Get rid of your grass and say goodbye to your lawn mower!

Mowing the lawn isn't fun. It takes time and is detrimental to your health and the environment:

" One type of pollutant emitted by lawn mowers is polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). These are classified as probable carcinogens by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Testing found that operating a typical gasoline mower with a four-cycle engine produced as much PAH as driving a modern car about 150 km or about 95 miles. This means that unless you drive more than 95 mph, your mower actually produces more pollution per hour than your car! "

How to turn your lawn into a garden:

You don't even have to pull up the sod! You can create a Lasagna Garden right over top of your grass. The trick for doing so is to use thick mulch or newsprint. Why waste your time mowing the lawn and burning carbon? Make a garden on your front lawn instead!

Lasagne Gardening - Mother Earth News
Kids' Gardening
A great tutorial on how to build a lasagna garden

The benefits of turning your lawn into a garden are far more than just getting rid of your lawnmower. The fruits and vegetables you can grow in this easy to maintain garden provide a source of fresh, local produce, right outside your door!

" You want to have a mixture of carbon-rich matter and nitrogen-rich matter, at about a 25:1 ratio. Common carbon-rich materials include leaves, newspaper, cardboard pieces, and dryer lint. For nitrogen, use grass clippings, algae, non-invasive weeds, and manure." From Urban Gardening Casual

A local example of transforming a lawn into a garden

You start out with a lawn, uniform, boring, unnatural

Building raised beds, however you could use the Lasagna method

Adding paper, grass, leaves - raised beds and the foreground has cardboard/newspaper/leaves on top of the grass- foreground bed is not raised and will be used for lettuce, peas, beans.

A lot of hard work and tons of help from a retired neighbour made this possible. There are tomatoes, salad greens, basil, leeks, beets, cabbage, sunflowers, lots of it started from collected seeds. Thanks to Viktor, a master gardener!

Here is the garden in progress...Viktor dug out all the soil in the garden bed next to the house, removed all the horsetail roots BY HAND and replaced all the soil one small shovel- full at a time. Instead of Sedum/morning glory/ horsetail, there are now beets, leeks and a lot of basil.

Backyard Chickens

Hopefully soon we will be able to have backyard chickens in Duncan. Urban chickens are a great way to get rid of kitchen waste and get amazing eggs as a by-product. More info

Council is considering permission for single family home dwellers to have up to 4 chickens PROVIDED that someone in the home can prove membership in the Feather Fanciers' Chicken Club and that they keep their chickens to the standards of the club. You will likely have to get a chicken permit from the city before you can start planning for your first omelette!