Sustainable Gardening is one of the coolest terms I ever heard. It means gardening without causing any harm to the earth and its inhabitants. As a steward of the planet, it is an excellent environmental practice when you preserve, protect, and nourish the environment without causing any damage. Utilizing the soil in an eco-friendly way is a way of giving back to nature. If you are interested in sustainable gardening, the five sustainable gardening ideas below may help you.
Designing the garden
If you think about sustainable gardening, it is best to include practices that can conserve resources to protect the soil and the plants. You can incorporate soil preparation and water conservation into your garden design. It can make your garden greener while reducing its environmental impact. When you plan the design of your garden, think of the plants that you want to grow.
Plants needing a significant amount of sun must be planted in the sunny area, while those that crave for water must be in the moist areas of the garden. The plants that are shadow loving should be positioned in the areas where they can possibly get a lot of shades. Doing this will make the plants healthy with a need for minimal care.
Composting organic fertilizers
Using compost as your organic fertilizer is a powerful method to grow your fruits and vegetable. You will yield delicious and healthy food while protecting the soil. You can recycle food, scraps, weeds, and leaves to produce the fertilizer for the soil.
Just place all these in a large bin. Make sure to put small holes on the side of the container. Let it stay for several weeks to break down before putting them to the garden. Practicing this way, you will get less waste, low cost, and fewer chemicals.
Collecting the seeds
Some flowers, fruits, and vegetables grow mature, they will produce seeds before they dry. You will be able to economize if you will collect the seeds and store them in a dry and cool place.
The next time you grow your plants again, you don’t have to buy new seeds. You can quickly start by saving seeds of tomatoes, beans, and others.
Conserving water
A gardener that aims for sustainability knows how to conserve water. You can do it if you store the rainwater. Just have a rain barrel where you can keep it. You can also use recycled water for your plants. This is the water which you can use for the second or third time.
You can develop a rain garden by producing a terrace to store the rainwater. In the idea of sustainability, the gardener’s goal is to use natural sources of water, such as rainwater or river. If you make a garden in a place where rain is rare, the direct watering tool can be used. An automated tool like sprinkler is fast to use, but you may wastewater.
Mulching the garden
Mulching is a good practice for sustainable gardening. It is an eco-friendly act because you use garden waste to make a mulch. You cover the soil with the mulches like leaves, bark, woodchips, and other organic materials to preserve the moisture of the land and improve its condition.
Doing this regulates the temperature of the soil and prevent freezes and thaws that may heave the plants out from the ground. Mulching your garden makes the soil healthy. Mulching is also an effective way to conserve water.
These five sustainable gardening ideas are easy to do. You can try doing it in your backyard farm, and you will save time, energy, resources. These methods are also suitable for backyard farms with animals such as ducks and chickens.