If you have a lawn, you probably wondered often enough why you keep up with such a useless, time-consuming and expensive piece of outdoor landscaping when you could instead have a healthy and productive organic vegetable garden. Now that even the White House is starting a garden, it could be the right time for you as well!

Many people who would like to turn to organic vegetable gardening are put off by the idea that it must be a difficult and time-consuming endeavour, and that a lot of tilling and other back-breaking work is involved. In fact, if you follow some basic permaculture precepts and let nature do its work, it will be very easy work. Unless your lawn is contaminated by a lot of pesticides, you won’t even have to remove the grass.

First, use chalk or some other system to mark off the area of your future organic vegetable garden. You may make it as big as the one of the White House, which can feed a dozen people or more with its eleven thousand square feet, or smaller, according to your needs. Once the area is delimited, water it well.

Next you need to add an area of ground mulch that contains some slow-release nutrients. A good mix is half-finished compost, grass clippings from the lawn, manure, rock phosphate, and sand. Finish off by covering the whole area with four to five overlapping sheets of newspaper.

Next you need to build a simple raised bed, made of planks, which you will put on top of the newspaper or cardboard. In due time the paper will decompose and become part of the organic base, but at first you will need it as a barrier between the early plants and the high-quality soil that you will now add.

Now fill the frame or frames with organic compost and topsoil. In the beginning you will have to buy the compost, but after your organic vegetable garden has gotten underway you will be able to make your own. Add some porous pebbles or vermiculite to the mix for aeration.

You are now done with the preparation of the organic vegetable garden patch. Leave it be for three or four weeks so that small burrowing insects have the time to come back and to turn the former piece of sterile lawn into a rich patch of good quality soil.

For planting, seedlings that have been grown in a greenhouse, inside the house or at a nursery are preferable to putting seeds in the earth right away. But both methods can be used. Organic herb and vegetable seeds are easily available through online stores.

Regarding the herbs and vegetables to pick for your lawn turned new garden, go wild and take whatever you prefer. Don’t be afraid to leave out some common plants and go for lesser known crops, the variety of plants available to the home grower compared to the supermarket is staggering.

It’s recommended to involve any kids that live in your area in the planning of the organic vegetable garden. This should of course include your own children, but also any other kids in your neighbourhood that your family is on friendly terms with. They will be engrossed in the activity, and you will get some help to transform that lawn into a garden.

Starting a compost heap is just as important as the other steps to a perfect organic vegetable garden. For that you need to pile all your garden clippings and non-animal kitchen waste into a wooden frame or a special composting box and water. After a while, you will have more compost for your plants.