Eat Your Yard
Why mow when you can grow? That’s the motto of a growing community of home gardeners in Skagit County. Converting your lawn to a food garden is good for you . . . and good for the planet! Growing food instead of lawns saves precious resources like water, oil, time, energy, and money.
The Eat Your Yard program was launched in November 2008 by Skagit Beat the Heat as a way to teach area residents how to convert their lawns into productive gardens (without even having to dig up the grass!). Since then, they’ve offered many free workshops to help the beginning gardener get growing and keep the seasoned gardener inspired. The program is continuing under the leadership of Transition Fidalgo and Friends.
You may have seen Eat Your Yard signs around Anacortes and been inspired by the gardens beside them. Gardeners in Skagit County have whole-heartedly embraced the idea of growing their own food at home. Like community gardens, the growing interest in home gardening harkens back to the Victory Garden days of the early 20th century. In times of economic uncertainty and with growing concern about the impacts of transporting food over long distances, large numbers of local residents are converting unproductive yard space to home gardens. In addition to enjoying fresh, nutritious produce, growing your own food offers benefits to our health, environment, economy, and promotes a sustainable food system in our local community.
Want to build your gardening skills and knowledge? Eat Your Yard in partnership with WSU Skagit County Master Gardeners offers free Veggie U gardening classes at the Anacortes Public Library and demonstrations at other locations including the 29th Street Garden.
Veggie U classes cover a wide range of gardening topics
- how to grow plants from seed
- what vegetable and fruit varieties do best in our coastal climate
- how to prepare your garden for best production
- winter gardening and season extenders
- how to save seeds
- how to build a hoop house for those plants that like more heat than our summers usually provide
- ...and many more.
Need to know how to prepare that delicious produce you pick from your yard or community garden plot? Check out the popular Eat Your Yard cookbook Serving the Skagit Harvest. Your purchase supports continuing the great classes and resources provided by the Eat Your Yard program, which is a completely volunteer run program.
