Low-Energy Gardening

Today’s Traverse City Record-Eagle has a story on an upcoming “energy forum” to be held by the Leelanau League of Women Voters, Tuesday February 25, at the Leelanau County Government Center.  I’ll be there with a storyboard and a couple “show and tell” items as an advocate of low-energy home composting and food gardening.  In the US, we spend roughly $45 billion each year (much of that for fossil fuels) and more than half of our residential water supplies on our 30 million acres of lawn grass.  We grow it, we mow it.  It’s easy to convert some of that lawn to productive food gardening without power equipment, and the result can be a healthier lifestyle along with net cost savings.  The secret?  Compost!—together with care to preserve the many beneficial life forms that support plant growth in the living soil.  Hence my recent post on that subject.  I’ve been remiss in not posting ideas on starting a home food garden “from scratch,” but I’ll soon remedy that omission.  Organic home food production can be done with surprisingly little expenditure of energy—including your own.