Photo courtesy of churl at Flickr.com.

Are you tired of dealing with an unproductive front lawn? One option is to rip up the grass and replace it with a front yard garden. Check with your neighbors and your municipality first, however, to make sure it’s both acceptable and legal.

It’s up to you whether you want to go with vegetables and flowers; your neighbors probably won’t be upset by a few dozen square feet of peonies, though a plot of head-high corn may be irritating. If you’re worried about how the neighbors will react, we recommend that you stick to tidy crops like onions or peppers, and low-profile, colorful flowers.

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Photo courtesy of ianqui at Flickr.com.

We all know that recycling is good for the environment, but it can be hard to see how our individual contributions matter. Well, consider this: you’re sharing this country with 300 million other people, millions of whom are also doing their part. In 2005, that added up to 1.6 million tons less trash than in 2004, which is nothing to sneeze at.

More recycling means less energy is needed to produce consumer items, and fewer greenhouse gasses are released in the process. All this adds up to energy savings equal to about 11 billion gallons of gasoline. With gas hovering around the $3.00 mark, what country can’t use an extra $33 billion in energy savings?

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Photo courtesy of nod_432 at Flickr.com.

There’s a saying that any plant’s a weed until you figure out what it’s good for, and certainly most of the plants we now think of as vegetables were considered weeds before their value was recognized.

Indeed, we’re just now starting to recognize the value of some plants still classified as weeds. Dandelion leaves, for example, are edible. Mallows, wild mustard, and sow thistle can improve the soil by drawing nutrients up to the surface and releasing them there. Wild radish is an excellent catch crop, because many bugs prefer to eat them instead of domesticated vegetables. Wild fennel attracts beneficial insects. If you get to know your weeds by sight, you can leave these helpful species in place when you find them, and accrue some gardening benefits without even trying.

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Photo courtesy of Bachspics at Flickr.com.

The most delicious potatoes in the world are those grown in your own organic garden, but many of us don’t even try to grow them because doing so effectively can be a challenge.

To ensure a successful potato crop, use only double-certified seed potatoes from a reliable source, and practice green sprouting. That is, thirty days before planting, store your seed potatoes in a dark place at 70-75 degrees. Once they sprout, put them in a cool, bright location (such as on an outdoor windowsill), at 50-55 degrees for about three weeks. When the tubers and sprouts turn green, you can cut them up and plant them, and you’ll end up with an earlier, more vigorous crop.

Incidentally, NEVER eat green potatoes — they contain a natural chemical called solanine that’s toxic even in small quantities.

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Photo courtesy of Genna.Eve at Flickr.com.

One way to harness the power of composting without having to deal with compost piles is by spreading organic matter directly on your garden area as a mulch, and then allowing it to decay in place.

This process is called sheet composting, and is the method used when green manures are employed. On the downside, the process may cause short-term nitrogen loss; however, in the long term it results in higher levels of nitrogen, since less nitrogen is lost through the evaporation that typically occurs as a traditional compost pile heats up. Similarly, fewer nutrients are lost, and the application of fresh material offers a slower release of those nutrients.

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Photo courtesy of fotoshup at Flickr.com.

If you have a big yard and find it more expedient to use a gas powered lawn mower rather than a push reel mower, you can still help the environment by keeping your mower blades as sharp as possible.

Dull blades tear through your grass rather than cutting it, leaving it considerably more damaged than sharp blades do. This makes your lawn less able to resist disease and drought. Plus, sharp blades cut the grass more easily and efficiently, saving on gas, thereby cutting down on pollution. As an attractive side benefit, efficient mowing gets you in out of the hot sun more quickly.

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Photo courtesy of J-Fish at Flickr.com.

The safest, most effective way to remove large insect pests like potato and Japanese beetles from your plants is to pick them off. However, if you’ve got more than a few plants, this can become impractical real fast.

To remove bugs like this in bulk, make use of two common household items: a sheet and a broom. Lay the sheet out next to the row of plants you’re working on, and tap each plant (gently!) with the broom in the direction of the sheet. The bugs will be knocked onto the sheet, where you can inspect them, rescue beneficial insects, and dispose of the critters you don’t want. Do this several days in a row, and you’ll quickly reduce the population of unwanted garden invaders.

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Photo courtesy of Old Shoe Woman at Flickr.com.

While many varieties of ladybug beetles are popular with gardeners because of their beneficial effects, some are downright nasty. One example is the Mexican Bean Beetle, the classic ladybug-gone-bad, which can wipe out a bean crop in next to no time.

One way to keep them away from your beans is to plant small crop of soybeans, which they seem to prefer, away from your main bean crop. When their little yellow larvae show up, pull up the soybeans and remove them from you garden, along with their hungry hangers-on. If you can, destroy the larvae by immersing the soybean plants in water.

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Photo courtesy of roujo at Flickr.com.

Tappening is launching an ad campaign targeting Coca Cola by dumping thousands of used plastic bottles at their office. The goal is to encourage people to use tap water instead of plastic bottles, because water bottles use non-renewable plastic and result in very wasteful pollution during their transportation. I love it - an ad campaign for tap water!

More than 25 million tons of plastic packaging are sold in the U.S. every year, and less than 5% of that plastic gets recycled. Imagine 500 Yankee Stadiums filled with trash that wont break down or decompose for 10,000 years. Even when plastic bottles are recycled, they’re often recycled into lower and lower quality products before being thrown out.

Since recycling rarely creates a closed loop, you can do good for the earth by not recycling - instead, your could stop buying plastic bottles and choose a reusable steel flask to carry around your drinking water. And when you do get some plastic bottles, here are 10 clever ways to re-use the bottles before recycling them.

Click here to see our 27 ounce stainless steel bottle at the Clean Air Gardening online store.

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Photo courtesy of sbpoet at Flickr.com.

While garden pests like rodents and birds can be crafty, they’re really not all that smart, because they trust their instincts instead of their intelligence to keep them safe. You can play on that by using inexpensive items they’ll avoid on sight.

For example, rabbits are (justifiably) afraid of snakes — so a few lengths of garden hose laid out in the garden patch can deter them. Similarly, you can discourage crows from chowing down on your seedlings and young transplants by erecting a row of bamboo stakes, connecting them with string, and tying a few pieces of aluminum foil to the string so they’ll flap in the breeze.

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