The Importance Of Recycling And Composting In The Garden
 (Read 50+ times)
By Glory Lennon
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The seed falls to the forest floor and is covered by the brown, dried leaves. The leaves decompose and enrich the soil providing nutrients to the seed. It rains, the seed sprouts and a tree grows. Eventually its leaves fall onto another seed and the process is repeated ad infinitum. This is Mother Nature’s recycling and composting regimen. Any gardener worth his salt will take a page out of her lofty book and do the same.
The importance of recycling and composting in the garden is too immense not to take seriously. To take these things lightly is to negate what gardening is all about, reconnecting with nature, being part of it and bettering it for all concerned. Don’t believe me? Well, if we did no recycling nor composting our gardens would become, in a surprisingly short amount of time, a wasteland. Ever been to the Badlands of South Dakota? Not much better than that and, no, I’m not exaggerating.
In the spring time we all have to clear out the old tomato vines, the dead flower stalks and crumbled leaves from our vegetable patch, shrub borders and flower gardens. We have all this organic material and nowhere to put it. Nowhere? Mother Nature would be so disappointed to hear you say that. Surely, you can emulate her, use her example and find a better use of that seemingly useless stuff rather than just throwing it in the garbage. Need a hint? It’s called the compost pile.
All that stuff which would naturally decompose on its own will do it that much quicker, more efficiently and neater in a pile of your creation. And really it’s not nearly as tough to do as some folks think. It is as easy as cutting off a corner of your yard, blocking it from view with hay bales or hedges and layering grass clippings, vegetable peels, leaves and flower stalks then leaving this to decompose on its own. No, you don’t have to turn it nor fuss with it in any way. Let the worms and microbial beings do all the work. That’s how Mother Nature does it. Talk about the laziest gardener ever, that’s her!
Dig at the bottom of your pile after several weeks and you’ll find black gold in the form of nutrient rich compost ready to use as a top dressing around plants of all types. It can make poor soil good, make sandy soil less porous, make clay soil less dense, make dry soil more able to retain moisture, make wet soil less so. Miraculous thing this compost, don’t you think? The fixer of all evils, it is. Wouldn’t you like to get in on this? I thought so.
As for recycling other things than just garden waste, I’ll bet some of you only think of newspapers tied with string and aluminum cans crushed and tossed into bins. Recycling those things is indeed important to keep our neighborhoods clean and tidy but in the garden it’s a bit different and much more simple. Did you know shredded newspapers, office papers and even junk mail can be recycled in the compost pile? Well, it can. When layered with grass clippings they work magic together. Too much of one kind of decomposing material isn’t as good as a mix and paper can take the place of dried leaves when you don’t have enough, like in the middle of summer when that grass grows something fierce.
But that’s just newspaper, so what else can you recycle and reuse in the garden? There are plenty of things that ordinarily get tossed into the trash which can be quite useful in the garden. For instance I use plastic yogurt, sour cream, ricotta cheese and ice cream containers as planters for flowers and vegetables in the spring. I also use them as storage containers for seeds, the popsicle sticks I use for markers (yes, that’s recycling too) and to store any leftover additives I use on the soil, like corn gluten, bloodmeal or lime. The plastic containers last remarkably long without deteriorating, keep things waterproof and safe from nibbling rodents in the case of seeds. And when they do break and fall apart tossing them in the garbage, or a recycling center if you clean it before getting rid of it, is no longer wasteful. That “garbage” had a long useful existence long after you ate that ice cream.
Pots in which perennials, annuals, shrubs and trees came can be used over and over again. I give plenty of “excess” garden plants to my friends using these and they do the same for me. The larger ones make handy collecting bins for weeds pulled out and it’s super easy to carry it and dump at the compost pile. You can use them for tools you want to have handy while floating around from bed to bed. They are good for a temporary planter and carrying case when you’re transplanting a delicate plant and wish to keep the root-ball intact.
I’ve used plastic laundry detergent containers as watering cans and one day I had the brilliant idea of making a bird house out of one by cutting a 1 inch wide hole on one side and drilling drain holes on the bottom. No, it wasn’t the prettiest nor the most conventional birdhouse but I hid it within the thick, evergreen branches of a Canadian Hemlock where it was virtually invisible except for the tiny bird family which moved into it almost as soon as I hung it up.
Tiny scrape of yarn and string mysteriously vanish and find their way into nests if left in a net bag and hung in a tree. Wire coat hangers can be devised into a hanger for light-weight pots. An old stainless steel sink makes a great potting bench with legs off an old table. One of my greenhouses is made primarily with old windows from a dear friend when she replaced them at her cottage. Do you see all the possibilities? Gosh, I hope so and there are so many other ways to recycle and reuse.
You have any idea how many environmentalists would give you a huge hug for doing any of this? Heck, even I’ll hug you. Hugs, like garden waste and much of what we throw out, are recyclable too, you know. So, do yourself and the world a favor and recycle, reuse and compost. Before you toss out anything think “What can I do with this other than just toss it?” With a bit of imagination I’m certain you can come up with much more than I’ve said here. Until you do it you won’t know just how important it is and not just to your pretty little garden but all the world with all its inhabitants.
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Author Bio Box: Glory Lennon
 For more garden talk, funny short stories and romantic novel excerpts visit http://www.helium.com/users/32782
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