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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The First Veggie Garden
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
You’ve probably heard that efforts to persuade the Obamas to turn over some turf to a veggie garden have been victorious: the first family will be planting a “Victory Garden” on the South Lawn.
Technically, it won’t be a “Victory” garden per se, but will be the first food-producing garden to grace the White House compound since Eleanor Roosevelt oversaw a real Victory Garden during WWII.
Still, it’s a victory for local foodies and specifically Eat the View, the prime perpetrator of this movement to turn back the grass and turn up the turnips, which is now asking folks to thank the Obamas via a form at their website.
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Tags: · Eat the View, gardening, Kitchen Gardeners International, Local Food, Obamas, sustainable food, vegetable garden, White House
