My writer friend Laura Vanderkam writes more on the country’s new frugality–and mentions me! She calls it the Craigslist economy. It’s a good read so go check it out.

Leah

If you haven’t already gone out to buy pumpkins for fall decorations or making jack-o-lanterns, I’m guessing that pretty soon you will be. What would you say if I told you that after this year, you’d never have to buy pumpkins again.

Of course, what I’m talking about is growing your own but don’t freak out. This is a simple thing that any person with a small patch of land can accomplish. I mean, a couple of years ago, my husband and I found ourselves as accidental gardeners with a full-blown pumpkin patch taking over our backyard. Here’s how we accomplished that.

We had a small, raised “bed” next to our house, and this was where we dumped our grass clippings after a couple of pass-throughs with the mower. It’s also where one year we dumped the seeds and “guts” of the pumpkins that we’d carved for Halloween–and then after Halloween, where we tossed the pumpkins themselves. Keep in mind this was no fancy garden. We’d just outlined a rectangular area with pavers, in a sunny spot in our yard, and just kept filling it with grass clippings.

A year after we’d filled it with grass clippings and pumpkin guts, we had pumpkin vines taking over our yard. Without doing anything at all, we’d grown ourselves enough pumpkins to decorate for that Halloween. As long as we did the dump-and-run with seeds and guts that fall, we’d always have enough pumpkins for our Halloween the next year. Not surprisingly, this would save us the time and money of having to buy our own.

I’ve yet to try accidental gardening in our new house, but that’s about to change. This week I’m going to invest in a couple of pumpkins, and then outline a sunny spot in our new yard for our accidental garden. I’ll probably use the patch of land where we’d kept the passive solar heating panels that we used for our pool, because it got sun for at least six hours a day. Since we have no grass–and therefore no grass clippings–I’ll probably pile all of the raked leaves in this area, along with the pumpkin guts, and pray that everything takes. (I may plant a real vegetable garden there next year, too.)

Do you have a spot in your yard where you can build yourself an accidental garden and grow your own? If you’ve done this in the past with success, post a comment to let us know what worked for you and what did not. I hope that a year from now I can upload a picture of my own locally grown pumpkins from our accidental garden.