I've struggled with a vegetable garden at our Erie home for years. Everything seemed against me: We have clay soil. Our backyard gets too wet. We have beautiful old trees, but that means we don't get enough sun in the backyard.
I'd try to plant vegetables and would see little growth. Pots worked along our front walkway, but they limited me in what I could grow and how big.
So when I heard about the Erie edible landscaping company called Eat Your Yard I decided to give owner Tess Frawley a call.
This is the wonderful Tess:
Tess came up with a plan for a front yard garden stretched all along both sides of our front walkway — where we got plenty of sun. Because of our soil, she brought in what my family came to call "magic dirt" because it helped vegetables grow so abundantly.
She asked us what vegetables we wanted, and encouraged us to try a few new ones.
Soon we had a thriving beautiful garden full of vegetables like peppers, carrots, lettuces, tomatoes and zucchini, along with things I never even considered growing like celery and okra (we pickled most of the okra for homemade Bloody Marys!)
Our garden was amazing and wonderful and produced vegetables for my family starting in the late spring, throughout the summer and — with some continued seedlings planted by Tess — even through the fall. My last harvest was Dec 17! I never thought that would be possible in Erie.
We had such a good time with our garden last summer that we've hired Eat Your Yard to help us again this summer. We're adding on an arch trellis this summer — I can't wait for it to be covered over with yummy goodness!
The best part?
The kids loved it. My kids tried everything in the garden and would even "snack" on lettuce or beans or whatever else they could just pick and eat while playing in the front yard. Tess came to our house regularly to care for our garden (thank goodness because she took quick care of pests that invaded mid-summer that I didn't know what to do with!) and the kids and I would help her pick weeds, plant new seeds or seedlings, and learn a few of Tess's many gardening tricks.
Eat Your Yard is hosting a Gardening 101 class Saturday, April 23, in the Frontier Park area.
Find out more!
If you've struggled with a garden but really want one — like me! — give Eat Your Yard a call. You'll be supporting a locally-owned small Erie business, you'll learn as much as you want about gardening, and you'll have the satisfaction of eating from your yard all summer long.
Here's to growing!
Eat Your Yard
tessfrawley@eatyouryarderie.com
(814) 460-3450
