HOW TO BE A GREENER GARDENER - A Few Easy Ideas for Consideration
1. Compost! Arrange a 'deal' with coffee shops for their coffee grounds, produce stores for their produce waste...
2. Reduce waste and reuse/recycle. Examples:
- Don't throw away your soap slivers! Slip them into an old onion mesh bag or an old pair of panty hose and tie it next to your hose. You can keep your hands clean out doors and the abrasiveness of the bag or nylon stocking will help scrub off the garden dirt.
- Recycle disposable drink cups - use them to start seeds. When the plants are ready to go into the garden, remove the bottom inch or so of each cup and plant the whole thing directly into the ground. The cup helps prevent cutworms from getting at your young plants!.
- Cut up old pantyhose and use the pieces as garden ties.
- Use old Popsicle sticks/leftover lumber as plant/row markers.
3. Mulch your garden regularly! This helps retain moisture in your garden beds and saves on water usage! Not to mention the mulch will add much-needed nutrients to the soil.
4. When you are washing veggies or your hands outside, do it over a large basin and use the dirty 'wash water' to water the garden.
5. When you're chopping veggies for a meal, save the excess bits for making soup stock. This includes items such as onion skins (which gives chicken stock that lovely golden colour!), stems of leafy greens, carrot ends, etc. Just keep them in the freezer until you're ready to make soup. These all really add to the flavour of the stock, and you'd be straining out the chunky bits with a cheesecloth at the end anyways!
6. Add the paper from your shredder to your compost! It's already all sized-up and a perfect 'brown' source! You can also use ripped up newspaper.
7. Save seeds, trade seeds, or order your seeds from the Seed Savers Exchanges. Try to grow heirloom or organic seeds where possible!
8. Plant flowers such among your vegetables to not only attract pollinators, but to offer them a food source while your veggies have yet to bloom.
9. Put out mason bee/solitary bee tube homes!
10. Put out bird houses - birds such as wrens, are a good form of pest control.
11. Participate in a Community Garden
12. Donate excess garden produce to the food bank!
13. Share your knowledge and ideas! Help inspire others! Encourage children to help so they can see where their food comes from and so that they in turn can pass on the knowledge. If you have time join local gardening organizations and clubs. Gardening is NOT an exclusive activity! :) And by the way, there is NO such thing as a 'brown thumb'! We all have green thumbs - you just have to discover yours! Cheers & Happy Gardening!
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