What To Do On Your Memorial Day Weekend If You Don't Want To Pay For Gas: Resurrect the Victory Garden!

Rising fuel prices have you down?
Don't want to pay the extra cash for a road trip this Memorial Day?
If you're tired of supporting the huge profits made by oil companies and money going to terrorist regimes when you fill your gas tank, let's make the choice NOT to travel. Let's choose to do something productive for ourselves and our families with our time off this holiday.

I'm talking about planting a garden. I'm talking about grabbing your families and friends, have a BBQ with local grassfed steaks, organic veggies, and some Fat Tire ale, pitching in and ripping up your lawn. Yep, that carefully tended, picket-fence lined, weed-free, lush, verdant patch that you've carefully nurtured with petroleum derived fertilizers, toxic insecticides, and gallons upon gallons of precious water. Rip it up. Pull it all out and plant a garden to help feed your family and friends. If you have any doubts, pick up a copy of Michael Pollan's, An Omnivore's Dilemma and give it a skim tomorrow morning over coffee. If you don't have time for that, read his article entitled "Why Bother" in the NY Time's Green Issue, he cites that 30% of our nation's produce after WWII was grown in backyard "Victory Gardens".

Once you're convinced, start planning out how to best use your lawn space. There are countless ways to organize your new project. If you want to make it easy, build or buy some raised garden beds and fill them with planting mix and compost. Or, throw down some landscaping fabric then cover it with soil like in last month's Mother Earth News. Find plants that grow well in your area and spread them out to transform your lawn into an "edible forests" with fruit trees, vegetable plots, an herb garden, and whatever else you can dream up. Make sure you dig up your sprinklers first, though - you can hook them up to drip irrigation systems to water your new project. There's tons of info on gardening out there, start googling and then start planting! You get exercise, family time, you save water over irrigating your lawn, and once it's established you'll save money and fossil fuel while providing more nutritious, pesticide free, organic food option for your household.