How To Grow Sustainable Food In Your Backyard

No matter where you live—whether it’s in the city, the suburbs or the country—if you have access to sunlight, water and soil you are just a seedling away from growing your own food.

The less land you have access to the more creative you’ll have to get, but wherever there’s a will there seems to be a way.

This fact is proved especially true by the many urban and peri-urban farmers throughout the country who haven’t let space limitations stymie their ability to grow their own food. For example, Growing Home has helped establish Wood Street Urban Farm, Chicago’s first permanent year-round urban farm; guerilla farmers in Los Angeles and in countries all around the world are constantly reinventing the notion of public vs. private land and planting seeds wherever they will grow; and vertical farmers are dreaming about building skyscraper greenhouses in order to feed the world’s increasing urban population.

While these are all somewhat complicated endeavors, I’ve recently learned about a new project that takes a more low-tech approach to urban agriculture.

Murray Hill Row-by Row is a new “lawn-share” Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) project being started by an enthusiastic eighth grade teacher with a bit of green thumb. In her Annapolis, Maryland neighborhood, twenty-something Eliza Toomey has begun to convince her friends and neighbors to give up precious yard space so she can grow fresh produce for all to enjoy. I’ve asked Eliza to share some of her motivation for undertaking this project, as well as her insights into the world of urban farming.

Check out Eliza’s blog for up-to-date information on the project!

Last April I moved to a ground floor apartment and was thrilled to have a small garden space. This excitement lent itself to optimism, which is what I needed to think I could have a successful vegetable garden in a dominantly shady space. Needless to say, I had only modest success. So sometime around Christmastime 2008 I started thinking about how I could garden a little more successfully.

My mother had always prompted me to find space from someone with excess land. This must have blended together in my mind with a story I had heard about a guy out in California who was running a farm off of people’s donated yards. With no further research, the Murray Hill Row-by-Row project was born. I remember announcing my plans to my extended family at Christmas dinner. It was met with some interest and a bit of skepticism!

2 ) How is your CSA unique from traditional CSAs? 

Traditionally, a CSA is run from a farm. They ask for members, who pay a set fee, sometimes all at once for the entire season and sometimes monthly. Then, weekly, the farmer boxes up whatever produce is being harvested at that point in the season and distributes it to the CSA members.

The Murray Hill Row-by-Row Project has no farm; instead, it uses the member’s yards as the farming space, hence the term "lawnshare." Each member grows one or two crops in their yard, and what grows is shared with all the members. I organize who grows what, grow the seedlings, help members prepare their garden plot, help the members plant the seeds or seedlings, look over the crops and organize the harvest, which includes picking, dividing and distributing.

The members themselves give up lawn space and commit to daily watering and keeping an eye on the plants. Members find it a lot easier to grow a lot of one crop, rather than have a full kitchen garden of their own. From the relative ease of growing one crop and the small weekly fee, members enjoy a full variety of vegetables and a more developed sense of community.

I have been overwhelmed by the response! My original idea was to use 6-8 neighbors yards to grow vegetables share the produce with them. Then about 20 people showed up to the meeting and the project had to morph a little bit to meet the numbers of people interested.

Now the members, not me, take primary daily responsibility for the vegetables. Working with that mode, the aims of the project are almost limitless - as of March 1, less than a month after the sign up meeting and little over a month after the newspaper article, the project has 19 members and about 2000 square feet!

To me, growing your own food is exciting. The idea that tiny seeds can provide a years worth of bounty is astonishing, and I feel honored to even be a part of the process. So for me, one advantage is pure enjoyment and awe. But for others who may not be so enthused, I find a number of other advantages to growing your own food.

First, it is local. I hate the idea that some of my food has flown in an airplane. An airplane? Irresponsible use of fossil fuels aside, I haven’t been in an airplane for vacation in years and I’ll be damned if my fruit is flying more than I am!

Additionally, growing your own food allows you to know what has been used to help grow it and keep it alive. I know I don't have to convince a soul about the dangers and unhealthfulness of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, insecticides and GM foods.

Also – what better use of your space? Lawns are passé! Using your space to save money instead of feeding your lawn dollar bills is the way to go. But there is always room for both, and I guess that is what I am advocating.

Growing your own food is work, but it can be enjoyable. Just like being on a sports team is work, or being in a choir or committee is work, we still end up doing them voluntarily and loving it. Here is my mantra – it is not easy, but it is simple.

And growing your own food can be put in to two categories – growing your veg from seeds and seedlings is cheaper, but more work. Buying seedlings from a garden center is a bit less work, but considerably more expensive. All of it should be joyful.

As to specifics, we are growing about 2 dozen herbs, veggies and fruits on about 2000 sq feet. I spent about $80 on seeds. I have about $20 worth of seeds from last year. I still need to buy seed potatoes and can guess that that, plus a discretionary $20 or so, will add up to a total of $140 spent on seeds. Already, that is relatively cheap - and keep in mind - that's for about 40 people!

So many kids are separated from the process of natural plant growth! Someone told me once of an article they read about kids who live in the city and what they knew about flowers. Think of the flowers that are always planted in the median or on the edges of the sidewalk, etc. The article stated that when interviewing kids about nature, the kids told the interviewer that the daffodils grew and then turned into the impatiens and that later on in the season the impatiens grew in to lilies. They had no idea that they were separate plants, only saw them magically (aka by workers) transform from one fully formed transplant into another fully developed plant.

Even I didn't know what broccoli looked like as it grew until a few years ago, and was recently surprised by Brussel's sprouts growth pattern. Involving kids is just another step of reintroducing food to the whole community.

7 ) In September, when this growing season (and the project) is over, what do you hope to have accomplished?

This is a difficult question. I hope to have developed a community of people who share an interest in preserving local acquisition of food. I hope to have developed a successful model that both myself and others can emulate. And I know I will have "accomplished" experience - one of the only things I cannot gain by researching, networking, hardwork, extensive planning and positive thinking. And sometimes, "experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted." I'll be happy for all that.

A conscience. I am wary of committing to one ethos or one principal as the "savior" of our food system. However, if each individual educates themselves, and when faced with food choices, chooses responsibly, that is all I can ask. Sometimes, you have to choose between the better of two evils - and that's where a conscience and education comes in.

(Photo credit: sbocaj on Flickr.)