What do plants need to grow?
Sun, dirt, water. Much is made of positioning a garden so it gets at least 8 hours of sunshine. People are quick to hook up sprinklers or find rain barrels to keep their gardens watered. But what about the dirt? How can you affect this third element of gardening?
First, test your soil. It’s easy–many colleges, universities and county seats have soil testing labs where one can drop off a sample from your garden and have it analyzed for pH and nutrients. Soil testing ranges from $8-$25 depending on where you live, but doing so can give you a LOT of information about how to fertilize and enrich your soil for maximum gardening benefits. Most labs will offer suggestions for improving your soil, too.
Second, if you garden near a roadside, get your soil tested for lead. Lead was added to fuel until 1990, leaving a heavy residue from exhaust concentrated beside roadways. If you’re stuck against a street, it’s best to use raised beds or containers to grow your vegetables and avoid lead contamination. Lead is heavy and concentrates in an area and several studies in other countries have shown the extent of roadside contamination from auto exhaust. And tires are made with lead wheel weights for balancing. These lead weights often fall off and end up in roadside ditches–leaving lines of lead contamination criss-crossing our country. (On a happy note, Congress is working on banning the use of lead in wheel weights, thus eliminating this source of lead contamination.)
Third, don’t blindly spend money on that Evil Blue Chemical (AKA “MiracleGro”) to make your tomatoes bodaceous this season. The best soil additive? Compost. Any decomposed natural substance will make your soil more nutritious for plant growth, hold moisture better and allow for the best air circulation for root growth. Compost will add structure to sandy soil and break up heavy clay. Compost does NOT smell and is NOT toxic–it’s dark, crumbly and earthy-smelling. If you aren’t into making your own compost, you can buy it nearly anywhere these days.
Fourth and finally, all gardens benefit from the addition of worm poop. Worm poop (AKA “Worm Castings”) provide the very best fertilizer for plants. Rich in nitrate nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, worm poop is the digested dead plant matter that worms eat. Worm poop as fertilizer does NOT smell, will NOT burn out your plants and will NOT harm anyone since it’s totally nontoxic.
Eco Lassie knows that your pet is part of your Eco Family and you want to take the same careful care of them that you do the rest of your loved ones. As you make your summer vacation plans, what will you do with your pet? Will you get a house sitter for Fido, or kennel Fifi when you leave on your jaunt?
Now that it’s July, gardeners across the U.S. are starting to get a little nervous. This is the time of year when things get stressful, when harvests are looked upon with fear, and when every trip to the garden is filled with danger.
Yes, Eco Warriors, this is the time of year when, if you don’t visit your garden twice a day, your zucchinis will morph from cute little squashes into monsters that are heavy and could do serious damage if used on a baseball field.
Enviro-Girl heard on the news that people in Wisconsin are encouraged to keep an eye out for deadly blue algae–a bluish tinted plant growth that occurs in lakes and rivers that is extremely toxic to people and animals. Algae blooms are encouraged by fertilizer runoff from farms and lawns–phosphorus, an ingredient added to kick-start growth, was the target of a recent state ban on fertilizers with phosphorus and the subject of a new proposal: banning detergents using phosphorus. Washington State, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Michigan, Vermont, Minnesota, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York and Indiana have bans on detergents with phosphorus.
As you can probably imagine, Recycla is passionately committed to doing her part to save Planet Earth. She is always trying new things, whether it’s sampling a new product or testing a tip before she posts it here.
