From something as specific as saving your amaryllis bulbs to general gardening philosophies, these fine gardeners weigh in with their favorite sustainability tips.
Linda Vater
Save the Amaryllis!
Amarylli?
Go to this YouTube video to hear it straight from Linda’s mouth!
No pressure to have these beautiful flowers bloom on cue again next Christmas — you can always go shopping again for that. Linda’s tips let us know how to keep these huge bulbs as interesting foliage containers with the bonus of surprise blooms in summer!
Erin the Impatient Gardener
Chop and drop!
Erin explains and demonstrates in this YouTube video.
She uses last fall’s foliage to supply this spring’s mulch. No carting away to the compost pile— let the decomposition begin right in place!
Julie Hart, aka Nanny Noo
Garden for where you are, says Nanny Noo! Take advantage of the horticultural conditions that you have, and make the garden that will thrive in those conditions.
PS. Keep a jug by the sink— your container plants can handle a little coffee, tea, or grime mixed into their water.
Following Nanny Noo on Instagram is the opposite of all the things that are bad about social media. Just do it.
Coffee Time!
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OR! Becoming a member of I’m into the Garden too!
I will send you some LH Gardens gear if you become a member!
Amanda the Ever Hopeful Gardener…
… has a pretty simple message for us. No sprays and no chems in the garden. Not even the ones that are organic or less harmful such as neem oil. She feels strongly that by letting Mother Nature run things, a natural balance will be achieved in her plantings.
Besides that, she just doesn’t mind eating kale with holes is it.
This girl loves her plants, loves welcoming bugs, and loves keeping the chems at bay.
Emma Biggs of Emma Grows
Emma explains sub-irrigated planters to us. This could change so much about the way you raise plants. This system saves time and water!
From the newsletter Grow Pittsburgh, this is a simple visual for a SIP, or sub irrigated planter.
Emma loves her tomatoes, and this irrigation system helps her get these beauties.
Marianne Willburn and Chickens
This girl can talk me into a lot of garden things…
Fresh eggs.
Probably the best manure you can add to your compost pile.
The opportunity to have someone else (or something else: poultry) actually create your compost.
So why wouldn’t we ALL have chickens? Follow this link to a blog post in which I outline why I wouldn’t, but Marianne comes close to convincing me. If she could explain exactly where they would go, and better yet, come build me the coop and the run, I would be in business!
This is from Marianne’s blog. She makes it all seem so bloody easy…
Whoa. She and I talk A LOT.
Bunny Williams
Bunny let me know that she has plans to install an irrigation system from a water tank in her veg garden this season. I am SO excited to know that there is some better way to do this than the way I do it, in terms of aesthetics, but at least I get a lot of my garden watered for free!
Or maybe I should say for the minimal price of hidden but ugly apparati.
Above, left to right you see the awesome cammy painted PVC piping that connects from leader pipes. I have the option to fill one tank and then the next, and when it’s time to pump the water out, the Everbilt sump pump is connected to a series of hoses.
Surely Bunny will figure out a way to have her system look better.
I hope that she creates something more in line with this aesthetic. :)
Tasha Greer of SimpleStead
Tasha’s tip was to have us carve out cultivated spaces from the wild bits instead of managing our properties the other way around. That way, we can try to leave most of our plots of land wild, or at least wild-ish, and only control the bits you need or want to control.
Easier said than done if you live in thickly settled suburbia or if HOA rules apply, but a good gardening philosophy none the less.
Look outside of the perfect order and harmony to see the harmony of nature that Tasha has left behind.
NEXT EPISODE
Richard Hawke and the best perennials from his Chicago Botanic Garden trials.
