WAYS IN GARDENING
Green gardening is a confusing term. Gardeners talk about their love of nature, but in reality what we’re doing is manipulating nature and short of growing a field of weeds, it will remain so. So the easiest way to garden greener is to work more cooperatively with nature. Here are 5 easy steps to make your garden greener.
1. Stop Fighting Your Site
Take a good, objective look at where you are gardening. Many gardeners skip right over the site evaluation. They know they want an English cottage garden, or sun loving tropical plants or maybe an alpine rock garden. Many of us want to try a little of everything.
If you are constantly adding lime or sulfur to your soil, if you have to fertilize every week, if watering takes up more of your time than gardening and if you are constantly wondering why, despite these efforts, your plants aren’t thriving, there’s a good chance you are trying to grow the wrong plants.
What Should You Do?:
Have your soil tested. At the very least, know what the pH is and whether it’s quick draining sand, hard baked clay, rock ledge or something in between.
Watch for sun exposure patterns. At what time does the sun reach your garden bed, how long does it linger, is there anything blocking full exposure and when does the sun leave the area.
Call the Master Gardeners at your local Cooperative Extension office and ask for a list of plants that are recommended for your area and then select the ones that are suited to your site. Give particular emphasis to plants native to your area.
Put plants where they will be happy. Shade lovers will waste water in the sun. Sun lovers will languish in shade and attract problems and pests. Acid lovers will never get enough nutrients if planted in a high pH... A plant grown in inhospitable conditions will demand more and more attention.
2. Focus on the Soil
The old organic gardening adage, "Feed the Soil and Let the Soil Feed the Plants", does so much more than reward you with great looking plants. There’s more going on in the soil than expanding plant roots. There’s a whole world in there, teaming with life forms that contribute to one another. Synthetic fertilizers may provide a quicker fix, but a healthy soil can sustain itself and your plants for the long run.
If you are growing annual flowers or vegetables, you are going to need some supplemental feeding during the growing season. It’s exhausting to keep blooming and producing without a rest. But that doesn’t mean you can’t still use an organic fertilizers that will contribute something to the soil while feeding your plants. Synthetic quick fixes are like a having a cup of coffee after you’ve pulled an all-nighter. You think you’re fine, but your body knows better.
What Should You Do?:
Get a complete soil test. Find out what nutrients are missing in your soil and add amendments accordingly.
Enrich the soil before you plant your garden. At the very least, add 3-4 inches of decaying organic matter and work it into the top couple of inches of soil.
Till the soil as little as possible. Tilling breaks up the soils structure and disturbs the organisms living in it. Of course, if your soil is too hard to plant in, some tilling will be necessary.
Side dress established plants with compost or composted manure. This will slowly replenish the soil where you needs it most - by the plant’s roots.
Don’t leave the soil uncovered, so that rain and erosion can wash away nutrients and weed seed can take hold. Use a layer of organic mulch around plants and plant a cover crop on beds that are left fallow.
3. Put Down the Sprayer
Perhaps the easiest thing we can do to garden greener is to stop trying to spray away every problem. Worse still is when we spray without knowing what the problem is.
What Should You Do?:
Identify the problem - or even if it is a problem - before you try to fix it. Walking through and checking your gardens daily will alert you to small problems before they get out of hand. One or two chewed leaves are to be expected. Look for the cause before you pull out the big guns. If you see a colony of insects or an egg sack, then take appropriate measures. That might mean simply removing the egg sack.
Know if it’s an insect or a disease. A good dose of fungicide may poison an insect, but no amount of insecticide is going to cure a fugal disease. And some insects are good for the garden, so you don’t want a spray that is going to kill everything in its way.
More is not better. Read and follow label directions. Even organic pesticides can be dangerous if over used.
And the final 2 Top Ways to Garden Greener are...
