The more we sow the less we mow, Urban Gardening in the front yard, part 1

We’re sick of the front lawn! Why mow all the time? It’s a pain, and the grass is all different kinds, it looks like a kid who cut his own hair, and as far as I can tell, we don’t get any real benefit from it. I want more garden space, so we’re going for it, we’re converting our front lawn into a garden.

We have an 800 square foot yard (not including the few plants we want to keep, like a rose bush and a dahlia).

So, how did we do it?

After talking to people in the know (Garden Fever, Farmer K), we settled on the “sheet composing” or “smothering” method, because we wanted less work, we didn’t want to dig up the sod. The process is:

1) Cover the lawn with some sheet thing that is organic and will decompose (newspaper, burlap bags, craft paper). This will smother the grass, because it won’t have any light or much air. We did dig up some of the grass, because it was crab grass that is usually hard to kill with this method.
2) Cover the organic sheet with at least 6” of compost
3) Wait a while for the grass to die, time depends on what type of grass we have, which is a mix, so anywhere from 3 months to 6 months.
4) Till and plant!

We decided to start with converting half the lawn (the north side), then in a few weeks do the other half (south side).

More details:
1) Cover the lawn with organic sheet:
We got burlap bags from Stumptown’s roasting facility’s dumpster, they are supposed to be more durable than newspaper and have less inorganic ink. And they were free! We had to cut the burlap bags open, to make them single layer.

2) Cover burlap bags with 6” of compost:
We got 8 cubic yards of mushroom compost from Mt. Scott Fuel Co., which is close to our house, and when we did a quality check it smelled great, and was nice and steamy.

Don’t dive in!

Queen o’ the pile

And...we’re done for now...

But what will the neighbors say? We’ve already seen our neighbors seem less than excited about our new plot. But it doesn’t seem like there are any strong objections, but I’ll happy to talk to any of them if they want to. Our neighborhood doesn’t really feel like the kind of area where our neighbors would be really excited about “strange hippy stuff”, but they probably won’t object too much either.

I think I need to put a sign in the front yard, so when people slow down the stare (already happened when we were working in the yard), they have something to read.

Farmer K has started saying “the more we sow the less you mow”, which is pretty catchy. I also like “America: feeding itself one yard at a time” from Eric. Here are a few more ideas:

It's not a grassroots movement, it's a sunroots movement
Our front yard, seeds of change
Bringing back victory gardens
Mowing is for wussies, real men garden
Friends of sunroot gardens CSA
Plotting (a garden) for change and hope
Garden of eatin'
We're pro bush...bush beans!
Ohh that smell, can't you smell that smell? . . . It's hope
Me and my ho(e) love gardening
This garden'll pop you collar(ed greens)
Food, not lawns

We may also be working on a “Bringing Garden Back” version of “Bringing Sexy Back”

To be continued...