In 2023 we grew more than 2500 lbs of food in about 5265 square foot .
This is less distance then many backyard .
We accomplished this feat on demesne we just set about to process , without any assistance from fruit trees or exist crops . If we could do this on a sword - new garden – what could be done on a long - terminal figure infinite ?
old age ago , I interviewed the Helvenston ’s – a pair growing intellectual nourishment in the city . Instead of being praise , they were harassed !
We demand to change our outlook .
We regularly register about how we do n’t have enough farmland … yet we have tons of land being intensively managed for lawn and landscaping that could easily be change to food product .
What Could Be Grown in a Small Yard? South Florida Edition
Down in South Florida , millions of masses be in a climate that is wonderfully suitable to monumental food production . rain is good and freeze are incredibly rare .
Coconut palms and mangoes grow readily and can basically be ignore after planting .
Yet yard after yard is covered in St. Augustine sens and ornamental landscaping , with the occasional inedible palm or toxic oleander .
Billions are spent on maintain up appearances , with luxuriant sprinkler systems and ChemiGrass serve coming by to spray toxicant and fertilizers on the grass , and expensive lawn crews wheeling about on zero - act mowers .
The proprietor of these unreal ecosystem drop their cash on their lawn and ornamental , then go to the grocery store and pass lots more money on their produce .
Those payments could be consolidate if they only imagine it through !
You have a tropical rainforest mood – why not expend it ?
Why not imbed tamarindo and starfruit , cassava and yam , bananas and plantain , West Indian cherry cherries and ice emollient bean trees , sweet potatoes and dasheen ?
Most of these are so easy to grow that it ’s almost embarrassing .
You could be eating fresh organic nutrient from your backyard on a daily basis for little more work than taking care of your unworthy patch of St. Augustine sess .
South Florida could feed itself , but instead , it spell almost all of its food . Even small spaces can be very fertile .
I ’m not talking about trying to grow a raised layer full of lettuce . I ’m spill the beans about acquire with the climate and plant the plant life that love the guts , the heat and twelvemonth - round ontogenesis .
I mention South Florida because it is familiar to me and it ’s easy to conceive of what could be done there , because I ’ve done it , inThe Great South Florida Food Forest Project .
What About Home Food Production In the Rest of the United States?
South Florida is by no means is it the only billet that you may develop most of you local intellectual nourishment in an urban setting .
Many communities in the United States are built on what once was prime ploughland , afterward parcelled off and sold to developers . The ugly suburban sprawl of Laverne , Tennessee consists of endless peg make plate , covered with cheap vinyl railroad siding , selling for far too much money due to the propinquity to Nashville .
Yet if you bought one of these family much of the dirt beneath your metrical foot is excellent for all kinds of crops .
Potatoes , sweet potatoes , corn whisky , cabbages , not to mention chestnuts , mulberry , persimmons , pear , pecans , peaches , plum , orchard apple tree , and blueberries .
Our two average sized pear trees in Tennessee produced a hundred and fifty - three hundred pound of fruit per class between the two of them , in perhaps six hundred square feet of distance .
They grew beside the road at the edge of our prop , and needed almost no care .
Why plant inedible ornamentals when you could set food ?
If you have less meter , plant perennials , and especially trees , if you have more clock time , contribute annuals , if we put the same amount of movement growing nutrient that we put into lawns and landscape painting , we could eliminate a large portion of our grocery store bill . There is n’t a deficiency of farming , there is a lack of will .
Your Yard Should Be an Asset, Not a Liability!
We no longer view the soil , particularly urban and sub urban soil , as an asset .
Our yards are liabilities .
Gardens and fruit trees are assets .
We have been trained to consume , not to bring on .
We are heavy babies , suckling at the corporate pap .
bulge a garden or orchard is almost free , particularly if you start from seminal fluid , barter for plants , or beg for cuttings .
I once claim a cutting from a friend ’s Ficus carica tree and rooted it . Two years later on it was as marvellous as me and bring about fig . Ten years later , it ’s still producing figs .
Can you see how the soil is an plus ?
If there is a social break down , or even just some cracks in the thousands of miles of supply lines required to stock your local piggly wiggly , the lawn multitude are gon na be hungry .
People have all sorts of excuses as to why they do n’t implant intellectual nourishment .
Family-Based Agriculture is the Bedrock of Society
Modern Americans are essentially disconnected from the total story of the human race . Agriculture is the bedrock of civilization , alongside the family unit whole . A man , a woman , their children and a piece of land for uprise food for thought . That ’s the fundamental social unit right there .
There will be a head when the current rich consumerist , modernist , individualistic paradigm will fail and local , family and community of interests agribusiness will confirm itself .
Now is the sentence to fill our backyards – and even front yard – with food so that we do n’t have to scramble later .
And even if it takes a hundred year for the current organization to flow , what do you have to lose ?
You gain homegrown Malus pumila pie and roast chestnut .
And who bonk ? Maybe the ChemiGrass cat will get a job planting urban orchards .
