The Urban Permaculture Farm Magazine

When I first began the journey of removing the grass from my front lawn and installing 5,000 pounds of rotted buffalo manure in 2009, I had no idea where it would lead. In the first year I learned a lot of hard lessons and soon realized that a vegetable garden requires more water than all the rest of my garden combined. Building a sustainable vegetable garden became a priority more than ever.

With the help of Aquascape, Inc. I had a rain water cistern and water fountain installed in the front lawn to help me supply fresh water to the vegetables. This season I began composting kitchen and yard waste heavily, added more composted manure, and mulched the vegetable garden; all things to do for your garden which will help conserve water. Thanks to Organic Mechanics Soil, I was also able to add worm castings in the vegetable garden zones where I did not rotate crops in the hopes the added nutrients will help the plants build positive microbial root activity.

This season I christened the garden with a name; “Jardin de Vegetal” and have worked to make it easier to plant and more ornamental to boost the front lawn attractiveness factor. In the rough hand-drawn design below you can see how I laid out a “sun ray” design around the front patio and walk way in my plan.

It was very simple to create. First, I drew out a rough design for the garden (see plan), then I dug in soil amendments. Next, I strung rope in straight lines to mark out where the plants should go, planted the plants, mulching well. That was easy!

Below is the list of incredible Burpee Home Gardens plants I used to make this vision come true. The numbers coordinate with the numbers on the above plan. The alphabet letters are perennials I laid out in the full-shade section of the front garden since it would not adequately support vegetable plants:

1. 30 Gourmet Blend Mixed Lettuces Plants
2. 30 Red Rubin Basil Plants
3. 16 Cabbage Plants
4. 40 Onion Plants - White Sweet Spanish
5. 20 Bush Bean Plants and 5 Burpee’s Bush Table Queen Squash Plants
6. 5 Burpee Golden Zucchini Plants
7. 3 SuperTasty Tomato Plants
8. 5 Sweet Burpless Cucumber Plants
9. 10 Flavorburst Pepper Plants
10. 5 Big Beef Tomato Plants
11. 2 SuperTasty Tomato Plants
12. 2 SunGold Cherry Tomato Plants

Here you can see how the garden looks mid-summer. Pretty good – plants are growing strong and I am very happy. To see even more of how the design and planting worked, please watch the video.