Some people might ask what the heck gardening has to do with “Green Home Improvements”. I feel that in order for people to feel good about the environment they first need to like it. Once you begin to like the environment you can begin to find ways to protect it. Since most people enjoy the benefits of flowers and gardens, I feel that adding a flower or vegetable garden is a perfect “Green Home Improvement”! If you fast forward a little to the benefits that your gardens will bring you over the next 12 months you will understand why we need good air quality, good soil quality and a good environment in general.

Flower gardens can add beauty to home from March when the first bulbs appear until late fall when the last flowers appear. These flowers and also be cut to add decoration to your dinner table or placed in a vase and used as a gift. Imagine the reward of growing your own flowers and then giving a sick friend or family member a nice arrangement of them? If your planning a nice dinner and you want to spruce up the table a little, some nice freshly cut flowers from your garden will save time, money and a trip to the flower store. With careful planning, flowers can add a smile to each and every day of the year.

Vegetable gardens can provide fresh vegetables for your family from late fall until your last canned jar is empty. Growing up we had a large garden and I can’t remember ever buying vegetables from the grocery store. It was equally a joy to pick fresh vegetables for dinner as it was to open a mason jar in February and enjoy our work from the summer. Imagine a Halloween with your own pumpkins and Indian corn, or the joy of drying out your own sunflower seeds? How about showing your kids how to grow cucumbers and then turning them into pickles with your own dill?

By now you must be wondering how all of this gardening stuff is green. By growing your own flowers and vegetables you have these green benefits;

1. You can provide your family with organic food.

2. You can control what chemicals (hopefully none) that your family consumes when they eat vegetables.

3. You can save gas by saving a few trips to the grocery store for fresh vegetables.

4. You will begin to think about air, soil and water quality and hopefully you will want to protect your soil, air and water from pollutants.

5. The biggest green benefit is that you can use some of your yard space for a garden. Grassy lawns are far from being green since they require gas to mow and chemicals to keep them nice and green. In my opinion the only nice looking lawns are the ones that are pumped full of chemicals. How about a lawn pumped full of nice flowers and vegetables?

6. If you have kids you can teach them how a nice environment can produce beautiful flowers and great tasting vegetables.

Feel free to expand on this this by leaving a comment.

LAWN CARE /COMPOST IDEA

Yesterday we enjoyed a nice sunny 50-60 degree day which felt like 80 compared to the cold winter that we experienced this year. Tired of being indoors we decided to tackle some outdoor projects. After raking our lawn and adding the contents to our community compost pile, I decided to start our own. Once I build it I will post a few pictures in case you want to build one for your yard. In my opinion, having a green organic compost pile is better than sending the waste off to a landfill. As I was finishing my lawn cleaning chores a landscaping company stopped to offer their services. I have this bad issue with timing, had they stopped by a couple of hours earlier I might of entertained hiring them. In hind sight………………… as I type this with a blister at the end of my left index finger I would of hired them in a heartbeat!

ORGANIC FERTILIZER

The landscape company was in the area looking for annual contracts for lawn care including fertilizing. I figured this would be a perfect time to give them a hard time about using harmful chemicals just to make lawns green. Much to my surprise, the company offered a full line of organic lawn care products. Quickly I had to change from giving them a hard time to asking them to write about what they offer so they can submit an article for this blog. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks they can submit a good article on the benefits of organic lawn care products. One of the things that they mentioned was that organic fertilizer cost a little more since it comes from somewhere out west. I’ll have to dig around and see if we actually have any organic fertilizer vendors in the north east since it seems a little wasteful trucking it across the nation. If you are looking to get a head start on your lawn this year hold off for a couple of weeks in order to give me some time to research this a little more.

ACORN PROJECT

Our next project was to collect all of the acorns that the squirrels rejected or for some reason they could not find. In total we have enough to fill a 5 gallon bucket! Once we get another warm day I will dig out our collection of pots from our shed and let my daughters go wild with the acorns. With any luck a few of them will turn into little oak trees that they can plant somewhere. When I say somewhere, I am referring to anywhere other than on our property. For some odd reason our birch trees (except one) all died. We think that their root systems had issues being at or below the water level of our lake. We cut down all of our pine trees because they liked to leak sap all over our cars, dogs and our house. A month ago we were forced to cut down a giant oak tree in our front yard that had a disease. Their is no doubt in my mind that our acorn/oak tree project is a way of repenting for us depleting our property of trees (except 2). Hopefully we will be able to start at least 20 or more trees and plant them in our local state forest where they will be nice and safe.

SAY NO TO SPRUCE FENCES!

One of our other projects was moving around some of our fencing in order to provide and area for a small garden. Looking back 8 years ago when I bought a spruce fence I knew that cedar was a better material but I did not want to spend the extra money. Well now I know that cedar would of paid off in the long run. I noticed that our fence is beginning to show signs of decay and has some issues with termites or carpenter ants. Most of this damage is in the bottom inch or two where the panels came in contact with the ground. Once I completed most of my fence project I noticed that my neighbors fence that was once supported by mine was now falling over. Since this fence never served a purpose and would get in the way of my garden project I determined that it would need to come down. With my neighbors permission and about 5 minutes of my time, I removed 35′ of 5 year old spruce fence. Out of all of her fence posts, only one was not completely rotten below ground level. If you are in the market for a new fence please try a product will provide a longer life than spruce. We used a black aluminum fence in our back yard 6 years ago and it looks as good today as the day that it was installed. There are also a wide variety of PVC fences on the market that carry some rather impressive warranties. If you are bound and determined to use wood spend the extra money on cedar since it does not like to rot and bugs generally leave it alone.