greener gardening practices

I think that these days all of us are try­ing to go green in many aspects of our lives as we try to reduce our demands on the world’s resources. Gar­den­ing has the shiny green patina of com­muning with nature and being kind to plants and ani­mals that make up this green earth. But so many mod­ern gar­den­ing prac­tices con­sume big piles of the resources that we depend on, and oth­ers con­tributes sig­nif­i­cantly to envi­ron­men­tal pollution.

Since it’s early in the year, the time that we many of us make res­o­lu­tions, I’ve out­line some areas that I’ll be try­ing to work on in my own gar­den. I’ve gath­ered them together below and cat­e­go­rized them into the three big Rs of going green: reduce, reuse, and recycle.

Reduce

  1. Fewer annu­als: The semi-twisted logic of plant­ing annu­als, nur­tur­ing them for six months, and then yank­ing them out when they’re all bloomed out to replace them with other sea­sonal annu­als to enjoy for maybe just a few more months is start­ing to bother me. It’s a cer­tain amount of work on my part, and the energy that must go into the pro­duc­tion of bed­ding plants adds to what guilt I feel. I doubt I’ll give up on annu­als entirely. But I’ll try to rely on them less, mostly as tem­po­rary fillers until some­thing with year-round inter­est can take over. Alter­nately, a lot of annu­als reseed, so that you can plant them one year, and they’ll return reli­ably in future years. Ally­sum, zin­nias, melam­podium, celosia, pop­pies and many orna­men­tal grasses are just a few of the plants that reseed reliably.
  2. I’ll think twice before I pull out a plant. Is a plant really ill or dying? Or am I just bored with it?
  3. When I do decide that a plant has to go, I’ll work on using more plants that are bet­ter adapted to my envi­ron­ment. Liv­ing in San Diego, this means using more Mediterranean-adapted plants and plants native to the area. This will reduce needs for sup­ple­men­tal water, plant food and insect control.
  4. It’s more work, but I’m start­ing more plants from seed these days. Ship­ping a packet of seeds across the coun­try takes way less energy than ship­ping the bed-full of plants that many pack­ets will give you. Direct-sowing the seeds into the ground can save on trans­porta­tion costs for pot­ting mix and pots. Another bonus is that you can treat your­self to plenty more vari­eties than would be avail­able at the local nursery.
  5. In addi­tion to buy­ing more seeds to grow, I’m sav­ing more seeds from the plants I already have. For species and open-pollenated heir­loom plants, the seed should come true to the orig­i­nal. For hybrid plants, the seedlings can be an adven­ture, some of them com­ing look­ing like their par­ents, oth­ers com­ing out to be inter­est­ing mon­grel mixes.
  6. Grow more edi­ble plants. There’s the push to buy locally grown pro­duce, fruits and veg­gies that have been grown within a hun­dred miles of your house. Why not grow food your­self and drop the trans­porta­tion costs to zero? I’ve got var­i­ous herbs over­win­ter­ing in the gar­den, and seeds for var­i­ous plants are now in the ground or already ger­mi­nat­ing: kale, beets, ama­ranth, miner’s let­tuce, plus what­ever plants of romaine and New Zealand spinach will come back from seed. Sev­eral of these have ter­rific orna­men­tal value, so they’ll get to live with the more dec­o­ra­tive plantings.
  7. I want to learn more about how to pre­pare the edi­ble plants I already have. For instance, the cat­tails grow­ing in the pond in the back yard are often listed as being one of the sta­ples of the native Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion in cen­turies past. Some of the local suc­cu­lent pop­u­la­tion of the genus Dud­leya also were used for food, and in fact one of the species is called edulis. (With a name like edulis, it’s gotta be good!) Maybe those and other plants in the gar­den could be relied on for occa­sional inter­est­ing meals. Even if some of them might be a lit­tle too weird for reg­u­lar con­sump­tion, eat­ing, like gar­den­ing, ought to be an adventure.

Reuse

  1. It’s not per­fect hor­ti­cul­tural hygiene, but I try to reuse pots when­ever pos­si­ble. Unfor­tu­nately I usu­ally end up with more gal­lon pots than I’ll ever be able to use a sec­ond or third time. Many nurs­eries will take them to reuse. And then I found that our almost-local native plant out­fit, Las Pil­i­tas Nurs­ery, will also donate 10 cents to the Cal­i­for­nia Native Plant Soci­ety for each pot that is returned for them to reuse. (That would explain the Lowes and Home Depot pots that I’ve seen at the nursery!)
  2. For those sit­u­a­tions when I decide a plant isn’t right for one spot, I’ll try to see if there’s another loca­tion in the gar­den where it would work bet­ter. Or may I know some­one who’d be dying to do some plant rescue…
  3. When I buy seeds, I some­times end up with more than I need. I’ll share them with inter­ested folks, and it could be an way to get more native or drought-tolerant plants into people’s gardens.

