We had two sections of lawn in front of our house when we moved in. A large lawn to the left of our driveway, and a small lawn to the right of the driveway.

The small lawn was the most useless thing ever. It was hard to mow, too small to play games on...really just a ridiculous waste of space and resources. So last May I had the lawn removed and replaced it with a vegetable garden.

I paid someone to do the hard part, which was to strip out the top layer of grass/roots and rototill in lots of lovely dark, rich compost. Still, they did it in less than a day, and it was pretty cheap. Included in the price I got a simple little drip irrigation system, so I wouldn't have to do any watering. Picking out the veggies was fun, and the planting was super-easy.

What a payoff! All summer long we have been eating an ultra-fresh, incredibly delicious bounty of strawberries, melons, heirloom tomatoes, green beans, fragrant basils, sweet peppers, hot peppers, Japanese eggplant, cucumbers, lots of different salad greens, corn, and Swiss chard. We're still waiting for the artichokes and Meyer lemons to produce, they are winter crops.

Now ask me what work I did after I planted the veggies. Um, almost none. I went out and harvested every few days, pulled a weed or two here and there, sometimes turned the hose on and watered when it was really hot outside. Other than that, my plot was almost maintenance-free.

Now I'm wondering why *anyone* would want a big lawn when you can reap such an incredible bounty from putting even a tiny section of the land to a different use. I put much less effort into my veggie garden than I do our lawn (which needs to be mown, trimmed and edged weekly, and re-seeded fairly often in the bare patches). I'm sure we used less water for the veggie garden too. And we had all kinds of butterflies and big fuzzy bumblebees visiting the garden, whereas the lawn is just kind of blah.

We have a Neuton rechargeable lawnmower that kicks ass. It's so quiet you can talk on the phone while you mow your lawn. No fumes or gas to buy, just push a button to start it. And I don't use any chemical fertilizers or herbicides, just a top-dressing of compost in the wintertime. Our lawn looks pretty great without any of that poisonous stuff on it, and I don't have to worry about Julian and Bugs playing on it, or, in the case of Bugs, eating it.

Edible Estates is an ongoing series of projects to replace the American lawn with edible garden landscapes responsive to local culture, climate and landscape. The website has some scary facts on it:

• Homeowners use up to 10 times more chemical pesticides per acre on their lawns than farmers use on crops.


• Lawn chemicals drift and are tracked indoors where they may remain in carpets and on surfaces for up to a year when not exposed to direct sunlight.


• Of 30 commonly used lawn pesticides, 13 are probable carcinogens, 14 are linked with birth defects, 18 with reproductive effects, 20 with liver or kidney damage, 18 with neurotoxicity and 28 are irritants.


• Of 30 commonly used lawn pesticides, 17 are detected in groundwater, 23 have the ability to leach into drinking water sources, 24 are toxic to fish and other aquatic organisms vital to our ecosystem, 11 are toxic to bees, and 16 are toxic to birds.


• 2,4-D, the pesticide in most Weed and Feed products, is a neurotoxicant and contains half the ingredients in Agent Orange.


• Studies have found that dogs whose owners use 2,4-D lawn products are twice as likely to develop canine malignant lymphoma.


• Those are just a few...

So think about that next time you're laying in the grass, or letting your kids frolic on it. What has been sprayed or sprinkled on that lawn? Freakin' POISON, possibly.

They also have some good DIY instructions for how to remove some or all of your lawn and replace it with your very own edible estate. Why pay $$$ for wilty trucked-in organic produce, when you can pick it fresh just steps from your door?

So I have to get this off my chest. What's up with mowing your lawn and bagging every single leaf and grass clipping, then going out and buying chemical liquid fertilizer and topsoil to replace it? If you mulch the clippings and leaves back into the lawn (you can do this while you mow it, just remove the bag) then it keeps the soil built up and healthy. Good fertile dirt is made of leaves and lawn clippings and sticks and other organic detritus. Just pile them up around your existing plants and watch them spring to new life.