Front Lawn Garden 09/21/09

Today fall starts, but the summer front lawn garden keeps on growing. This picture of this new garden in the front lawn shows the flowers flowering, the tomatoes, eggplant and basil flourishing. Now with fall beginning the garden will probably slow down and die for the winter. Where there was grass now there are flowers and vegetables.

All the plants in the front lawn garden are annuals while the rain garden is all perennials and the backyard garden is a mix.

The front lawn garden was new this year and from the compliments on how good it looks from neighbors and friends, and from its production, it will be reborn in the spring.

The key to the garden’s success, I believe, was the homemade soil and the mix of flowers (marigolds) with herbs and vegetable plants (basil, tomatoes, eggplants) that grow well together. This companion planting, also done in the backyard, is new this year for my gardens but, like most innovative ideas, has been around for a long time. From Native Americans to traditional farmers in India, companion planting has been successfully used. It is something we need to rediscover in our home gardens.

While we were in India on the Pilgrimage of Peace last winter we visited Navdanya , an organic farming institute devoted to “rejuvenation of indigenous knowledge and culture.” They were testing all kinds of combinations of companion planting from just a few plants up to seventeen together. (There will be a Pilgrimage of Peace 2010.)

It seems that plants, just like humans, do better when working together. The singularity of grass has been replaced by the multiplicity of plants on the front lawn.

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