Front Yard Vegetable Garden Illegal in Oak Park, Michigan?

Oak Park Michigan officials really need to take a look at Vegetable Gardening For Dummies and GET A CLUE about the importance of home vegetable gardens!  Officials have said that a nicely constructed raised bed in the front yard is not for 'vegetables' but  for "suitable plants" but does not list the exact plants you are supposed to grow. 
With the dangerous chemicals leaching into our food, the great recession we are in,  the lack of low-cost organic produce, and the fact that most kids don't understand where our food comes from.....I am worried that our 'leaders' just don't 'get it.'  Sign a petition CLICK HERE to tell the folks running Oak Park that they should actually be fining and jailing the people who vandalize property not those who grow food!

Oak Park isn't the only city that has had an issue with gardens.  Even in the environmentally rich city of Seattle, gardening anything other than a well manicured lawn in the public green space between the road and the sidewalk was illegal until last year when Seattle declared 2010 the year of Urban Farming and allowed land owners to garden the green space with vegetable patches.

We need to be able to grow our own food.  We need to be able to create gardens. We've cemented over too much of this Earth. 

WE NEED GARDENS EVERYWHERE!

FREE Fertilizer for your Garden!

You can create fertilizer out of materials that are in your trash!  REALLY!  Believe it or not gardeners have been spending thousands of dollars on nitrogen and calcium enrichment fertilizers while at the same time throwing out after their morning meal thousands of dollars of perfectly great sources of nitrogen and calcium !!

Ok.  So I have a apartment garden and it is constructed on cement out of reclaimed wood and potting soil.  How do I keep my soil healthy if it isn't actually "real" soil? 


 I add what other folks would consider breakfast, still others may consider 'trash,' or here in the Seattle what many consider something that goes in the yard waste container.  . . . Coffee & Eggs!


Coffee Grounds
Get this!  Used coffee grounds (minus the filter) are great as mulch on the garden AND it deters slugs!  It adds nitrogen to the soil and can either be added to compost, dug into the soil, or placed on top directly.  Vegetables and other plants that grow fast love this nitrogen-rich amendment!  check out this great article by the Seattle Pi on the benefits of using coffee grounds in the garden: Give Your Garden a Jolt. . .   I suggest getting organic coffee!  Chemicals used on non-organic food sources leech there way not only into your body but into the dirt!

Egg Shells
Clean, crushed eggs shells make the perfect amendment to soil that is lacking in calcium.  Tomatoes LOVE calcium.  See my previous post "Huevos! How to get More Out of your Breakfast!   for more details.  I use organic, free-range  egg shells only!  If you haven't tried organic, they are worth the extra cost!  The egg shells are thick and rich with calcium!

Here is to gardens everywhere!

Gardening in Black 101 -- Part 1: Dracunculus Vulgaris

This lovely flower is 12 inches long! Amazing! I found it while walking to work. It wasn't there, and then the next day the plant had exploded with color! I hope to plant this lovely devil in my garden next year. They stink like rotting fish to attract pollinators which means that I will need to be selective in where I place it. ---not under a window-- for example!

Got Kids? What do you do with all those worn out shoes?

Photo by Compost This!

You don't have to be a kid to enjoy this idea!  Got an old shoe, what is the gardener to do?  Shoe gardens are whimsical, free, and, fun.  Not only that most tennis shoes have holes in them by the time they are ready to plant!

YES!  I want to see gardens EVERYWHERE!