Recy­cle

  1. Stores often have last week’s bulbs on sale for not much money. If they’re bulbs adapted to the cli­mate, this is a great way to save some of these plants from the dump­sters. And if you’re into dumpster-diving or cruis­ing the back alleys of gar­den cen­ters, you might pick these up for free. Most of the nar­cis­sus in my yard came through these mark-downs.
  2. I’ll have to admit that I’m a failed com­poster. I just don’t have the magic com­bi­na­tion of time, space and dis­ci­pline (in all hon­esty it’s mostly the dis­ci­pline where I’m lack­ing). But the city for­tu­nately has a greens recy­cling pro­gram for those of us who don’t have this down. Kitchen scraps are already mak­ing it into the bins, and I’ll try to be be even more fanat­i­cal with any­thing green in the gar­den that would compost.
  3. If you’re not doing it already, recy­cle lawn lawn clip­pings into mulch. Last sum­mer I con­vinced John to put the onto the veg­gie gar­den instead of dump­ing them in the city greens recy­cling. This way they’re still get­ting recy­cled, only they don’t have to be trucked to the land­fill to be turned into mulch.
  4. Even if you can’t find some­one to reuse your plas­tic pots, there are some emerg­ing uses for them that might become avail­able to more parts of the coun­try. I’ll keep my eyes open in case there are inter­est­ing local recy­cling oppor­tu­ni­ties, like the one where pots would be melted down for “land­scape tim­bers.” (The link goes to an great pro­gram in Missouri.)
  5. Bro­ken clay pots make great cov­ers for drain holes in pots around the gar­den. They allow the water to drain out, but also reduce the amount of pot­ting soil that you lose.

Like many new year’s res­o­lu­tions, I know I won’t stick to them fanat­i­cally. One of the things that draws me to the plant world is the sheer vari­ety in all the cool plants that I can invite into my gar­den. I’m a col­lec­tor at heart, so say­ing no to a new and inter­est­ing spec­i­men is one of the hard­est things for me to do. I know that that’s going to be one of the hard­est goals to stick to. Hope­fully, putting it out in a pub­lic space like this post will pro­vide me a lit­tle gen­tle pres­sure and reminder of what I intended to do.

January 07 2009 07:13 pm | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: •

6 Responses to “greener gardening practices”

  1. Philip on 08 Jan 2009 at 10:29 am #

    Hi James,
    I like your gar­den res­o­lu­tions.
    I love plants( or at least plants that i want) that reseed, like CA pop­pies.
    I think it is so great you have Min­ers let­tuce. I saw that Larner seeds offered it. It grows wild here in an unlikely place, the alley behind the shop­ping cen­ter. Nature tri­umphant!
    Lots of good ideas here in your post.
    All the best,
    Philip

  2. lostlandscape on 09 Jan 2009 at 12:42 pm #

    Philip–Yes, the Cal­i­for­nia pop­pies can be great reseed­ers. I still have a patch of orange­ness from some plants I grew a decade ago. It’s a sure sign of spring when they bloom. Hope­fully you have some yourself!

    The miner’s let­tuce is another great reminder of spring, though in a much qui­eter way. They’re so dec­o­ra­tive with their tiny lit­tle flower heads set into their round leaves–and deli­cious to eat, too!

  3. Susan (garden-chick) on 09 Jan 2009 at 4:11 pm #

    Good res­o­lu­tions, but I don’t think I could stick with the “don’t replace, just because I’m bored with it” one. I have a small gar­den, and gen­er­ally, any new addi­tion means bid­ding farewell to some­one else.

    You’re luck to be close to Las Pil­i­tas — I love their web­site (although they can be pretty hard­core with some of their advice)

  4. lostlandscape on 10 Jan 2009 at 9:12 am #

    Susan, yes, I think that one would be the hard­est for any­one with a bit of curios­ity! I’ve been known to pur­pose­fully under­wa­ter or oth­er­wise neglect a plant that I don’t like any­more so I can ratio­nal­ize remov­ing it–“See? It looks awful. I’ve got to pull it out…”

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