Edible landscapes are a green alternative to ornamental landscapes, and may include vegetables, herbs, fruit, and nuts. They can more than pay for themselves in therapeutic exercise, enjoyment and fresh healthy food. Home food production helps the planet by reducing the energy required to produce and transport your food. University of Florida resources for edible landscapes may be found at http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/ep146.
Strategies for edible landscapes include: dooryard garden, home orchard, and accessible garden.
Door yard gardens may be done in a great number of styles. Raised bed gardening is one of the most common. This style efficiently concentrates the inputs of water, fertilizer, and mulch in a small area.
Door yard gardens are mostly used for the production of herbs and vegetables like salad greens, carrots and tomatoes. Annual food yields of one pound per square foot of garden are common.
Door yard gardens are often combined with home composting. The composting beneficially recycles solid waste, by providing fertilizer for the garden. Leaves and grass from home landscapes can also be used as mulch for home gardens.
A home orchard may include a great variety of fruit. In Florida, citrus, avocado and mango are stars for food production. Pecans are grown in North Florida. In cooler climates areas apples, peaches, pears and cherries shine.
A home orchard is the lazy man’s way to edible landscaping. An orchard takes less labor, but produces more food than and a vegetable garden. A few trees may produce hundreds of pounds of healthful food per year. Some gardeners sell their excess at local farmers markets, while getting to know their neighbors.
An accessible garden is basically garden beds raised which can be worked without bending down. They are useful for people in wheelchairs, as well as, people who can walk but have difficulty bending down. Important design elements of a wheelchair friendly garden are gradient of slope, turning circles, width of paths, type of surface, and low exterior door thresholds. Acccessible gardening is used for physical and psychological therapy.
The vertical garden solves the problem of tight gardening space. Vegetables and herbs may be grown on shelves, fences, trellises, hanging five-gallon buckets or baskets, even step ladders.
The up-side-down tomato is an excellent example of the vertical gardening. It makes very efficient use of potting mix, fertilizer, water and sunlight to produce luscious tomatoes. Eggplants, peppers, and beans also do well grown upside down.
GardeningKnowHow.com notes that trellises and fences can support vine crops such as, peas and cucumbers. Corn stalks can support pole beans, a technique used by Native Americans. A stepladder can support heavy-fruited crops such as pumpkins and winter squash.
Vertical gardens, especially of ornamentals, can also be grown on walls or sides of buildings. In these architectural applications, plants are supported by any convenient means including bird netting, metal frames, wood lattices, even old rain gutters. The acrobatic plants dine out on water and fertilizer provided by potting soil, growing blocks, moss, tree bark, felt or other absorbent media.
The result can be startling to the eyes accustomed to ordinary horizontal plantings. Urban building walls become verdant gardens which provide a whimsical relief to surrounding acres of asphalt, brick and the “new brutality” of concrete, glass and steel buildings. Like shade trees, vertical gardens purify the air and keep buildings and urban yards and streets cool.
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