The Washington Post - 19.03.2020

the washington post

.

thursday, march

19

,

2020

DC

8

critics say. And the way to feed it

is to add organic matter. A

compost pile will keep green

waste on site and, properly

managed, soon provide finished

material for soil amendments. If

you don’t want to go to the

trouble of building and

maintaining a compost pile, you

can keep, shred and store fallen

leaves, which are a valuable

commodity. Leaves on the lawn,

provided they are not too thick,

can be shredded in place and

left; they will disappear by

spring.

Fertilizers

Plants, including turf grass, need

nutrients to grow and thrive. But

synthetic fertilizers exact a toll

on the environment in different

ways. Nitrogen and phosphorus

manufacture requires fossil fuel

energy, which releases

greenhouse gases into the

atmosphere. The leakages of

methane from fertilizer plants

may be much higher than

thought, according to a recent

study by the Environmental

Defense Fund. Methane, though

not as long-lived in the

atmosphere as carbon dioxide,

does more damage, said Joe

Rudek, a lead senior scientist at

EDF.

Although big farms rely on

synthetic fertilizers to grow food

or livestock feed, he said, “there’s

no reason I know of for

gardeners to be buying inorganic

fertilizer.” Organic fertilizers are

available, including products

made from fish or seaweed.

The second harm comes when

fertilizers are applied to

farmland and landscapes, only

for some to be washed into

waterways to the detriment of

receiving bodies of water, such as

the Chesapeake Bay or the Gulf

of Mexico, and their ecosystems.

Maryland law limits the amount

of nitrogen residents can put on

their lawns, restricts the timing

of applications (not in winter,

basically) and permits

phosphorus feeds only if a soil

test shows a need.

Old-fashioned compost tea

was a passive concoction of

compost or aged manure left to

soak in a can of water for a few

days. To day it is more likely to be

a sophisticated brewed organic

product. Home gardeners can

make their own versions by

investing in some equipment

and devoting themselves to its

manufacture. Optimally, a mesh

bag filled with high-quality

compost is placed in a tank of

One of the ironies

of creating the

perfect home

landscape is that

a misguided quest

for an immaculate

lawn and lush

flower garden will

give the

environment a

mugging.

The days when pesticides and

fertilizers were spread with little

or no regard to their collateral

damage, even on us, seemed to

have waned, thankfully. But even

unwittingly, homeowners still

have great capacity to assault the

Earth in the cumulative effects of

chemical sprays and poor garden

practices.

The biggest obstacle to low-

impact, eco-friendly gardening is

our way of thinking, shaped by

ideas that the lawn should be the

main landscape feature, that

every pest and disease needs

eliminating and that there is a

product that will fix all your

problems.

But surely to be a gardener is

to be someone who derives deep

satisfaction from nurturing

nature. We need to contemplate

not only our carbon footprint but

also our greater cost to the

environment. Consider what we

are bringing onto our property

and what is leaving it.

As the arrival of spring gets

our own sap flowing, we offer a

gentle guide to gentler

gardening. (My thanks to the

following horticultural experts:

Ray Mims of the U.S. Botanic

Garden; Fred Spicer of the

Chicago Botanic Garden; To dd

Forrest of the New York

Botanical Garden; Jon Traunfeld

of the Maryland Home and

Garden Information Center; and

Paul Tukey of Glenstone

Museum.)

Soil

One of the great shifts in

gardening in recent decades has

been the awareness of the

importance of the soil, its

structure and its biology, and the

need to cultivate both. This may

have been the sentiment of

organic gardeners all along, but

now we all have a greater

understanding of this hidden

biosphere and its symbiotic

relationship to plants, especially

the way that abundant colonies

of beneficial bacteria and fungi

in the soil help feed plants and

keep them healthy.

Fungicide sprays and fertilizer

salts will harm this soil zoo,

A gentle guide to

gentler gardening

Adrian

Higgins

GARDENING

Home

water and aerated for a day or

two. The ensuing microbe-rich

brew is then sprayed as a soil

tonic to build populations of

beneficial microbes, reducing

the need for fertilizers. Its full

value is debated — some say

compost tea makes plants so

healthy they shrug off diseases —

but almost everyone agrees it

invigorates plants.

Pesticides

The problem with many

pesticides is that they kill

beneficial (or merely neutral)

organisms that you are not

targeting; this extends to

systemic pesticides such as

neonicotinoids or organic

pesticides such as pyrethrins. “I

like to say cobra venom is

organic,” said Forrest, vice

president for horticulture and

living collections at the New

York Botanical Garden.

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