Growing Locally: Your Own Backyard
As inspiration comes from all around us to start eating better and using locally grown foods, it's time to look in our own back (or front) yard. Rethink the use of your existing space and you can find a great location to insert a food growing area into your landscape. Here are the critical issues to consider when locating that space:
1 Sun exposure during the day: make sure that the area you are looking at gets at least four to six hours of direct sun. Preferable areas would also be located away from any trees whose roots may compete with your crop for water and nutrients in the soil.
2 Easy access: locate your new vegetable/fruit space within easy reach of weeding, pulling, on-going fertilizing and tilling, as well as harvesting. It doesn't need to be within five feet of your backdoor, but you will want it in an area that allows you to get into the space to maneuver easily.
3 Available water: determine how your area will get water and how the amount and frequency can be controlled. If you plan to add this new garden to your existing drip system, make sure that you won't over water other established shrubs and trees on that zone when you need to increase the frequency and amount for your vegetable and fruit crops. If you determine you need to hand-water this area, consider how practical this will be for you on your maintenance schedule.
4 Consider visual appeal: while attempting to incorporate a food crop area into existing ornamental landscape, make sure that you consider the visual effects. You will have a year-round area that could potentially become a focal point in your landscape, depending on how you design this area into an existing one. This is where an experienced landscape and garden designer could best be recruited.
5 Once you have located the ideal area, you need to determine the best size for the space so that you have time to devote to maintenance as well as what you want to grow that you can't already buy from local producers.
These are our suggestions for food that grow well here in the Denver-metro area:
Tomatoes: Early Girl, Better Boy, Celebrity, Sweet 100, Roma and Heirloom varieties.
Greens: Lettuce such as Boston, Spinach, and Swiss Chard.
Roots: Radishes,carrots, beets, and potatoes all can grow well here. Try the blue varieties of potatoes to change things up.
Herbs: Tarragon, Thyme, Basil, Oregano and Sage are great starter Herbs and very useful in year-round recipes.
Berries and Fruits: Gold and Red Raspberries, Strawberries, Blackberries, dwarf plum, dwarf cherry and dwarf peach trees can all be planted within a smaller space and all can be found self-fertile.
Edible Flowers: Nasturtiums can add bright color and spice to salads and the garden, as well as sunflowers, violets, and lavender.
With a little effort put in for good soil preparation, some on-going weeding and fertilizing, you can have a great organic salad and spiced berry dessert without going to the store and contributing your part to a sustainable garden and future.
Twelve Steps to a Great Landscape
If you want to have the best garden and landscape on the block, follow the steps landscape professionals use to get started:
Step 1: Know thyself. Discover what you want and need by doing some research. Make note of landscapes that appeal to and inspire you and keep notes about them in a file or on a poster board. Make sure to learn what products and services cost in order to establish a realistic budget.
Step 2: Idea gathering. Keep organized files of those elements you want in your garden, complete with pictures and drawings. Photos of patios, outdoor furniture, water and fire features, recreation equipment, or that really fabulous light fixture you can envision lighting up the patio at night are all helpful when working to pull together a beautiful landscape.
Step 3: Develop a master plan. This is your ‘business plan’ for the yard. Work with a professional to establish a strong space design, and then layer that with lighting, plants, pathways, flower and herb gardens, and fire and water features.
Step 4: Use clever innovations. Creatively hide an unsightly shed by using a metal trellis with flowering vines, turn an old stump into a garden table or cover it up with beautiful native grasses. Try using a concrete color stain to give new life to an old patio, or install a new pavers walkway with gently curving lines that are meant to lead the eye to the front door.
Step 5: Mass effect. Use multiples of one variety of plant, and introduce bold color into your outdoor areas in the form of colorful container plantings and furniture cushions. Strike a bold accent by considering a strong garden feature such as a sitting wall.
Step 6: Simple details. Create elegance, serenity, and peacefulness with subdued, restful effects. Use green on green color and texture. Try to repeat patterns of movement and materials for consistency and calm.
Step 7: Keep proportion in mind when layering elements into the garden. A good planting scheme should look just as good in a black and white photo as it does in color. Let that idea guide you.
Step 8: Create a sense of space. Connect your garden to the surrounding environment by incorporating similar architectural elements and color; consider regional influences (i.e. natural prairie or mountains), and use locally and readily available resources such as mountain granite and moss rock, flagstone, ornamental grasses, and flowing streambeds.
Step 9: Create 'outdoor' rooms. Think in terms of ceiling, floors, and walls to pull together a sense of rooms in the outdoors.
Step 10: Use old ideas in new and different ways. Combine a bold color such as the chartreuse-hued sweet potato vine with white impatiens in a colorful orange or blue glazed ceramic urn to brighten up a shady area of the yard. Or place a birdbath in the sun surrounded by succulents, sedums, and New Zealand flax.
Step 11: Think outside of the box. Consider creating a patio and sitting area in your front yard to create a courtyard entry feel. Use a space that you wouldn't normally to enhance a welcoming feeling. Plant vines on either side of garage, or cantilever trellis beams out from header boards above the garage door, and let vines grow to meet over the garage.
Step 12: Remember that gardens are to be used. Design for living in your yard. Create comfort, security, privacy, intrigue, interest, and fun.
From the Archives:
Welcome to My World: Creating an Entry Garden
Your Next Bottle of Wine--From Your Own Yard
Beyond the Runway Lights of Old...
Landscapes Go ‘Green’
Feng Shui in the Landscape and Garden
Hydrangeas
Tackle Lawn Brown Spots
Beat The Heat
Less Lawn, More drought-tolerant Plants
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