Shawna Coronado - No-Waste Organic Gardening: Eco-friendly Solutions to Improve any Garden

Growing a garden that includes a gorgeous outdoor room, filled with recycled materials, resale shop finds, and reused items for little to no cost, is easy. It is all about the very sustainable process of searching your community for treasures and keeping those items out of the landfill by finding smart ways to reuse them.

Eco-friendly Solutions to Improve Any Garden

SHAWNA CORONADO

No-Waste Organic Gardening is the concept of breaking traditional rules to discover a clever way to reduce waste by reusing and recycling in the garden. Preventing waste is a wise lifestyle choice because your efforts can save money, and the best no-waste organic gardening tips are easy, smart, and economical.

My garden has always been a hotbed for green and organic garden ideas. With a limited budget, I am constantly on the lookout for alternative ways to build a useful, beautiful, low-cost, and low-input garden. Throw in a bit of creativity and art, and you have an environmentally responsible, delightfully whimsical, yet eminently practical garden that enhances your homes value and brings joy to the neighbors.

People often ask me where I get my ideas. Without a doubt, my grandmothers wereand continue to bemy greatest inspiration. They were queens of reducing waste in the garden and in all aspects their lives; reusing old nylon pantyhose to tie tomatoes to stakes, using rotted sheep manure to fertilize, and using recycled tuna cans to deter cutworms. They showed me that having a healthy, organic, environmentally friendly garden is possible, and with very little financial investment. Soil, seeds, sunshine, and hard work can outwit just about any life challenge, according to my grandmothers.

One thing you learn from grandparents who grew up in a wartime erathey wasted nothing, and they saved everything. The folks of their generation were the ultimate reducers, reusers, and recyclers.

Globally, humans generate 2.6 trillion pounds (nearly 12 trillion kg) of garbage annually. Much of that waste comes from organic matter, such as food. This resource could easily be turned into billions of pounds or kilograms of compost to use in agricultural growing, yet it is discarded.

When we use creative and environmentally friendly garden ideas, we help the environment by keeping items out of the landfill for longer. But more importantly, by converting waste products into useful goods, you can grow a healthy garden at no-to-low cost. Ultimately, growing a no-waste organic garden is about wellness: an overall state of well-being not just for you, but also for the entire planet.

Making your own compost or garden soil is the first step to help you grow your own organic herbs, vegetables, and fruitand in the process, you help reduce solid waste and you can feed your family with fresh, chemical-free food. The statistics vary on municipal solid waste disposal. Globally, food is half the waste thrown into landfills. Food, combined with yard trimmings and paper, is more than half of what is thrown away in many parts of the world. If we used yard trimmings and brush to make healthy, organic compost, we could prevent millions of tons of garbage. Paper and cardboard can be reused in the garden in dozens of ways because they compost as well. As newspapers are now printed with soy ink, which is safe for the environment, it makes sense to reuse as much of it as possible in your garden adventures.

Upcycling wine bottles, old tools, and old stone into a creative and beautiful path for a dark area on the side of your home is the ultimate no-waste green garden tip. Plant herbs and vegetables in the wall garden, and you have the opportunity to grow organic food for your family.

An Additional Benefit

While saving money is very important to gardeners, there is also a byproduct of using good environmental practices in building a beautiful garden: friendship.

In my front garden, I built a place that can be loved and appreciated by hummingbirds, pollinators, and neighbors alike, thanks to no-waste gardening techniques. By building a rainwater cistern to collect free water, using organic fertilizers, planting a garden filled with pollinator- attracting plants, and utilizing soils I have made myself, I am practicing sustainable growing ideas, which help both my family and the community stay a little greener and healthier.

Community is about caring, and theres no better garden tip than splitting a pass-along plant to share with a neighbor, or sharing the bounty of all those extra vegetables you grew from seed to help build the bond of companionship with your friends. By taking the step to be a little greener and healthier, you set an example for others in your community to help teach organic stewardship. Neighborhoods the world over are primed and ready for no-waste gardening love, because when you build something out of love, others want to share in that experience.

The no-waste gardening tips youll discover in my book range from soil creation and upcycled outdoor living ideas to pest management and quick tips on starting seedsall as natural as I could make them. Many of the ideas are based on what my lovely money-saving grandmothers taught me while I was growing up on the farm. Making a difference with your familys environmentally friendly lifestyle is the first small step to making a difference for a better world. Start building greener and healthier gardens today.

Keeping an item out of the landfill is especially rewarding when you translate it into an artful no-waste garden idea.

Butterflies love perennials, such as butterfly weed and black-eyed Susans, but they also adore annuals, such as zinnia. Planting a few big zinnias all around your beds is a wonderfully easy gardening project.

I have done everything I can to make my front garden visually interesting, as well as natural and environmentally friendly. For example, my water fountain is made from 100-percent post-consumer recycled products: its actually a 500-gallon cistern that collects rainwater off my roof as its water source.