THE GARDEN SCOOP: Earth Day 2022
It’s Earth Day, April 22nd, and the Garden Scoop wanted to share a little history of how it started and pass along some green ideas.
Earth Day was founded in 1970 as a day of education about environmental issues. The idea was brought forth by Sen. Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin at a conference in Seattle in the Fall of 1969 and took flight from there. By 1990, Earth Day went global with 140 nations participating.
The Garden Scoop’s favorite magazine, Northern Gardener, published 7 ways to Garden Greener. If you haven’t signed up for their magazine, give them a look! I’m sharing their ideas and mine too!
- Nourish your soil with what’s on your property. In other words, rather than haul those leaves to your local yard waste site, spread them on your garden beds for mulch. I use my spent ornamental grasses for mulch in my vegetable garden. I then break them up and leave them.
- Compost your other plant debris, last winter’s perennial stalks, spent annuals, etc.
- Pick perennials. Once established they use less water and fertilizer than annuals.
- Put your plants where they want to be. Check the tags for sun/shade conditions and place appropriately. Remember the Master Gardener mantra, “Right Plant, Right Place”.
- Plant in layers. Mix trees and shrubs, groundcovers and annuals, vegetables and perennials in layers. Plants are like (most) people, they are healthier in communities. Bonus, those communities help wildlife too.
- Water wisely. Use soaker hoses, water in the early morning, certainly not during the heat of the day. Make sure you’re not watering the sidewalk, or your automatic sprinkler goes on during a rainfall! Group water hungry plants together and get a rain barrel like The Garden Scoop talked about last week. Rainwater is like liquid gold.
- Save seeds. Get this, seeds will adapt to soil conditions where they are repeatedly grown! Those annuals you planted last year (that grew so well) produced great seed for this year. Some of the easiest seeds to save are beans, marigolds and sunflowers. My sister gave me a bunch of seeds a couple years ago and I simply threw them in a spot in my garden, not really expecting much. Boy, was I surprised when I got gigantic marigolds!
- And... let nature control pests. Welcome diversity. Insects, birds, wildlife. They will help take care of the “bad actors”.
I’m also sharing a really great article on recycling plastics better. This is something I struggle with and likely you do too. Check it out. Recycle plastics better.
Here’s to celebrating our beautiful planet,
