When it comes to growing plants, nature does it best. Humans have tamed and transformed many species over the roughly 10,000 years we’ve been practicing agriculture, which is an impressive feat! However, nature has billions of years of experience ahead of us. The natural cycle it crafted of growth, death, decomposition, and regrowth, has sustained life on this planet since the first microbes skittered around in the sea.
When we talk about ‘sustainability’, what does that mean? The literal definition relates to the ability to maintain a process continually over time.
When we translate this to our garden, it relates to our ability to plant into healthy soil every year, and harvest from our gardens with the knowledge that our soil can provide healthy produce season-after-season. Though gardening is inherently ‘green’, sustainable gardening is about cultivating produce in a way that supports a healthier future.
Many home gardeners were taught that the best way to garden is to kill off every weed, use a generic or chemical fertilizer, or to grow the same product in the same soil every year. What they don’t tell you about this method, is that it removes the ‘nature’ element from your garden. Biodiversity is the key to healthy, living soil. Many gardens create these micro-monocultures, where one plant is grown in one spot during the season, and the soil sits fallow for the rest of the year. This makes general maintenance easier but doesn’t engage the natural soil cycle.
Your garden is an ecosystem that needs support! Rather than fighting nature, you can work alongside it for a healthier garden that sustains life.
Gardening for the Future
Forward-thinking when planning your garden primarily includes the steps that you take in the current season to take care of your crops in the next. Though some plant matter will break down in your soil and return nutrients and organic matter, it often isn’t enough to bring the needed level of fertility back to feed your plants, or to support your soil biology. While you’re planning your garden layout this year, use your layout from last year to think about what your soil might need.
Where you planted potatoes, peppers, or tomatoes last year, your soil will be especially drained because these plants are heavy feeders. Peas, beans, peanuts, and clover, are all legumes that act as nitrogen-fixers in the soil, meaning that they pull nitrogen out of the atmosphere, and sequester it in the soil to be used as a food source for plants. Plant these crops where your heavy feeders were planted last year. Creating a diverse garden with healthy plants that work together will support healthier soil biology, decrease weed pressure, and support healthier soil development throughout the season!
Farmers use the principle of crop rotation to support healthier soil by changing what they plant on the same soil from season-season. This is effective on a large scale, but can be beneficial to gardens of any size!
During the off-season for your garden, we recommend priming your garden beds by adding a layer of organic compost. Compost provides rich organic matter that can protect garden beds from erosion and harsh temperatures, as well as reviving microbial populations.
Diverse microbes are the most important factor for healthy plant growth, because a microbe interacts with every input your plants consume. Many also perform functions in the soil including disease suppression, root development, improved water capacity, and residue management, all of which positively affect plant development.
Working With Your Ecosystem
Nature grows it best, so why reinvent the wheel? The easiest way to healthier crops is through healthier soil, and healthier soil is made by following your soil’s natural rhythms. Not only are you supporting healthier plants, but you’re ensuring long-term health in your soil.
Look at a prairie, and how it changes throughout the year. The season starts with smaller plants popping up in the springtime. Some of these will grow into tall grasses and flowers over the season, but many others have a short life cycle. These plants will feed microbes by releasing nutrients called ‘root exudates’ which specifically provide nutrients to microbes to encourage them to help the plant grow over the season. Increasing the microbial activity in your soil can encourage plant development, and bring your soil back to life. They will also break up this top layer of soil, making it easier for bigger plants to expand their root systems once those seedlings start to develop.
There are usually several ‘waves’ of plant growth from Spring though late Fall, with plants going dormant or producing seeds just before the weather is inhospitable. This results in constant plant growth all season long. You can take this principle and apply it to your own garden!
In early Spring, you can start seeding plants outdoors to act as the first crop of the season. Peas, spinach, lettuce, radishes and arugula are cold-hardy and are great in the springtime, these plants can even become sweeter and tastier after they’re hit with a light frost. Check the Farmer’s Almanac for your growing zone to see when your recommended planting date is for these crops. Once your evenings are consistently above 50 degrees, it is safe to get your heavier feeding plants in the ground!
Harden off seedlings before planting them in the ground. You can continue to grow lettuces and lighter feeders between your bigger crops, or you can experiment with companion plants, which bring specific benefits to plants in your garden. For example, growing basil next to tomatoes not only keeps the bugs off your tomatoes, but the two plants work together in the soil to make each other more colorful and delicious.
Once the fall starts to approach, plant another round of spinach, lettuce, radishes, and, or any other cold-hardy lighter feeder that you prefer. You can also plant a final round of nitrogen fixers like clover, alfalfa, or peas to put nutrients back into your soil. Once these plants expire for the season, you can leave some of the green material to become incorporated into the soil over winter.
This not only prevents your soil from going bare, protecting it from erosion and improving water-holding capacity, but feeds and protects microbes, earthworms, decomposers, and other beneficial soil life. Bugs and microbes are so important to healthy gardens, but often get left out when thinking about the soil health equation (often because when we think of ‘garden bugs’ the first thing that comes to mind are pests). The idea of living soil goes beyond your plants but talks about the relationship between the life above the soil, and the life within it.
Minimizing Negative Impact
When considering how to garden alongside nature, an important piece of that conversation involves minimizing as much negative impact you can, and creating healthy soil to create a better world. Being a gardener involves acting as a good steward to the land that you’re growing in. There are a few easy things you can do to minimize your impact, like recycling your seedling pots or seeing if your local nursery has a reuse program. Compost your garden waste instead of throwing it out, by participating in community composting initiatives. Limit water waste by applying water right where your plants need it. For some gardens, an irrigation system not only makes plant care easier, but can reduce water consumption while making your regimen more effective.
Do you rely on pesticides because you are constantly battling pests like squash bugs and cabbage worms? Are weeds a never-ending nuisance that leaves you reaching for round-up? The convenient option for gardeners isn’t always the best one for the long-term. Though a chemical solution might be the easy response, there are other ways to engage in pest management that use the benefits nature provides, and can minimize your impact.
Attracting predator species is fairly simple and is a natural method of pest management that can also make your garden more beautiful! For example: if you struggle with squash bugs, try attracting their natural foe the damsel bug by planting a small crop of alfalfa or clover. These don’t need to be planted in your garden bed but can easily be grown in a container and placed next to your problem areas.
Gardeners can also rely on trap crops to reduce pest pressure. Trap crops are plants that you essentially ‘sacrifice’ to the pest to make it easier to keep them off your preferred produce. Some gardeners will give the crop to the pest, while others use it as a way to corral pest species and make management easier. Sticking with the example of squash bugs, the Blue Hubbard Squash has shown to be an effective trap crop for this common pest. In the case of squash bugs, these insects should be killed on the trap crop (ideally when they are still in egg form, as they are easy to see and squish).
Sustainability goes beyond just creating less trash. It is a conversation about how to best care for your garden and the planet. When you grow for a better future, you will make a better garden for yourself today, and a better world for the generations to come. Purple Cow Organics is proud to have sustainability at the core of our mission, and we are excited to continue to expand local sustainability initiatives in the years to come.