Share a Green Gardening Tip of Your Own
I’m sure many of you have a few great green gardening tips you’d like to pass along. If you’d like to share a tip, please do. Here’s a tip submission form, to make it easy for you.
4. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Let’s face it, there are a lot of leftovers when you finish planting. In particular, there are all those empty pots and cell packs, not to mention the plastic bags the mulch comes in. Even before you get outdoors, there’s the pile of seed catalogs you’ve finished with for the year.
Alternative materials will help to some degree and recyclable or biodegradable are good options. But we need to start by reducing the amount of stuff required to get our gardens planted in the first place.
If it’s not compost-able, it should be recyclable. I’m sure that when 90% of the population was employed in agriculture, we were a lot more thrifty. Here are some ways to get us thinking about more responsible disposal of our leftovers.
What Should You Do?:
Compost. This sounds like a no-brainer, but every year I’m amazed at the piles of leaves raked to the curb for pick-up. It takes no more effort to compost than to bag leaves for pick-up. As they say, compost happens. It makes no sense to spend hundreds of dollars buying mulch and fertilizer when you are throwing away the free stuff.
Clean and reuse cell packs for seed starting ext year. If you don’t start seeds, check with local nurseries and find out which ones will accept your used cell packs. Or find a local youth gardening program that’s in need of more pots.
Use larger nursery pots for container gardening. You can hide them behind your more attractive pots, where no one will see them, and save a bundle. Or spray paint them with one of the wonderful new faux stone paints. They look convincing and are much lighter to move around.
Biodegradable pots can be expensive, but you can make your own from old newspaper. They almost start decomposing before you have a chance to plant them.
Use the rest of your old newspaper as a soil moistener. Add shredded newspaper to the bottom of plant containers. They soak up the extra water that would drain off and hold some of it until the soil is able to take in more.
Consider having mulch and soil delivered by the yard, instead of buying dozens of plastic bag fulls. There is a fee for delivery, but it is often offset by the much cheaper price of buying in bulk. And if you have your own truck, most businesses have designated hours where you can pick it up yourself.
Save the branches you prune in the spring to reuse as plants stakes in the garden. They look more natural and the dark color helps them disappear when the plants grow over them. Bushy branches work especially well at holding up floppers.
Do more seed and plant shopping online. You can log onto the free service CatalogChoice.org and have your name removed from companies you no longer want catalogs from.
5.Take the Focus off the Lawn and Limit the Hardscaping
A lush, green lawn and an extravagant outdoor room for entertaining have become symbols of success. Unfortunately they both contribute greatly to pollution, run-off and flooding and ecological imbalance. It’s not that turf grass and stone are bad materials, it’s the way we use and care for them.
What Should You Do?:
Less lawn is good. Less emphasis on the perfect, weed-free lawn is better. Lawn paths and play areas will always be a part of our landscapes. But that doesn’t mean we have to douse them with chemicals and fertilizer every spring. Start by planting grass seed that’s appropriate for your sun exposure and lawn usage. Kentucky Blue grass is pretty, but in most places it’s a water hog and a pest magnate.
Use organic lawn care products. They’re safer for your family, your pets and the environment. (You won’t see yellow flags on your lawn after an organic feeding.) Organic lawn care won’t destroy the eco-system of the soil, so you’ll have less pest problems. There is no chemical run-off into the storm drains and eventually into your water supply. Once your lawn becomes accustomed to organic care, it’s cheaper and much less work to maintain it. Check out SafeLawns.org for help getting your lawn off of chemicals.
Don’t mow so often. Aside from all the very expensive gas you won’t be using, letting your lawn grow to a height of about 3" will result in healthier grass. It will be better able to handle periods of drought and the thicker cover will crowd out weeds.
Talk with someone knowledgeable in landscape architecture before you start paving and hardscaping. The less soil available for drainage, the less the water is purified before it makes its way back into the watershed. Also keep in mind the materials used to clean and seal your outdoor flooring. What goes into the ground eventually makes its way back to us.
