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| Rugosa Rubra Shrub Rose with bee |
“Going Green” is the current buzz phrase.
There are things you can do to go green that make sense and others that only make money for the seller. When a green idea is marketed, research instead of letting emotion or guilt drive your decision. Some ideas sound good but if you know “the rest of the story”, they don’t make environmental sense.
How do we take all the past, present and future ideas and garden responsibly? Give some of these a try:
No-till vegetable gardening:
1. Till once every few years when you want to mix in animal fertilizer.
2. Use paper from your shredder as garden mulch.
3. Shredding newspaper with soy ink gums up the machine. Tear it in strips or lay down several thicknesses of full sheets and top with a few clods of soil. Immediately wet all the paper completely and it will form a great mulch to keep out weeds, let water through and cool the soil. And, it decomposes.
4. Don’t use slick paper because it isn’t porous.
The jury is still out on if there are negative side effects on food stuffs from composting colored paper or colored ink.
Compost:
1. Composting doesn’t have to be highly expensive, labor intensive, or ugly.
2. Throw all non-animal kitchen garbage in the compost pile.
3. Buy coffee filters made from recycled paper and compost both.
I don’t turn the compost, take the temperature, buy worms or layer but I am composting.
The trick with going green, is to start where YOU can start. Don’t fall for the marketing hype that you must buy expensive and do everything perfect to be helping the environment.
Unless you have “your people” do everything to go totally green or it becomes your passion, you will only guilt yourself into never starting because you won‘t think a little is enough.
Start by taking baby steps - little “green” baby steps.
There are things you can do to go green that make sense and others that only make money for the seller. When a green idea is marketed, research instead of letting emotion or guilt drive your decision. Some ideas sound good but if you know “the rest of the story”, they don’t make environmental sense.
How do we take all the past, present and future ideas and garden responsibly? Give some of these a try:
No-till vegetable gardening:
1. Till once every few years when you want to mix in animal fertilizer.
2. Use paper from your shredder as garden mulch.
3. Shredding newspaper with soy ink gums up the machine. Tear it in strips or lay down several thicknesses of full sheets and top with a few clods of soil. Immediately wet all the paper completely and it will form a great mulch to keep out weeds, let water through and cool the soil. And, it decomposes.
4. Don’t use slick paper because it isn’t porous.
The jury is still out on if there are negative side effects on food stuffs from composting colored paper or colored ink.
Compost:
1. Composting doesn’t have to be highly expensive, labor intensive, or ugly.
2. Throw all non-animal kitchen garbage in the compost pile.
3. Buy coffee filters made from recycled paper and compost both.
I don’t turn the compost, take the temperature, buy worms or layer but I am composting.
The trick with going green, is to start where YOU can start. Don’t fall for the marketing hype that you must buy expensive and do everything perfect to be helping the environment.
Unless you have “your people” do everything to go totally green or it becomes your passion, you will only guilt yourself into never starting because you won‘t think a little is enough.
Start by taking baby steps - little “green” baby steps.
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