Grow Your Own Food: Planning Your Edible Landscape Design
With more and more people interested in sustainability, the Great American Lawn is shrinking and people are going back to devoting parts of their lawn to edible delights. In fact, some of the best activities you can do in a landscape are gardening, cooking, and eating outdoors. Each of these wonderful activities can be combined when you grow your own food in an edible landscape. This process, sometimes known as foodscaping, is improving the lifestyles of urban and suburban families everywhere and making landscapes more beautiful in the process. In this article, we will go over how to create an edible landscape design, go over specifics on an edible garden design, and how to choose edible plants for landscaping.
How Do You Plan An Edible Landscape?
One of the most exciting improvements anyone can make to their landscape is creating an edible landscape. Can you imagine, slowly strolling through your backyard, picking some peas here, some strawberries there… knowing exactly what went into your produce and never having to wonder if it’s fresh?
Growing your own food is a huge investment in your health and well being. The fruits and vegetables that make it into your daily meals will help nourish your body. You can also nourish your soul by growing a good deal of those edible plants yourself, in the convenience of home.
Wherever you have some unused space in your landscape - or even a balcony with room for a container garden - there is some big potential to grow your own food. Here is how you can start to plan your edible landscape.
Consider sources of water: Water is one of the most important elements of gardening. Your edible landscape should have easy access to water, whether that’s as simple as a quick walk to a spigot and a hose next to your home or as brilliant as an automatic drip irrigation system that’s built into raised planter beds. Rain barrels that collect runoff from your roof are an incredible source of free water for your garden.
Know your landscape: Even if you spend lots of time in your landscape, there are likely some areas that don’t see much attention. Take notes and take pictures of where the sun shines the most throughout the day. These will be the areas which can provide the most sunlight and nourishment for your edible plant life. See which of these areas you are willing to adapt into growing food.
Know your soil: If you are planting directly in the ground, you’ll need to know some basic facts about different patches of soil in your landscape. Each part will have specific levels of moisture, your soil will have varying levels of loam or clay, and it can be either loose or compacted. These conditions can either be favorable or challenging for specific edible plants. Soil testing and soil amendment may be necessary to create the best outcomes.
How Do You Make A Beautiful Edible Garden?
Building a beautiful edible garden is all about making sure that plants have the best chance for a healthy growth cycle each season. From cordoning off a patch of soil in the backyard to setting up a vertical edible flower garden, or building rows of raised planters, there are plenty of options for your landscape. Here is how you can start to make a beautiful edible garden:
Measure locations of planting beds: Each location where you grow edible plants in your landscape will need to be measured with stakes and string before they are constructed. Simply having a visual plan of the space and where the planters will lie will be your greatest asset in making the next steps.
Know the size of your mature plants: Give each plant the space it needs to grow to its mature size without crowding out its neighbors or overtaking the walking areas.
Make sure to space out the walkways so you can easily access each part of the beds.
Improve the beds: There are various ways to improve your planting beds, from amending the soil, tilling the soil, building raised beds, to installing a drip irrigation system. Drip irrigation can also be used for container gardening - it doesn’t need to be installed in the earth!
Choose your plant types: The plants you want to grow in your edible landscape will need to be spaced out and various plants grouped together, so it’s important to have a good idea of what to grow as you plan out your edible garden. You may end up with too little space or too much of a crop to handle. Grow what you love to eat, and plant only what you will realistically eat that season. After all, we’ve all heard the sad tales of people desperate to give away a bumper crop of zucchini…
Map out each plot: Draw a map to follow where you will place various edible plants. Certain fruits and vegetables work well together, such as carrots with beans, tomatoes with zucchinis, and so on. This mostly has to do with seasonality so you can cycle through each plot in an efficient way.
What Can I Plant In My Edible Garden?
