Jan 27 2008
Commonsense Organic Gardening Tips For Everyone
You don’t have to be Martha Stewart in order to benefit from organic gardening tips, whether you are growing a flower garden or just a spider plant in a pot. Most home owners are stuck with lawns on their property and are legally responsible for them. With commonsense organic gardening tips, you can know what you can do with your lawn or whatever your property has that will have less of a negative impact on the environment.
Leave It Lay
Whenever possible, leave fallen leaves and grass clipping in your yard or garden. This might sound odd, but this is one of the easiest organic gardening tips to practice. Not only does the rotting leaves and grass clippings make excellent organic compost, but you will not be contributing to filling up already crowded landfills with bags of lawn clippings or fallen leaves.
Choose Native Species
Another commonsense organic gardening tip will make your gardening smarter and not harder. Choose to grow only species native to your area. Find out what you can about the plants growing on your property. Are they invasive species or are they native? And if you have a bare patch of earth to till, native species will take less water, food and effort to grow.
If you do decide to eliminate an invasive species, you need to remove it by hand or by shovel, not by herbicides or weed killers. This will not only more effectively eliminate the species (by getting rid of the roots), but it you will not risk poisons being accidentally added to the public water supply through runoff from your property.
Choose Natural Repellants
Bugs are always going to be a problem in gardening, but please never resort to synthetic pesticides. It’s a bit like killing a mosquito with a bazooka. With a little study and minimum research on the Internet, you can find what natural herbs to plant to keep bugs away. You can also use sprays you make yourself.
When you can, encourage native predatory species that prey on your plant eating bugs. This means being tolerant of bats and frogs, as they eat a lot of bugs. Ladybugs eat aphids and spiders also eat a lot of bad bugs. By encouraging birds to your garden, you will also encourage them to eat bad bugs.
With commonsense organic gardening tips, you can relax letting nature take it’s course. Perfection is in imperfection at times, especially with gardens.
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