March 24th, 2009

By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

With all the recent polls and pronouncements about the growth of home veggie gardens, I’m itching to expand mine. Yet this year, and every year, I am confronted with a deceptively soft, but decidedly stubborn foe: the lawn.

We could wax on about the American lawn, that great, lush, water-chugging emblem of good times and expansive living. But let’s not. Right now, it stands in the way of growing more snap peas.

I have peeled up turf to create garden and flower beds (actually I’ve directed this work, at which my husband is surprisingly good!). But we’ve wound up with lawn re-emerging from underneath and creeping in from alongside the plot. This problem is especially acute here in Texas where many lawns feature Bermuda grass, an invasive turf that tolerates little competition and will send out runners to evade borders.

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