Eat your garden

Eat from a plant in your front yard. I dare you. How do you like them hedging cedars now?

Maybe I'm being unfair: it's too early in the season. Ask yourself this: at any time throughout the year, is there anything edible produced in your front yard?

How about the back yard? Okay, there's a better chance that you have a fruit tree tucked in back there somewhere. Do you have any sort of vegetable garden? Good job if you do.

I read an article recently that talked about the decline of the home vegetable garden - something like 70% in the last 20 years. Now, I'm not going to get all hung up on statistics, but that sort of reinforces my own impression... that while many in my parent's generation had a small vegetable garden, you'd really have to go back to my grandparent's generation to see really serious backyard vegetable plots.

That's too bad. But before I get on my high horse, let me admit that the closest thing I've ever had to a vegetable garden is sitting in a tray at my patio door right now, waiting for a bit better weather before they take to the outdoors. Here's a picture of my tomato seedlings:

I wasn't drawn to gardening by the idea of growing my own food. Don't get me wrong, I do have quite a few edible plants in my yard. Blueberries. Strawberries. Currants. Gooseberries. But previous to this year, they earned their place in my garden by other virtues, with edible fruits as only a nice bonus.

It wasn't until I enrolled at Kwantlen's school of horticulture that my attitude changed.

There are some very bright professors at Kwantlen. A few in particular have impressed me greatly, and I'd place them amongst the brightest people I've ever known. So here's what got me thinking:

a - These guys are extremely bright
b - They're experts in food production and landscape plants
c - They see a problem with how the residential landscape is being used today

Now, I don't want to put words in their mouths, so I'll stop right there. It was enough to get me thinking, and reading, and it was enough to convince me that I really want to grow some of my own food.

So, back to what I already grow:

 
In the backdrop of these emerging hostas is one of my blueberry bushes. It fits right into the landscape, with golden leaves in the early spring, attractive white bell-shaped flowers later on, followed by a load of berries, and then the leaves turn orange and red in the fall. If you zoom in a bit, you can probably see the airy blue flowers of Brunnera macrophylla too.

Who could ask for a more useful plant in the landscape?

Here's another edible plant that works great in the garden:

The plant in the foreground is a woodland strawberry, Fragaria vesca. The one in the background is a big-root geranium, Geranium macrorhizum. I have these woodland strawberries popping up all over the place in my front yard now. They make a great groundcover plant, with glossy, healthy green foliage. The berries are a nice treat while working in the garden, and they give the kids an excuse to join me for a while weeding.

Attractive plants like these make it easy to find an excuse to put edibles into your garden. It's a little harder to explain to the wife why I'd like to grow a whole ton of good king henry (Chenopodium bonus-henricus) in the back yard:

It has it's visual appeal, I suppose, but it also could be taken as looking, perhaps, just a little bit - ahem - weedy. Like a little version of pigweed - and it doesn't help that the two are closely related. The selling point is that the plant is a traditional potherb, with the young leaves and shoots tasting much like spinach. It's also a perennial, unlike many of the vegetables you'd normally grow in the garden.

During the winter (and very early spring) I go into a bit of gardening withdrawal. Right when I'm at my most vulnerable, the seed catalogs arrive, and I usually end up going a little overboard. This year, I had edible plants on my mind, and here's a partial list of what I've got growing or on the way:

Lemon balm, borage, hyssop, scarlet runner beans, welsh onions, Egyptian walking onions, hamburg parsnips, Manchurian cherry bushes, licorice, Chinese artichoke, goji berry, goumi fruit, pawpaw, chinese blueberry, hardy kiwi, Japanese plum yew, nut pine.

My enthusiasm far exceeds my yard space, and if anyone I know wants some seedlings (and if you're willing to listen to me prattle on about food sustainability) let me know.