Sustainable gardening helps protect the environment and conserve resources. By practicing it, gardeners can reduce their impact on the planet while still enjoying the benefits of outdoor gardening.
Being sustainable can allow you to avoid polluting, reduce your water usage, improve your garden’s soil health, attract more pollinators, and increase the biodiversity in your garden. There’s no good reason you shouldn’t incorporate sustainable practice except being unaware of it.
How to Plan Sustainable Garden
Worry not; if you have yet to learn how to raise a sustainable garden, this short guide will teach you how.
1. Assessing Your Garden Space
Start with the drawing board and sketch out your garden. After that, assess it. Some of the things you should note are how much sunlight does your space receive? Is the quality and composition of your garden’s soil enough to grow the plants you want?
After determining the sunlight and soil, it’s time to check the local climate and weather conditions. Does it snow heavily in your region? Does it rain frequently? Thankfully, all the answers to these questions are one search away.
Once you know all these pieces of information, select the ideal plants that match the conditions of your garden space. If you have no idea where to start looking, check what are the native plants in your region and country.
Of course, you can choose to plant non-native, but native plants are easier to have as they often require little maintenance and are already accustomed to your property’s environment.
2. Choosing The Right Sized Greenhouse
Once you’ve assessed your garden space, you’ll know what you can plant in your yard. But sometimes, the space you have isn’t enough, or the local climate isn’t ideal for the plants you want. If that’s the case, you might want to get a greenhouse—and be sure it’s the right size.
I’ve taken inspiration from a lovely 6×8 greenhouse to create my final garden layout, which I think will work really well in my outdoor space.
6 x 8 Halls Black Popular at South West Greenhouses
As you can see, the greenhouse is built in a very sunny area, and you should imitate that. Doing so will ensure that your plants get enough sunlight. You should also make sure that your greenhouse is adequately ventilated to prevent heat and moisture from accumulating, which may cause problems for the plants inside. Check also: Patio Umbrellas Made In USA.
3. Incorporate Beekeeping
Beekeeping can be a valuable addition to your sustainable garden, offering numerous benefits to the ecosystem and crops. By fostering a bee-friendly environment, you support the declining bee populations and enhance pollination in your garden. Bees play a vital role in the reproductive process of plants, helping them produce healthier and more abundant fruits and vegetables.
Setting up beehives in a secluded corner of your garden can provide these essential pollinators with a haven, ensuring their continued presence to aid in your garden’s productivity. Additionally, you’ll be rewarded with a supply of delicious, raw honey. This natural sweetener can be used in various culinary delights or sold locally to support sustainable gardening efforts.
4. Utilizing Water Conservation Strategies
If you live in an area with a lot of rain, consider installing a rainwater harvesting system. It can save you a lot of water in the long run, and it’s better for plants because it’s soft, free of harmful chemicals (not always, though), aerated, and nutrient-rich.
Next, install drip irrigation. This watering system delivers water directly and slowly to the roots of plants, which can save water and reduce nutrient loss. If you can afford it, get an automatic drip irrigation system, which can save you even more time and water.
Once you have your water collection and irrigation systems, you can start mulching. Mulch helps retain and maintain soil moisture by blocking sunlight, which insulates the soil and prevents water from evaporating. As a bonus, mulch adds organic matter to the soil over time.
5. Preparing Organic Soil
Now it’s time to get serious about sustainability in your garden. You can start by dedicating an area for composting. You can build your compost bin or buy a commercially ready one. Once you have one, you can let kitchen scraps and other organic waste you generate compost there.
Remember, there are some kitchen scraps you can’t add to your compost bin. A good rule of thumb is to avoid anything oily, like meat, fat, or dairy.
While your compost is ‘cooking,’ you can use organic fertilizers and amendments to enrich your garden’s soil. You can buy these materials at big box stores or hardware stores. You can also use manure, bone meal, fish meal, peat moss, and bark mulch.
If you have some empty space in your garden that you’re saving for future plants, plant cover crops like grass, legumes, and broadleaf plants. Cover crops prevent weeds and other invasive plants from taking over your garden and enrich your soil over time. They improve soil structure, water infiltration, and organic matter content. You can easily remove them once you have plants ready to fill the space.
6. Adding Native And Adaptive Plants
As mentioned a while ago, planting native plants is beneficial to your sustainable garden. They’re great for your garden because they attract local wildlife, reduce soil erosion, improve water quality, require less maintenance, and look great.
If you don’t like the native plants in your area, you can plant adaptive plants that have already adapted to your local climate. Adaptive plants are also hardy and easy to maintain, and they offer some of the same benefits as native plants.
Adding native and adaptive plants to your garden space makes it biodiverse. A biodiverse garden is more resistant to pests, has better pollination, is more beautiful, has healthier soil, and attracts more wildlife.
7. Doing Companion Planting
Companion planting is a way to deter pests and attract pollinators without using pesticides. To do this, you plant different types of plants together that have a beneficial relationship with each other.
For example, marigolds are said to repel aphids and cabbage moths, so you could plant them near your cabbage plants. Nasturtiums are also said to repel pests, and they attract pollinators, so they’re a good choice for any garden.
You can also use companion planting to enhance pollination. For example, you could plant flowers with different scents that attract different pollinators. You could also choose flowers that bloom at different times to keep pollinators coming back to your garden.
Companion planting is a great way to reduce your reliance on pesticides and herbicides, and it can also help create a more beautiful and productive garden.
8. Harvesting Sustainably
To keep your garden healthy, you should practice sustainable harvesting. This means only harvesting what you need and doing it in a way that doesn’t harm the plants. You should also give them time to regrow before harvesting again.
To avoid wasting your harvests, learn how to store and preserve them properly. Some gardeners often utilize and transform their garage to use a small corner of it as storage space for their produce.
Conclusion
Those are the steps you need to take to have a sustainable garden. Yes, it can be a lot of work in the beginning. However, it can save you a lot of money and time in the long run. And if ever you plan to plant vegetables, you’ll definitely enjoy having organic meals.
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