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Masterful storyteller Michael Tougias shares how he took his carefully manicured lawn and turned it into a highly productive garden.
As inspiring as it is instructive, I Can Eat My Yard guides readers through amending and enriching soil to create the garden of their dreams! From seeding tomato plants to harvesting blueberries, to pots of herbs on your kitchen sill and green-thumb tips for beginners, Tougias delivers a beautiful yet practical guide to self-sufficient DIY-deck and backyard homesteading. More than your average gardening how-to, I Can Eat My Yard is an agricultural manifesto that teaches its readers to utilize the available areas around them to grow their own food. Tougias’ fresh approach encourages and inspires even the most novice gardeners to improve their green thumb with basic tools and limited space.
Chapter One: Lawn headaches and first steps to freedom and food
Chapter Two: Outwitted by a groundhog, writers David Grayson and John Burroughs, joys of growing my own food
Chapter Three: Moving, divorce, no garden, boyhood garden, why I garden, house hunting, the moonscape yard, creating a new garden, using boulders for retaining walls, reducing lawn, Thoreau, seaweed: the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Chapter Four: A garden can heal the heart, blueberry plants, coffee grounds, acidic soil, stone walls, Native Americans, colonists, writer David Grayson, future plans
Chapter Five: Assisting earthworms, David Grayson’s farm, enriching the soil, strawberries, deer, turkeys, soil pH, John Muir, fisher, fencing, early seeds, seed spacing, transplanting strawberry runners, commercially grown foods, deterring deer from the garden, netting, chipmunks, overcrowding in the garden, goal of growing 40% of food for four months
Chapter Six: Peaches, dogwoods, lilacs, butterfly bush, frost, juniper, south-facing slope, an insolent rabbit saga
Chapter Seven: Rachel Carson, DDT, water supplies, red-winged blackbirds, quests for the perfect lawn, ideas to reduce applications of chemicals, No Mow May, children, changing perspectives, lawnatics
Chapter Eight: Research on the health benefits of gardening, the “Glucose Revolution,” freshness &and vitamins, boiling vs roasting, eating in season, wisdom of the ages
Chapter Nine: Meadows and mowing, sticks, understory trees and bushes, weeding: chore or challenge, different weed guards
Chapter Ten: Simple life of the Nearings, composting, Native Americans, fish in the garden, raccoons, corn, leaf thieves, leaf blowers, construction of compost bin, synthetic fertilizers, red tide
Chapter Eleven: Unwanted caterpillars, insecticides, insect covers, natural B.T., Kale and cruciferous cole crops, tomatoes, hornworm, vine borer, squash bugs, pollinators, beneficial insects, non-toxic sprays, big-eyed bugs, herbs, flowers, crop rotation, Roundup, bees, aphids, the dirty dozen and clean fifteen, forever chemicals
Chapter Twelve: History of lawns, alternatives to a lawn, lawn care companies, boyhood, joys of gardening, public space, research and studies on gardening’s calming effects, Thoreau, children, gardens and mental health
Chapter Thirteen: Summary of the steps we can all take, seeds of change, community gardens, wildlife corridors, cattle feed, Blue Zones, legumes, helping form new perspectives
Epilogue
Return of the groundhog
About the Author
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