The beginning of our square foot garden

I've been a backyard gardener for 19 years, but it wasn't until recently that I began to realize the impact of growing my own food. For example, 1/5 of our fossil fuel is used for growing, transporting, and packaging of our food; by growing vegetables from seed in my own backyard, I eliminate some fossil fuel consumption along with the harmful toxins emitted into the atmosphere when they are burned. My personal reduction of fuel may be only a drop in the bucket compared to the 1,950 million pounds of carbon Americans emit into our atmosphere daily. According to Hazel Henderson in Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy, our fossil fuel usage creates about 98% of the United States CO2 emissions (pp 124). With numbers as high as these, I'm willing to do my part on a local level in order to contribute to healthier lives.

After moving to Bay Village, Ohio, where the soil is mainly clay and the backyards shaded, my gardening dwindled to containers. The Bay Village Green Team came to my rescue with the 2010 Community Garden. With my 8ft by 4ft sunny plot, I am provided with the opportunity to feed my family from garden to table. This might seem like a small amount of space for those of you use to planting in rows, but square foot gardening works quite well. Our plot contains 32 square feet which I have laid out into individual squares; we planted a total of 71 plants in a raised bed filled with leaf hummus and all purpose-all organic fertilizer. The Bay Village Community Garden is all organic; no harmful pesticides or fertilizers on our dinner table.

We planted our plot on May 29, 2010. More on that to come.

Happy Gardening,
Jacki