While I often recommend gardening, I’ve been a bit demoralized after killing the 3 herb plants I got a while back. So — when Jenn invited me to check out her yard garden in Santa Monica, I biked over for gardening inspiration.

Jenn and her husband Nat (sp?) pretty much converted their entire front lawn into an edible garden — tomatos, string beans, peppers, melons, mint, etc.

In a few weeks, it looks like they’ll be able to get at least half their produce from their own front yard –

The two had been gardening on the side while living on the east coast and in San Francisco before moving down to Santa Monica a couple years ago.

Then earlier this year, Nat took a few-months-long “master gardener” program via UC extension — and got serious about urban gardening. An amenable landlord let them dig up their front yard, mix up the soil with free compost from Culver City, and start planting stuff.

Cost: About $100 for seeds, starter plants and some gardening tools and materials, though Nat thinks it could’ve been done for less with a lil more patience. Still, just the tomato crop alone should make up for those sunk costs, he says. He claims quite convincingly that it’s not hard, and that it’s not a lot of work — just a lil serious watering once a week or so….

The urban garden gets a lot of people to stop and check it out, Jenn and Nat say — a great way to get to know one’s neighbors. The two’ve already inspired their apartment managers to start their own edible garden in the back –

The apartment also has fig and apricot trees in the back, so Jenn has big plans to make preserves at some point.

For my part, I have big plans to make basil survive on my porch garden. In the meantime, Nat cut some lettuce and swiss chard leaves for me —

To the left’s the fresh salad I had once I got home (cucumbers and tomatoes from the farmers’ market).