscape without ruining your curb appeal. At Our Land Organics, we strive to blend aesthetic and productive aims to create landscapes that are both inviting and sustaining.
Photo credit: Blondinrikard Fröberg
Option 3: Grow Food on the Balcony
Even if you don’t have much outdoor space, you can still begin supplementing your monthly grocery runs with food you grow yourself.
Focusing on shallow-rooting annuals that can be grown in pots is a great way to begin growing food, especially if your space is limited. While herbs such as basil and rosemary are an obvious choice, you can also branch out to growing strawberries, salad greens, or even green beans.
The type of soil you use to fill your balcony containers will determine your success. There are a few things you’ll want to look for when choosing the right potting soil.
As an accredited member of NOFA’s Organic Land Care program, we recommend something that is organically sourced.
Additionally, you’ll want something with a nice blend of perlite/compost/worm castings, as pots will dry out much quicker than larger bodies of soil.
Cherry tomatoes growing on a balcony.
Quick Tips for Growing Your Own Food
No matter how you choose to begin your food growing journey, we’ve compiled a quick list of tips that will help you along the way. We hope our years of trial and error can help you avoid some of the mistakes we’ve made in the past.
Always have a plan for deer
In the Greater Cincinnati area, hungry deer will almost certainly find a way into your garden. The most secure and most long-term solution is an 8-foot deer fence surrounding your entire growing area.
That’s not always possible, however. We regularly install much lower (4-foot) fences directly around raised bed gardens. This is due to deer’s hesitancy to jump into spaces where they are unsure of where to land. If there are obstacles (such as raised beds) on the other side of the fence, deer will generally avoid jumping over your fence and into your garden.
If you choose to apply deer repellents instead, be sure to select an organic compound, especially since you will be applying it near your food. Keep in mind that aromatic repellents will need to be regularly applied and will never entirely override a deer’s hunger impulse.
Deer fencing can look nice! This style of fencing allows for high visibility while still protecting the garden. Photo by: Lyndsey Davisson
2. Focus on what you actually eat
Before research and compiling a huge list of food options, make a list of the vegetables that are most commonly in your kitchen. Finding yourself knee-deep in collard greens come mid-July will only be worthwhile if you like to eat collard greens.
In general, we recommend growing crops that you can harvest more than once throughout the season, such as herbs, salad greens, and tomatoes. Other crops such as broccoli, onions, and cauliflower will occupy your precious growing space and yield comparatively small gains.
For more ideas on what to grow, see our blog post about 5 superfoods you can begin growing today.
Starting Small. These raised bed provide quick access from the patio and in a manageable size.