Grow $700 of Food in 100 Square Feet!

In 2007, I began to get lots of questions about growing food to help save money. Then, while working on my new book, Edible Landscaping, I had an aha! moment. As I was assembling statistics to show the wastefulness of the American obsession with turf, I wondered what the productivity of just a small part of American lawns would be if they were planted with edibles instead of grass. I wanted to pull together some figures to share with everyone, but calls to seed companies and online searches didn’t turn up any data for home harvest amounts — only figures for commercial agriculture. From experience, I knew those commercial numbers were much too low compared with what home gardeners can get. For example, home gardeners don’t toss out misshapen cucumbers and sunburned tomatoes. They pick greens by the leaf rather than the head, and harvests aren’t limited to two or three times a season. For years, I’ve known that my California garden produces a lot. By late summer, my kitchen table overflows with tomatoes, peppers and squash; in spring and fall, it’s broccoli, lettuces and beets. But I’d never thought to quantify it. So I decided to grow a trial garden and tally up the harvests to get a rough idea of what some popular vegetables can produce.

A sustainable life is not that difficult. Whether it is your room, your hotel or your B&B you can choose to arrange it in an ecological way while enjoying various advantages. On the one hand, you are doing good for the environment by reducing the impact on the planet. On the other hand, you will reduce your waste, minimize consumption… and save money!

This waste pollutes our environment and above all prevents the reuse of waste and reduces the abundance of resources as well. Make a commitment to create a place to sort your waste: perhaps outside or on a balcony and to better avoid unwanted odours, dispose of it regularly. Also be careful with the cooking oil used at home! If you dispose of them in the sewers, it can cause serious damage to the environment: it must be carried out at the appropriate collection points on the territory.