We’re at it again: Giving the neighbors something to talk about. Last year it was wheat swaying in the front yard. This year, a 5 foot wide bed of potatoes now greets visitors and passing motorists slowly undulating over the speed bump in front of our home. Red La Soda, Yukon Gold, and Burbank Russett line the driveway, already heaped up with soil and straw to entice more and bigger potatoes. The idea to grow spuds in the front yard has been percolating for some time. I had actually planned to plant them last summer, but life got in the way.
So this spring, I set to work pulling grasses and double digging the first bed. The thing about digging in our yard is that it becomes a lesson in archeology. Instead of pottery shards and ancient coins, I dig up the remnants of late-1960′s attempts at irrigation and fence posts marking boundaries of property lines no longer in existence. Once all that is excavated, we’re left with a loamy bed receptive to starchy tubers. Going with taters in newly built beds makes sense from the standpoint of further building up of that soil. The compost added now will remain once the tubers leave the earth. That will give us a chance to plant winter crops of fava beans and lettuce. So we aren’t just growing potatoes. We’re building soil.
Also planted are Trail of Tears pole beans – purported to be carried by Cherokee as they were force-marched along the route to their new “home” on a reservation. These are 
planted around the perimeter of a tomato cage a la the pretty clumps method I wrote about here. Punctuating the end of the bed nearest the doorway is a Bonnie Best tomato, the standard-bearer canning tomato of the 1950′s. Given the age of our house, these two heirlooms seemed appropriate choices. I also tucked in a few borage plants – bee favorites that bear deep-blue star-bell flowers all summer long. They seed freely, so I expect to find them sprouting next spring.
With the help of a youth from our church, we double dug a second bed parallel to the first, so we now have another bed awaiting planting of butternut squash the first week of June to sprawl over the middle portion of the yard throughout the summer and into the fall. That will make for a lot of butternut, but they store well. They were also a hit with the Garden Bounty which we plan to have up and running again this summer. Surplus will find welcome bellies.
So why create more beds in the front when we have so many in the back? Partly from hating ground left unplanted. The last occupants of our house attempted sod, but with no 
permanent irrigation for regular watering, it had become a patchwork of dark green islands of grass disconnected by either bare dirt or an assemblage of weeds. No longer a lawn guy, I opted instead to turn the front yard into an example of edible landscaping. Planting in front is also partly an invitation to people to stop, to talk, to ask, to learn. Growing vegetables in the front yard is certainly a conversation starter. We had plenty such conversations begun when we grew wheat out front last year. Rachel’s already gotten to know the garbage lady; neighbors want to know more about how to grow potatoes of their own. So the more apt question might be: Why not grow food out front of your house?
