Ecological Gardening

The earth feeds man - man feeds the earth. The more careful our attitude towards her, the more she gives us: healthy vegetables, sweet fruits and magnificent flowers. How can we learn to act at the same time with nature so that our children will remain healthy, fertile land?

Learn the principles of crop rotation

Among the Slavs, this agricultural technique was called multifield. It has been tested for millennia and scientifically substantiated in the 20th century. The bottom line is to correctly alternate planting crops on the site - this way you can restore the balance of trace elements in the soil and increase its fertility.

Living in one place from year to year, the plant takes some substances from the soil, depleting it, and oversaturation with others. Now it is more expedient to plant a crop that suits the "renewed" soil composition; there will be several such cycles, then you need to pause. A field that is not sown to make the land "rest" is called pure fallow. If the land is not sown for more than a year, it is called a deposit.

The easiest way to state the principles of crop rotation is as follows: first, the most "voracious" and hungry for nutrients plants are planted on the site, then those that can live and bear fruit on lean soils.

Unlearn digging

As strange as such a proposal may sound, do it - and the earth will be grateful to you. Deep digging destroys the soil structure and disrupts the activity of small animals and microorganisms.

You yourself more than once regretfully discovered that you chopped off a live earth frog or worm with a shovel: this can be avoided by loosening the ground with a flat cutter at a depth of several centimeters. This is enough to cut weeds and oxygenate the soil without destroying a single living creature.

A flat cutter replaces a shovel, hoe, rake - and at the same time causes minimal damage to the soil and vegetation.

Sow siderates

To lower the acidity of the soil, as well as to enrich it with nitrogen and organic fertilizers, green fertilizers - green manures - are plowed into it. Usually these are legumes: sweet clover, lupine, clover.

Siderata attract pollinating insects to the site with their bright flowers, deliver useful substances from the lower layers of the soil to the upper ones; some - "scare off" pests and diseases (nematode, scab and others).

Green manures are planted in the aisles of the main crops, in the off-season or during the "rest" of the soil. It is good to combine sideration with crop rotation.

Mulch the soil

Mulched soil is well protected from overheating and freezing, retains most of the water and looseness of the structure.

• Organic mulch can be represented by sawdust, needles, humus (for example, from the aforementioned green manures), nutshells. Over time, it needs to be replaced, as birds and rodents can take it away.
• Inorganic mulch is black film, garden nonwovens, gravel, expanded clay. If you use coarse gravel or other stone, you provide the so-called "dry watering": dew condenses there in the morning.

For originals, there is a colored mulch - brightly colored wood chips. It looks very aesthetically pleasing under ornamental plants.

Arrange warm beds

A bed is called warm, arranged directly on the compost. They begin to make such structures in the fall (so as not to use fresh organic matter, due to which fungal diseases of plants can develop). High sides are made of slate, poles, edged boards or beams, they fill the space with compost, branches, leaves.

In the spring, arcs are installed and the covering material is pulled (most often the film is to create the effect of a steam room). Place such warm beds in the direction from north to south so that the plants receive maximum light during the day.

In a warm bed, seedlings can be planted 2-4 weeks earlier than in the ground: the temperature there is 2-3º C higher than that of the environment.

Not to interfere in the affairs of nature, but to help her is the philosophy of every skilled gardener.