Life Wants to Grow!

Creating an eco-friendly garden can seem daunting, but it can also be very easy. Just focus on ways to attract pollinators, improve your soil’s health, use water wisely, remove invasive plants, and add more native plants to your garden. Isn’t planning next year’s garden what the winter months are for?

Support Pollinators

I remember when we could grow so many zucchini on one plant, it became a running joke in the gardening community. In recent years, planting two or even three plants gets me the same amount as before. I even had to resort to self pollinating because there weren’t many pollinators in my garden.

Here are four ways to attract more pollinators to your garden:

1. Grow perennial plants that pollinators like, such as milkweed, coneflower, yarrow, and lavender.

2. Let some of your herb plants—such as basil, Russian sage, and dill—bloom to attract an abundance of bees and other pollinators.

3. Add a bird feeder or a bee hotel to your garden landscape.

4. Grow native plants to attract native beneficial insects and pollinators.

Take Care of Your Soil

When I started growing food, I didn’t know I would also become a soil farmer. Soil is a critical part of growing food. It isn’t just dirt! There are many components that make up good soil, including insects, earthworms, and much smaller microscopic organisms such as bacteria and fungi. Healthy soil = healthy plants!

Here are five ways to add nutrients to your soil:

1. Cover crops bring so many added nutrients, such as nitrogen, to your soil during the cooler months, when we are not growing crops.

2. Adding organic matter, such as compost, to your soil gives your garden a rich source of the beneficial organisms and nutrients your garden needs to thrive.

3. Adding amendments such as worm castings or leaf mold to your soil can add macro nutrients.

4. Adding plants that mine the soil deeply, such as comfrey or daikon radish, helps aerate the soil and improve water absorption.

5. Mulching takes longer to break down than other soil-building methods, but it also helps preserve your soil quality. 

Use Water Wisely

There are several ways to use water wisely in your garden. Harvesting water is the easiest that I’ve found, and you can achieve it several different ways. Here are three I recommend:

1. Using a slanted roof can be helpful when collecting rainwater.

2. Adding a rain barrel attached to your shed or gathering area can help provide valuable water access. You can even link barrels together using overflows to store more water.

3. A repurposed IBC tank can hold almost 250 gallons of water. Just make sure to cover the tank to reduce the amount of light, which will decrease the growth of bad microorganisms.

Remove Invasives and Plant Natives

Growing native plants can attract pollinators and beneficial insects to your garden well before the flowers on your crops bloom. Once they are established, this diverse array of insects in turn attract their natural enemies such as ladybugs, beetles, flies, praying mantis and wasps. By the time your crops start to flower and fruit, your pest control efforts are already in full swing.

Unlike native plants, invasive species aren’t as beneficial. These species alter the natural habitat and compete with native plants and organisms for resources.

Here are some common invasive plants to look out for:

• Honeysuckle: Invasive Amur Honeysuckle is easy to spot because it’s the only thing that still has its leaves, and it exists in every neglected corner of this city. This plant offers no benefit to wildlife here and will crowd out possible pollinator spaces surrounding the garden.

• Winter Creeper & English Ivy: These are ground covers that will climb fences and trees and escape into the garden. These two vining plants often grow together and form a dense mat, making it impossible for other plants to grow through.

Here are some native plants to add to your garden:

• Butterfly Weed: This is a great mid-season pollinator that tolerates dry conditions and attracts a range of pollinators, especially butterflies. 

• Mountain Mint: This mid-season pollinator plant attracts a huge range of pollinators to the garden, including a variety of bees and wasps. Why do you want to attract wasps to your garden? Because they will predate on caterpillars and other pests commonly found to be eating your plants!

• Foxglove Beardtongue: This early-season pollinator is great for bees and acts as a nice border plant. It’s important to have a variety of nectar sources at all times of the year so there are plenty of insects around to pollinate your early season veggies.

As you plan next year’s garden, don’t forget to incorporate some of these principles of eco-friendly gardening!