Eco-friendly Gardening Ideas- 1

Sustainable Gardening means gardening in a smart and eco-friendly way. It’s all about giving back to the environment what we used from it, by using organic growing methods so you can use fewer chemicals and adopt greener alternatives when you’re gardening. Food and flowers produced in a sustainable garden is rich in terms of both nutrients, taste and smell with more beautiful! 

Sustainability is not just a one-time practice; it’s actually a life time process that the lifestyle that promises significant long-term rewards, both with rich in health and cost effective.

Let us discuss some awesome sustainable gardening ideas that you should consider first to experimenting in your garden:

1. Garden Design

When you’re thinking about getting into sustainable gardening, it’s a good idea to incorporate resource-conserving practices in your garden in order to protect your plants and soil. There are many water conservation and soil preparation practices that you may incorporate into the design of your garden to make it greener and reduce its impact on the environment. We will discuss more on reliable water and soil conservation methods which we can practice easily in home garden levels in coming posts. 

Sustainable design is quite comprehensive; when you’re planning out your garden, think about the different plants you want to grow. The different plants from different families will naturally protect the cultivation from the peat and diseases. Natural prevention of pest and diseases are very important in eco-friendly spaces especially in home gardens. The different types of plants grow to different soil depth and it will not compete with each other’s for nutrient intakes. The shadow-loving plants should be planted in the shade of tall, lush plants where they get plenty of shade. Plants that love the sun should be planted in sunny areas where they can enjoy being pampered. Plants that crave water should be planted in moist areas of your garden so they remain healthy with minimal care.

By planning all these points out in advance, you can conserve plenty of resources while nourishing a good, healthy garden.

2. Compost Your Green Waste

The most fascinating tip of the eco-friendly gardening is preparation of organic manure by own- especially by yourself. It is a sustainable gardening practice and composting — the recycling of your food and other natural waste to be used as organic fertilizer. Instead of throwing away your dead leaves, flower heads, and grass clippings, you can compost them into nutrient-rich, organic fertilizer for your garden. This will make your soil richer and your produce healthier and more delicious. In fact, making your own compost is crucial both for organic gardening and for sustainable living. When you compost food scraps, garden waste, and other biodegradable materials at home, you will reduce waste, getting you closer to living a zero-waste lifestyle.

3. Save Your Seeds- produce your own seeds

When your flowers and vegetables have matured, they’re going to produce seeds before they dry out. Collect these seeds and store them in a cool, dry place. You can use these seeds in the next season to grow your plants again. Most of the commercial seed are very expensive in these days in the world. So we can cut that buying cost by producing our weeds in our farm yard and optimize the benefit and the enthusiasm of gardening. 

4. Use local varieties     

Select some local varieties those are grow in your area for your home garden in first years. They will grow naturally in your garden without any more effect of cultural practices. It’s easier to grow and sustain these plants because they’re already suited to the rainfall, soil, and climate in your region. Native plants or the local varieties require less effort and even less water to maintain and grow. Moreover, by growing native plants you will also be helping in the preservation of the birds and insects in your area by providing food and shelter for them. The natural pollination will proceed in timely and harvest will be ready in time by not affecting them in all adverse climatic conditions. 

5. Say No to Herbicides

If need to be a part of an eco-friendly surrounding in our home gardens we should practice the anti-chemical concepts or the minimal use chemical concepts. But it should be a big NO to using herbicides. It’s best to use sustainable methods to maintain your garden. Instead of using chemical herbicides, you should use organic methods or Agronomic Practices to control your weeds and pests. Weeds may be pulled out directly by the soil and just mix them with the top soil or use the pulled weeds as a mulch to your cultivation is a good source of Nitrogen incoming to your soil. Not only this cultivation method giving the more greenish radiant to your plot but also giving some personnel time to you to be refresh and it’s a great exercise for you as well.

6. Protect Beneficial Insects 

Beneficial insects are nature’s gift for a perfect way of controlling pests without using harmful chemicals. These insects eat up caterpillars, mites, aphids, and other bugs that consume plants, and the best part is that they’re completely harmless to pets and people. The life cycles or any phrase of a life cycle will be destroying automatically by the beneficial insects mostly. So we have to do a very little on pest controlling. All we have to do is to introduce more beneficial insect species to your lovely home gardens and back yards to control everything in norm. We can induce some species of butterflies, most of the dragonfly species, lady bird beetles..etc by planting their feeding plants and host plants in the home gardens. So can you imagine how will be the bio diversity variation inside a little happiness enriched eco system where you are living? 

Healthyliving.lk will discuss more on feeding and host plant species in our future post of “How we are going to have butterflies to our home garden?”