Niki Jabbour, author of The Year Round Vegetable Gardener, and Growing Under Cover was in the Globe & Mail recently, teaching Globe readers how their gardens can help fight climate change, by making their gardens peat-free and becoming converts to the no-dig movement.
“I stopped digging my gardens three years ago,” she says, adding that her soil (which was sandy) is now darker, dense with organic matter, and holds moisture much better. This has the added benefit of preventing the release of carbon that was previously stored in the soil, and which is disrupted and released by digging.
Peat bogs, which are under serious threat around the globe, store vast amounts of carbon, and if gardeners can do their part to preserve them they will be making a serious reduction in their carbon footprints!”
Gardening with ‘Garbage’
Look at used household items from a different perspective. Newspaper and cardboard can be turned into effective weed barriers under mulch. Empty yogurt containers poked with drainage holes make perfect starting pots for seeds. Even used coffee grounds and crushed egg shells can become earth-friendly fertilizers.
When you add paper, rip it into small pieces. Whole potatoes, onions, corn, carrots, etc. are slow to compost, cut them small before adding them to the compost bin. Improve your soil and feed your garden naturally with compost you made from kitchen scraps and garden clean-ups.
Keep leaves out of landfills! Every year about 8 million tons of leaves end up there. Another reason: leaves help the grass. Leaves are full of nutrients, including nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium which improve the soil's health. Those nutrients are being returned to the soil - but only if you use a lawnmower to cut them into small pieces.
If you leave the leaves on the grass, it will exclude light. And then the grass won't be able to photosynthesize. Eventually, it would die under a thick layer of leaves. Shredded leaves can also be piled into garden beds. Leaves are a resource - and not a problem!
Don't stop composting in winter! The material will freeze and then thaw, come spring. This way you have lots of material to create an earth-friendly garden in a couple of months.
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