Community garden with clean energy project

How to make your community garden “greener”

What’s more green than gardening? Not much, but you might be surprised to find out that there are ways you can make your gardening even greener, from how you water it to the tools and supplies you use to keep it healthy. Gardening is a science and a hobby, and it can provide food and zen, but they also require a lot of work. Here are some tips for making your community garden as green as possible.

Collect your own compost

Your table scraps are often full of nutrients that your plants will enjoy, even if you don’t. Avoid letting your leftovers become trash in a landfill by creating a compost pile for a nutrient-rich soil. Besides, you’ll save money on fertilizer. Recycling the food you’re done with to make more food is one of the best ways of getting something from nothing we can think of.

To do this, you can create a compost box or simply designate an area of your garden. Fill it with soil and encourage your community to add their scraps to it. As the compost breaks down, add water so that it’s about as damp as a wrung-out sponge. Don’t forget to stir the pile as new material is added. (You want to mix it into lower layers to help cut down on the smell). The pile will shrink as it decomposes, so there should always be a little more room when you check on it. When your compost is ready, it will be dark, smell like earth, and crumble in your hands. Voila, healthy plant food at no extra cost to you. And you can use it in a variety of ways, such as topping plants, mixing into the soil of your garden, or making compost tea for watering your plants.

Create a water basin

All you need is a few barrels and you can collect water for your garden for free. After your plants are done drinking up the gloomy weather, keep some for later. This saves you the cost of water and helps to put that water to better use than simply letting it flow down a drain pipe. When it’s time to use the water, make sure you water during the coolest parts of the day so that the water can sink deeper into the soil instead of evaporating.

Use non-gas-powered tools

Many gardening tools require a full tank of gas and create plenty of fumes. Probably more than you would expect could make a difference, but they do. In fact, lawn-mowers and other gas-powered tools can contribute a significant amount to greenhouse gases in cities. So try replacing your gas lawnmower with a reel mower. If the extra sweat isn’t an option (or is just too inconvenient), try getting electric tools. Electric mowers don’t produce harmful gases and require fewer repairs than gas tools. And if you use clean methods to generate your energy, such as with a solar panel or windmill, electric tools can go even further. With this combination, you can even make your gardening practices energy requirements net-zero, or very near to it.

Use fewer chemicals in your garden

Herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers are all common in gardening. But there are plenty of natural methods for keeping your garden healthy that don’t use toxins. You can start by dethatching and aerating your lawn. A dethatching rake will do the trick, but you might need to rent an aerator. Luckily, there are electric varieties of these as well. We already talked about making your compost above, which acts as fantastic fertilizer. You might have to do some shopping for natural herbicides, but there are vinegar-based products on the market.

It’s even better with a greenhouse

If you have a greenhouse, you can do even more with all these suggestions. For example, compost piles produce heat as they decompose, and greenhouses often need a heating source to maintain a proper temperature during colder seasons. Why pay for heat when you can let the compost do the work for you? Water basins can also help maintain temperatures during the colder months by retaining heat captured by the sun during the day.

Keeping and maintaining a garden can be extremely rewarding and creates a great place for your community to bond. You learn teamwork as well as an appreciation for the miracles of nature. Hopefully, with these methods, you can enjoy that even more.