A New Take on a Green Thumb

These days, having a “green thumb” can mean something radically different from what it used to. Once it just meant that you were really good at making things grow in your garden, in balcony containers, or in your flower pots. But now it can also mean that you use green, environmentally friendly methods in creating the garden itself.

You can start by using more natural methods to grow your garden, avoiding chemicals as much as possible. Instead of using a lot of fertilizers and pesticides, you would allow the different elements of the garden to work together in a more natural way, letting the genuine ecosystem operate. So you’d see to the health of the soil by making or buying your own organic compost, as well as guaranteeing that there are enough worms in the soil to aerate it properly and further break down organic materials. Making your own compost would have a double function: it would keep your garden and plants healthier, but it would also use up the organic waste from your house, keeping it out of the landfills.

You might also take heed to the health of the soil by practicing crop rotation. This isn’t just for farms with big crops, but is essential for gardens as well. Plants that take certain nutrients out of the soil in one growing season should not be planted in the same spot the following year, or they could starve for those nutrients. Some crops might be grown in one location just to be “plowed under” and build up nutrients for the following year, while other vegetables should be rotated so that what some plants leave behind can be used as nutrients for a different type of plant the next time.

You can conserve nutrients with crop rotation and composting, but you can conserve both soil and water in other ways. Rather than just pouring water all over the garden with a large sprinkler or hose, you might engage in more targeted watering. Planting in raised beds, so that more vegetables can be grown closer together with fewer paths between them, will help reduce the amount of water you need and avoid runoff of the excess. Or if you do plant in the more traditional rows, you can walk up and down along them, watering each plant more directly and carefully.

Even when it comes to pests, rather than using pesticides against them, you might bring in ladybugs or other natural predators that don’t harm the plants themselves. Or you could build birdhouses and put out seed that would attract birds that feed on those bugs. It would also be helpful if you do some study about the various insects that might visit your garden, because certain ones can actually be beneficial to plants rather than harm them. You’d want to encourage those if you can. But if you do need to use a spray, there are organic home-made pest-control sprays, or even organic pesticides that you could use sparingly. You don’t just want to keep your plants healthier, you also want to avoid leeching more chemicals into the soil they’re growing in.

You might think that a garden is automatically green, by definition. But you can make it greener by using more organic principles of gardening that work with nature rather than try to suppress or defeat it. This will produce not just healthier fruits and vegetables that are better for you, but will also help produce a cleaner planet in the long run.