Organic or not, every garden has weeds, so you’ll have to control them. Whether you zap them with vinegar solution or pull them up by the roots, one rule of thumb in keeping up with them is to never let them go to seed. One weed can produce as many as 250,000 seeds. Popularity: 12% [?]
In addition to push lawnmowers, electric mowers make excellent eco-friendly choices. They’re relatively quiet and have no emissions. If you want to go even greener, you can even buy a solar-powered electric mower — so nothing ever has to be burned to provide the energy to mow your lawn. Popularity: 4% [?] We mentioned about how Yahoo! loves us in a previous blog post. And today we’re thrilled to tell you how they have interviewed Clean Air Gardening on their Official Yahoo Store blog. The post is about how we use video on our site to teach site visitors about our products. Check it out! Popularity: 7% [?]
The ideal mowing height for your grass varies according to its type; you can consult this site for more information on the best mowing height for your grass. Whatever the grass, for a beautiful lawn you should let the clippings lie after you mow, so they’ll provide nutrient-rich fertilizer for the remaining grass. Popularity: 4% [?]
a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/foodteacher/685798293/” title=”photo sharing”> If local rules allow, clotheslines are a great way to save energy and fight global warming. They’re cheap and use naturally abundant solar and wind energy to dry your clothes. I get frustrated at people in my apartment building who don’t use the clothes line available to us to hang out their clothes, especially during the summer. In such a hot, dry climate, our clothes dry out in less than an hour during the summer. Even blue jeans! This is about the same time my neighbors spend drying all their clothes and wasting energy. Popularity: 4% [?]
If you decide to pull up your weeds, make sure get the roots too; otherwise the weed will simply grow back. This may require you to dig them up with a specialized tool if the ground is dry. However, if your lawn is moist from a recent rain or watering, in most cases you can get the roots out along with the weed by grasping the weed at the base and pulling upward steadily. Don’t jerk the weed, or it might break. Popularity: 4% [?]
Organic gardening starts with healthy soil, so it makes sense to take care of your “soil food web” — the mix of life, from the microscopic level on up, that inhabits, aerates and develops your soil. Adding compost and compost tea are excellent ways to keep the soil food web happy. Popularity: 4% [?]
If you discover tent caterpillars feasting on your trees, don’t use a chemical pesticide to kill them. It may be effective, but you might end up dealing with a resistant strain the next time. Instead, prune away the affected limbs and burn them, if you can, to kill the infestation. Popularity: 5% [?]
To save water in your garden, try using soaker and “ooze” hoses in combination with timers rather than spraying the plants directly. This puts the water down near the roots, where it needs to be, and has the added benefit of helping you avoid mildews from wetted leaves. Popularity: 4% [?]
The Informed Reader, a blog that is part of the Wall Street Journal online, writes about the important role that trees play in urban areas to decrease average temperatures, to decrease pollution, and to absorb water and rainfall that would otherwise have a bigger impact on city drainage systems.
If you are interested in the topic, don’t miss our comprehensive article about the environmental benefits of trees on the Clean Air Gardening site. I am a firm believer that trees provide huge benefits to both urban and rural areas. That is why Clean Air Gardening matches donations of up to $10 to the National Arbor Day Foundation on our checkout page. We have been responsible for planting more than 17,000 trees since we began the program about a year ago, and the number is about to go up when we make our latest donation at the end of the month! We also really like the organization, Trees for the Future, and American Forests. American Forests has this awesome program where you can buy saplings that come from famous trees, so that you can grow a direct descendant of that tree. I bought my dad a sapling from the Austin, Texas Treaty Live Oak, a tree that is around 500 years old. I also bought him a cool Elvis tree too, that comes from one of the trees on the Graceland property in Memphis. Popularity: 6% [?] |