Green gardening is a confusing term. Gardeners talk about their love of nature, but in reality what we’re doing is manipulating nature and short of growing a field of weeds, it will remain so. So the easiest way to garden greener is to work more cooperatively with nature. Here are 5 easy steps to make your garden greener.
1. Stop Fighting Your Site
Take a good, objective look at where you are gardening. Many gardeners skip right over the site evaluation. They know they want an English cottage garden, or sun loving tropical plants or maybe an alpine rock garden. Many of us want to try a little of everything.
If you are constantly adding lime or sulfur to your soil, if you have to fertilize every week, if watering takes up more of your time than gardening and if you are constantly wondering why, despite these efforts, your plants aren’t thriving, there’s a good chance you are trying to grow the wrong plants.
What Should You Do?:
Have your soil tested. At the very least, know what the pH is and whether it’s quick draining sand, hard baked clay, rock ledge or something in between.
Watch for sun exposure patterns. At what time does the sun reach your garden bed, how long does it linger, is there anything blocking full exposure and when does the sun leave the area.
Call the Master Gardeners at your local Cooperative Extension office and ask for a list of plants that are recommended for your area and then select the ones that are suited to your site. Give particular emphasis to plants native to your area.
Put plants where they will be happy. Shade lovers will waste water in the sun. Sun lovers will languish in shade and attract problems and pests. Acid lovers will never get enough nutrients if planted in a high pH... A plant grown in inhospitable conditions will demand more and more attention.
2. Focus on the Soil
The old organic gardening adage, "Feed the Soil and Let the Soil Feed the Plants", does so much more than reward you with great looking plants. There’s more going on in the soil than expanding plant roots. There’s a whole world in there, teaming with life forms that contribute to one another. Synthetic fertilizers may provide a quicker fix, but a healthy soil can sustain itself and your plants for the long run.
If you are growing annual flowers or vegetables, you are going to need some supplemental feeding during the growing season. It’s exhausting to keep blooming and producing without a rest. But that doesn’t mean you can’t still use an organic fertilizers that will contribute something to the soil while feeding your plants. Synthetic quick fixes are like a having a cup of coffee after you’ve pulled an all-nighter. You think you’re fine, but your body knows better.
What Should You Do?:
Get a complete soil test. Find out what nutrients are missing in your soil and add amendments accordingly.
Enrich the soil before you plant your garden. At the very least, add 3-4 inches of decaying organic matter and work it into the top couple of inches of soil.
Till the soil as little as possible. Tilling breaks up the soils structure and disturbs the organisms living in it. Of course, if your soil is too hard to plant in, some tilling will be necessary.
Side dress established plants with compost or composted manure. This will slowly replenish the soil where you needs it most - by the plant’s roots.
Don’t leave the soil uncovered, so that rain and erosion can wash away nutrients and weed seed can take hold. Use a layer of organic mulch around plants and plant a cover crop on beds that are left fallow.
3. Put Down the Sprayer
Perhaps the easiest thing we can do to garden greener is to stop trying to spray away every problem. Worse still is when we spray without knowing what the problem is.
What Should You Do?:
Identify the problem - or even if it is a problem - before you try to fix it. Walking through and checking your gardens daily will alert you to small problems before they get out of hand. One or two chewed leaves are to be expected. Look for the cause before you pull out the big guns. If you see a colony of insects or an egg sack, then take appropriate measures. That might mean simply removing the egg sack.
Know if it’s an insect or a disease. A good dose of fungicide may poison an insect, but no amount of insecticide is going to cure a fugal disease. And some insects are good for the garden, so you don’t want a spray that is going to kill everything in its way.
More is not better. Read and follow label directions. Even organic pesticides can be dangerous if over used.
And the final 2 Top Ways to Garden Greener are...
Share a Green Gardening Tip of Your Own
I’m sure many of you have a few great green gardening tips you’d like to pass along. If you’d like to share a tip, please do. Here’s a tip submission form, to make it easy for you.
4. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Let’s face it, there are a lot of leftovers when you finish planting. In particular, there are all those empty pots and cell packs, not to mention the plastic bags the mulch comes in. Even before you get outdoors, there’s the pile of seed catalogs you’ve finished with for the year.
Alternative materials will help to some degree and recyclable or biodegradable are good options. But we need to start by reducing the amount of stuff required to get our gardens planted in the first place.
If it’s not compost-able, it should be recyclable. I’m sure that when 90% of the population was employed in agriculture, we were a lot more thrifty. Here are some ways to get us thinking about more responsible disposal of our leftovers.
What Should You Do?:
Compost. This sounds like a no-brainer, but every year I’m amazed at the piles of leaves raked to the curb for pick-up. It takes no more effort to compost than to bag leaves for pick-up. As they say, compost happens. It makes no sense to spend hundreds of dollars buying mulch and fertilizer when you are throwing away the free stuff.
Clean and reuse cell packs for seed starting ext year. If you don’t start seeds, check with local nurseries and find out which ones will accept your used cell packs. Or find a local youth gardening program that’s in need of more pots.
Use larger nursery pots for container gardening. You can hide them behind your more attractive pots, where no one will see them, and save a bundle. Or spray paint them with one of the wonderful new faux stone paints. They look convincing and are much lighter to move around.
Biodegradable pots can be expensive, but you can make your own from old newspaper. They almost start decomposing before you have a chance to plant them.
Use the rest of your old newspaper as a soil moistener. Add shredded newspaper to the bottom of plant containers. They soak up the extra water that would drain off and hold some of it until the soil is able to take in more.
Consider having mulch and soil delivered by the yard, instead of buying dozens of plastic bag fulls. There is a fee for delivery, but it is often offset by the much cheaper price of buying in bulk. And if you have your own truck, most businesses have designated hours where you can pick it up yourself.
Save the branches you prune in the spring to reuse as plants stakes in the garden. They look more natural and the dark color helps them disappear when the plants grow over them. Bushy branches work especially well at holding up floppers.
Do more seed and plant shopping online. You can log onto the free service CatalogChoice.org and have your name removed from companies you no longer want catalogs from.
5.Take the Focus off the Lawn and Limit the Hardscaping
A lush, green lawn and an extravagant outdoor room for entertaining have become symbols of success. Unfortunately they both contribute greatly to pollution, run-off and flooding and ecological imbalance. It’s not that turf grass and stone are bad materials, it’s the way we use and care for them.
What Should You Do?:
Less lawn is good. Less emphasis on the perfect, weed-free lawn is better. Lawn paths and play areas will always be a part of our landscapes. But that doesn’t mean we have to douse them with chemicals and fertilizer every spring. Start by planting grass seed that’s appropriate for your sun exposure and lawn usage. Kentucky Blue grass is pretty, but in most places it’s a water hog and a pest magnate.
Use organic lawn care products. They’re safer for your family, your pets and the environment. (You won’t see yellow flags on your lawn after an organic feeding.) Organic lawn care won’t destroy the eco-system of the soil, so you’ll have less pest problems. There is no chemical run-off into the storm drains and eventually into your water supply. Once your lawn becomes accustomed to organic care, it’s cheaper and much less work to maintain it. Check out SafeLawns.org for help getting your lawn off of chemicals.
Don’t mow so often. Aside from all the very expensive gas you won’t be using, letting your lawn grow to a height of about 3" will result in healthier grass. It will be better able to handle periods of drought and the thicker cover will crowd out weeds.
Talk with someone knowledgeable in landscape architecture before you start paving and hardscaping. The less soil available for drainage, the less the water is purified before it makes its way back into the watershed. Also keep in mind the materials used to clean and seal your outdoor flooring. What goes into the ground eventually makes its way back to us.
