Living Like Ed (28 page)

If you’ve got a south-facing window, you can also grow some cherry tomatoes indoors, as well as some types of herbs.

A lot of people have rooftop gardens, too. That’s another great way for city dwellers to grow food.

And if you want to garden on a larger scale, you can become part of a community garden. They’ve got them all over. There are community gardens in cities including

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New York

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L.A.

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Fresno, California

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Chicago

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Fairbanks, Alaska

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Huntsville, Alabama

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Boulder, Colorado

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Hartford, Connecticut

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Atlanta

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Gainesville, Florida

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Indianapolis

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Des Moines

And if there isn’t one near you, start your own. A group called Urban Farming (
www.urbanfarming.org
) helps people around the nation start community gardens.

Here’s how a community garden works. Essentially, the city donates the plot of land, usually an unused lot in a developed area. They may say, “This is an old Department of Water and Power lot that we don’t use anymore. We’re going to give this to people to grow food.” There’s a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a whole big thing.

Everyone who signs up for an allotment is given an area that’s maybe 20 feet by 30 feet to tend and plant in whatever way they choose. You can grow food there or flowers or whatever you want. There’s water available to you, but you do have to bring in your own soil amendments. You can make compost at home or on-site.

Gardening for Health

I do want to mention that gardening isn’t just good for my pocketbook. And it isn’t just good for my taste buds. It’s also good for my health:

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Gardening provides both a strength-training and a cardiovascular workout. Anyone who’s ever carried a couple of full watering cans or pushed a wheelbarrow knows this.

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Gardening increases flexibility.

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Gardening provides exactly the kind of exercise recommended for the prevention of heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, and adult-onset diabetes.

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Gardening helps prevent osteoporosis.

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Gardening relieves stress and helps you to live in the moment.

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Gardening also allows you to express your creativity, and that’s good for your brain and your spirit.

The healing benefits of simply being in a garden are well documented, too. For years, hospitals have had healing gardens.

Gardening has even been used as a type of physical therapy for people with special needs or for those who are recovering from injuries. It’s been shown to improve eye-to-hand coordination, range of motion, motor skills, and even self-esteem.

Gardening is also a great way to meet your neighbors. Hang out in the front yard for a while and soon you’ll find you are experiencing a real sense of community.

I’ve also come to see that gardening is a wonderful way for parents to connect with kids (even grown children). I learned a lot about the cycle of life by gardening as a child, and you can teach your kids about everything from delayed gratification to the benefits of cleaning your tools and putting them away properly every time.

So why wouldn’t you take a little time to create your own sanctuary that just so happens to have the benefits of providing delicious fresh food and reducing our energy needs?

Gardening for the Environment

I’ve touched on the environmental drawbacks of having to ship food an average of 1,300 miles. Clearly, a lot of fuel is burned and a lot of emissions are created in that process. But there are other environmental reasons to start your own garden, particularly if you choose native plants. Gardens make the air healthier for everyone, humans and animals, in your neighborhood, and they keep the ecology of the area in better balance.

Inviting birds and other animals into your garden not only provides valuable habitat for these creatures—who are often getting crowded by continuing development in our cities and suburbs—but also enables nature to provide its own form of pest control.

Beneficial insects will do the work of pesticides, so you don’t need to introduce poisons into your garden. Praying mantises are a perfect example. They won’t eat your plants, but they will eat the small insects that do, including beetles, caterpillars, and aphids. You can buy them as well as ladybugs for your garden. A single ladybug can eat as many as five thousand aphids in its lifetime, which is about a year.

Yet another environmentally friendly way to control small pests, like white flies, black flies, and aphids, is to mix up some soapy water and spray it directly on these bugs. Even a good, hard stream from the hose can shake these pests loose and discourage them from attacking plants in your garden.

If you’ve got snails and slugs, there’s still no need to get out the poison. Instead of using pesticides, you can find snail traps at your local home and garden shop. You might even try experimenting with beer traps. And then when it’s time to dispose of these slimy creatures, you can simply submerge them in salty water.

Of course, insecticides aren’t the only poisons you’ll want to avoid. It’s also important to avoid herbicides—that is, poisons that are designed to kill plants. Rather than poisoning the weeds in your garden, take a few minutes and pull them out by hand or with simple garden tools.

Also, you can use mulch—or plant drought-tolerant groundcovers—to reduce the number of weeds that come up in the first place. Many people have a habit of raking up every single leaf that falls in their yard. Leave some of those leaves to turn into mulch. You can even use grass clippings in your flower and vegetable beds to help hold in water and reduce weeds. Then, as these clippings and leaves break down, they provide nutrients to the soil, so you’ll need less fertilizer, too.

Silent Gardening

I’ve touched on the problems associated with gasoline-powered lawn equipment, but you may not be willing or ready to give up on the lawn entirely. I do keep a small lawn area along my parkway—that access strip by the curb, where people have to walk and kids cut through on their way to school. If you want to keep at least a small patch of lawn, or if your spouse insists on it, is there another way to maintain those small lawns—and the rest of your yard—without using gasoline-powered equipment? Absolutely.

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Use electric equipment.
Electric mowers, electric trimmers, and electric blowers are more energy efficient than gas-powered equipment. They require less handling of gasoline and they create less pollution. If you have a solar-powered house, or you’re buying green power from the many utilities that offer green power, you’ll be creating
a lot
less pollution than if you were using that horrible two-stroke engine that most lawn mowers use. Electric equipment also makes less noise, so there’s less noise pollution.

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Use rechargeable equipment.
Battery-powered leaf blowers are much quieter than two-stroke equipment yet are still quite effective.

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Use manual tools.
Even better than electric or battery-operated tools—for small yards or small jobs—are hand tools. The only energy they need is the energy you expend while using them. This includes push mowers and—dare I suggest it?—good old-fashioned rakes.

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Reduce mowing time.
If you replace regular turf grass with another type of grass that’s designed to grow long, like mondograss, you can reduce the need to mow—maybe even as infrequently as once or twice a year. The same goes for planting a prairie-style meadow instead of a lawn. You just mow it once at the end of the season and wait for it to come up again on its own in the springtime.

I’m really lucky to have found a gardener who understands this stuff. While I’d love to do all my own gardening, I’ve gotten so busy lately that I need help taking care of all my plants and trees and shrubs. Fortunately, my friend and gardener Chris Houchin owns a company called Quiet Garden Landscaping. I’ll let him explain how he has reduced wasted energy and water—as well as noise—in my garden.