Make Every Day Earth Day - #5

The World Wildlife Federation offers these tips to gardeners yearning to keep it green:

Gardening with the environment in mind allows you to enjoy nature while helping to maintain healthy ecosystems. Remember these things when planning your patch and you can be guaranteed to have a truly green garden.

• Collect rainwater to water your flowers.
• Let part of your garden grow freely and see what wild flowers appear.
• Plant local species of trees.
• Plant pollinator-friendly plants, to attract butterflies and moths to your garden and provide them food.
• Never take plants or pick flowers from anywhere in the wild.
• Buy bulbs from cultivated stocks only (ask the shop or gardening center for advice).
• Stop using chemical pesticides -- try to use natural products instead.
• Use traps, parasites, and natural predators such as ladybirds.
• Use disease-resistant and pest-resistant plants.
• Use organic compost and mulch to improve soil health and reduce the need for pesticides and fertilizers.
• Don't use peat in your flower beds and vegetable gardens (peat is taken from ancient bog land, destroying some of our most precious wildlife areas). Instead, make your own compost with grass clippings and vegetable scraps from the house.
• Use plants that repel insects. Some herbs and flowers - including basil, chives, mint, marigolds, and chrysanthemums -- mixed in with other plants, help keep pests away.
• Don't use electrical equipment like leaf-blowers as they consume so much energy for so little gain. Use a rake instead -- it's better for your health too!
• Never pour antifreeze, oil or other chemicals on the ground, into storm sewers or down the drain. Take these toxic substances to your local waste disposal facility.
• Don't buy garden furniture or decking made of tropical hard wood -- mahogany for example -- unless it's got a Forest Stewardship Council label.
• Take time out to sit out in your backyard with friends and family, and appreciate the beauty of nature!

Comments

[fred]

The best thing about native plants is of course, their low maintenance, since they’re made to handle the local climate and pests better than non-natives. But it’d sure be cool if they had better resources (quick use) for planting natives from similar yet geographically distant environments – with a list of any differences that you might have to account for. You know, a hydrangea that might be happy in coastal North Carolina’s summer rains will suffer in western Oregons summer droughts even though they’re both in USDA Zone 8a…

[ricky]

I'll go one better: stop gardening.

They're all plants.

Christ, a hundred and fifty years ago some uptight, inbred, status concious British lord labels you a "weed" and for the rest of history you wind up in the garbage.

I mean, what exactly is so awful about dandelions?

What exactly is so great about grass?

[Ron Sullivan]

And what exactly does grass (assuming you mean turfgrass) have to do with gardening?

As for the sweeping designation "weed": Google on "invasive exotics" for a start. Those would, of course, include both dandelions (most species anyway) and turfgrasses.

The thing about native plants isn't just that they're "easy," but that they are part of an intricately woven foodweb, and nurture native species that typically don't exist anywhere wlse. If you substitute an exotic, chances are that for aomeone in your neighborhood you've just taken up valuable market /pantry space with the equivalent of plastic display sushi or wax fruit.

We really don't know enough about the places we live to make those substitutions as blithely as we do. No, the whole yard doesn't have to be natives, but wildlife corridors have to exist for small wildlife, too -- the birds and the bees, e.g.

That said: One of the best gardeners I know says essentially what you did, ricky: that the best gardening, after prep, planting, and yes weeding out invasives, turns into not-gardening.

[eRobin]

How funny. I was going to say essentially what Ricky and Ron said. We're in a multi-year drought in PA. There isn't enough rain water to collect. I can't justify using tap water on my garden. I've learned to love whatever nature throws out there or what I can plant that will tough it out and survive. I find hosta are best for that. I love me my hosta. And I love those damn dandelions too. Atilbe, ornametal grasses and day lilies have also done well by me. Very little water needed - they've all done well on my kitchen waste water so kudos to them.

I container garden for the four-year old so he can see different flowers grow.

[fred]

Where I live:

Kudzu effect: ivy, english laurel, vinca..
Varmint food: echinacia, fucshia, azalea..
Special pruning needs: butterfly bush, eucalyptus, lavender..
Needs physical support: some cotoneaster, wisteria, forsythia..
Cute, until they seed: forget-me-not, some euphorbia and violets..
Root rot problems: japanese maples, some rhodies..

It’s always something - even if the books and nurseryfolks recommended them. What I’m saying is there’s probably money to be made on a computer program or website or something to help simplify things for the no-gardening gardener.

[eRobin]

File this under Who Cares? but I have to tell you that I was out canvassing for Chuck Pennacchio and a state candidate today when a lady on my list gave me three really pretty clay pots she was throwing out. Mmmmmm ... container gardens ...

[Ron Sullivan]

Fred, I'd bet there is some money to be made in such a thing, but until then I'd suggest consulting your nearest Master Gardener program, which is probably run by your state's university agricultural extension program. (Google on "Master Gardener" + your area, maybe? Or of course the phonebook.) Plus, isn't there a Dave's Garden website that people from all over chat on about their local problems and successes?

The rot problems with Japanese maples and rhodies are, as far as I can tell, ubiquitous. But they're also the results of specific conditions: verticillium wilt is carried in by plants like tomatoes and then stays in the soil for some time, just e.g. Rhodies -- plant them high, never deep, and if your soil is heavy clay, rough-out the edges of the hole and make it wide too. (If your soil's heavy clay, you'll know it. Sticks to the shovel like tar when it's wet, for one thing. If it's that wet, don't mess with it that day. Screws up the structure.)

Of course, time was, your local nursery would have that sort of expertise and advice. And they'd do their own propagating too and get varieties that worked well in their places. Hmph. Another thing wrong with McDonaldsization.

[michael jones]

A great post and a wonderful initiative. The green around us mainly the natural one like trees and other plants is very improtant for our beeing. So we should do our best to keep it this way. Grow more flowers, make the gardening our hobby and so on. Actually if you start growing plant in your bacck yard and buy garden furniture, you will see how plesant and beautiful everything becomes.