When the daily temperatures rise, many of us think in our farms and gardens. The consideration of some fundamental problems in advance pays off if the action begins.
A hot topic is new these days, a form of sustainability that tries to restore natural processes by reducing the human influence on the country. The reconstruction can occur in every scale, from an entire ecosystem to a meadow to a small back yard patch. A limited but increasingly popular approach is “no-Mow May”. People try to offer the habitat and food for pollinators of early spring and simply let their grass grow this crucial month. For practical comments on the reconstruction of the garden, see nrcm.org/blog/rewilding-our-homes-in-maine. Learn more about the repetition on a macroscala at Rewilding.org and]rewild.org.
Regardless of whether we get our yards again or not, we are often encouraged to plant local species these days. Since the natives are adapted to the local conditions, they make a farm more sustainable. They not only require less irrigation, but are also more attractive for pollinators and are more likely to survive without many pesticides and fertilizers (even in bad soil) and more resilient in view of our increasingly unpredictable and extreme weather. Maine Audubons Native Plant Finder, Mainenative Plates.org, offers many options, while the non-profit Wild Seed project also has a good list, wildseedproject.net/blog/comprection-plant-list.
Maintaining a healthy soil is of fundamental reason for a sustainable garden or a sustainable garden. In East Asia and are not confused with common earthworms, these “jumping worms” have spread locally at alarming speed in the past ten years. They exhaust the top a few centimeters of the soil of its nutrients, which leads to a decline in plant covering as well as the mushrooms, vertebrates and invertebrates that depend on it. In the absence of approved controls for jumpworms, the best strategy is to avoid them. The strategies include bare root plants, careful attention when sharing systems and asking for jumping worms when buying soil in loser filling. Further information can be found at maine.gov/dacf/hp/horticulture/jumpingworms.shtml and btlt.org/jumping_worms.
As with every new undertaking, the achievement of greater sustainability in your garden or garden will benefit from a thoughtful strategy. Adjusting the daily practices would be the next step as we will take into account in a future column.
David Conwell is a former history teacher who belongs to Brunswick's sustainability committee and the Climate Lobby of the Advocacy Organization Citizens Citizens.
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