Watch the Hartiverse gardening video here: https://youtu.be/XwGY9yKsRpc
Learn seven eco-friendly strategies to help your garden grow with less effort and greater results.
For more gardening recommendations, consult the following Amazon affiliate links:
Garden Alchemy: 80 Recipes and Concoctions for Organic Fertilizers, Plant Elixirs, Potting Mixes, Pest Deterrents, and More
Vegetable Gardening for Beginners: A Simple Guide to Growing Vegetables at Home
Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard
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Creating an eco-friendly garden helps you to attract natural predators to take care of the pests you don’t want while boosting the natural beauty of your landscape. With these methods you can limit or even eliminate the use of chemical pesticides or other unnatural practices to keep your garden healthy. Here are seven ideas to get you started:
- Plant trees, hedges and shrubs. Planting a variety of trees and shrubs in many different sizes and types will provide food for birds, bees, and other wildlife that are beneficial for your garden. Providing nesting sites for many different types of animals is good for the ecology of your garden.
- Keep the deadwood. Instead of binning it as yard waste, use dying trees or parts of a dying tree as habitat for organisms that keep your garden ecosystem healthy. Fungi, mosses, and insects will attract birds who will eat them. Deadwood is also good habitat for garden snakes. They eat the insects and rodents that would otherwise damage the food plants in your garden.
- Create water features. Bring aquatic wildlife such as frogs to your garden. Frogs eat lots of insects every day as their primary food source. Since they are amphibians, they will stick around to get their daily swim. They’re also a delight to watch and listen to as they make their croaking sounds.
- Designate a place for tall grass. Planting some tall ornamental grasses provides cover for small animals, reptiles, and caterpillars. Tall grasses usually produce attractive tops while the area at ground level creates plenty of places for animals to hide and nest.
- Vary your planting. It’s important to plant a diversity of different types of plants that are native to your area. Check with your local nursery for plants that will thrive in your climate, creating garden spaces that need less care.
- Encourage wildflowers. Some gardeners consider wildflowers to be weeds, but if they are native to your area, they can be very valuable to the ecology of your garden. They also provide food for native insects and butterflies which can encourage pollination of all your plants. Nettles are especially helpful for providing a breeding area for butterflies. Just be sure to avoid touching them with bare fingers as they can create painful stings.
- Put up bird houses. If you’d like more birds in your garden, you can put up nesting boxes on walls, on fences and in trees to provide shelter for birds. Put them up at least 6-7 feet off the ground to keep them protected. It’s also a good idea to put up bat boxes, because bats eat hundreds of mosquitoes and other flying pests each night.
The beautiful thing about these eco-friendly gardening practices is that they naturally attract just the right wildlife to your garden, helping you protect against disease and pests naturally without chemical pesticides and fertilizers.
Hopefully this video inspired you to try some of these tips in your own garden. If you have recommendations of your own, feel free to share them in the comments section. Please click like and subscribe. Thank you and happy gardening!
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