Gardening to Reduce Climate Change

Roberta's garden (from DigginFood blog post)

It's the middle of winter.  It's cold outside.  There is snow everywhere.  Of course, I'm thinking about gardening.  The thought of green things growing, the smell of soil and flowers - it is like dreaming of going to a vacation paradise.  It's pretty good for the earth too.  Growing your own vegetables is certainly a way to avoid buying plastic enclosed vegies at the store.  Picking vegetables and fruits in your own yard takes less carbon than buying ones that have been trucked to your city and composting your fruits and vegetables will reduce the amount of produce that is thrown into landfills where methane - a heat trapping gas 23 times more potent CO2 - is formed.  I'll probably be sharing lots of posts on my efforts to grow vegetables this year, starting with this one that has some ideas for how to reduce the carbon impact of our gardens.  Here are a few ideas gleaned from The Union of Concerned Scientists website.  I know nothing about the organization, but the points in this linked article "The Climate Friendly Gardener" certainly make sense.  Here is a summary of their climate friendly gardening tips:

1. Choose low emission garden products and practices (use push lawn mowers, and avoid fossil fuel based fertilizers and pesticides, and peat based potting mixes).

2. Grow cover crops at the end of the season to keep the soil covered and replenish nutrients

3. Plant trees and shrubs.  They suck up CO2

4. Compost your food and garden waste

5. If you have a lawn, avoid those fossil fuel based fertilizers, mow high and water during the cool times of the day to reduce the negative impact of watering.

Here's a nice graphic on the flow of CO2 in our atmosphere:

And here is another plus to gardening - it is a way to reuse containers that are lying around!  Here is a link to a blog post from DigginFood of the garden that grows behind Roberta's pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn (pictured at top).  This garden is planted on top of storage containers.  I love that she has used old cans for planting  and great big plastic containers for her raised beds.

What fun reused items have you used in your garden?