To know the answer to this question, you simply need to know which kinds of fruits and vegetables you like to eat most. Fruits and vegetables like lettuce greens, tomatoes, green beans, chili peppers, herbs, strawberries, zucchini, eggplant, peas, garlic, and green onions are all easy edible plants to get started. This means that you can grow these plants from seed and expect some decent results after the first growth cycle and a bigger crop after a few more growth cycles.
Herbs are an excellent starter vegetable to grow since they grow easily under full sun and grow quickly. The fantastic Herb Starter Kit from Urban Leaf is a wonderful and affordable way to really get the feel for growing some delicious edible plants.
What Can I Plant In My Front Yard Bed?
The most visually appealing plants in your edible landscape are likely the ones that produce flowers or bright fruits and vegetables at various times of the year. Make sure to coordinate sun exposure with soil conditions so that you plant the right plant in your front yard. Chili pepper plants, berry bushes, tomato plants, kale, and squash plants are some of the most visually appealing edible plants for the front yard.
Are Flowers In My Garden Edible?
It’s very likely that some of the flowers in your garden are edible, but it’s much more important to know which ones are not edible first. Daffodils, poppies, foxgloves, and oleanders should never be consumed in any form as a flower since they all produce toxins that are poisonous to humans. Once you know which plant flowers to stay away from, you can start to learn which plant flowers are edible.
Which Plant Flower Is Edible?
Edible flowers are often overlooked in edible gardens, though they can add quite a bit of fantastic flavor to your meals. In fact, the highest caliber of restaurants around the world uses edible flowers on their menus every day. We’ve mentioned the overabundant zucchini crops: if you find that you’re going to have a bumper crop and realistically won’t eat them all, harvest the flowers. Squash flowers are delicious.
Some well known edible ornamental flowers include the cornflower, hibiscus, magnolia, rose, sunflower, and peony. Many restaurants also use micro flowers such as the nasturtium or the pansy. These flowers can be grown in any edible landscape!
What Are The Best Edible Flowers?
Certain edible flowers have an incredible taste that makes them attractive plants to grow in an edible landscape. Some of the best edible flowers include favorites like the cornflower, dahlia, rose, hibiscus, honeysuckle, and magnolia. Just in those five flowers, there are a range of amazing flavors as well as some great ways to cook them. Don’t forget that these are also flowers so they can provide some stunning beauty to your landscape!
What Vegetables Have Edible Flowers?
Many vegetables that you can grow in your landscape also produce some stunning flowers. Many of these flowers are also edible and can add some wonderful flavors to your foods as well. Calendulas, carnations, squash blossoms, yucca blossoms, and roses all have both edible vegetables and flowers.
Can You Mix Vegetables In A Garden?
Yes! In fact, it’s encouraged to mix vegetables together all over your edible landscape. Carefully plan where each patch of vegetables will go in your landscape, keeping seasonal pairings together. Mixing vegetables in the garden will attract pollinators such as bees, birds, and butterflies, further diversifying and improving the health of each plant.
Can I Mix Vegetables And Flowers Together?
Absolutely! Vegetables and flowers love to be mixed in landscapes. Again, you should make sure to keep certain plants together to make it easier to tend to them during seasonal cycles. You can pair all sorts of vegetables and flowers together and the pollinators will do a great job of making each crop more diverse and beautiful.
What Should I Mix In My Vegetable Garden?
Each vegetable has a companion plant in a garden. For instance, cabbages love being companions with beets, lettuce greens, celery, and onions. Eggplants love growing next to beans and chili peppers. Consult a companion plant chart in order to better map out your edible garden.
What Should You Not Mix In A Garden?
Again, it’s important to consult a companion plant chart to see which plants you should not mix in a garden. For instance, peas don’t make good neighbors with garlic and onions. Potatoes and corn don’t like being grown around tomatoes. A bad pairing can either alter the taste in a negative way or even damage the plants.
The most rewarding part of an edible landscape is, of course, the harvest. Knowing that you’re doing something great for the environment by reducing the size of your lawn (a food desert) is a big bonus too, for Mother Earth. Bon appetit!