Gardening / Wildlife

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1001 Ways to Save the World

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Gardening & Wildlife

Avoid peat-based composts

Tip 801	Why do it?	Do What? and How?	Is it Easy? Is it Green?
When buying compost for your plants, garden or seed beds, avoid peat-based composts. Use NON-peat products.	Peat products come from natural bogs and harvesting peat in this way is unsustainable. Peat takes about 1000 years to grow for every 30 centimeters of peat bog. Harvesting peat removes thousands of years of unique ecology every year a bog is harvested.	What: Peat bogs are totally unique in ecology. Plant species which exist in peat bogs exist nowhere else on the planet, including insectiverous plants. Peat bogs are huge CO2 sinks. Peat is harvested on a large-scale from a rapidly diminishing and unique natural environment, especially in Ireland. Peat bogs are the northern hemisphere's equivalent of the tropical rain forests...... unique on the planet, under threat and mostly destroyed by greed. One name to watch here is Bord na Mona,,,,, the Irish Peat marketing organisation. If you see this company, you can basically forget that product as environmentally unsound. How: Use quality recycled compost instead. Peat is great but quality organic compost is just as good.	Green: Easy:

Run a compost Heap

Tip 802	Why do it?	Do What? and How?	Is it Easy? Is it Green?
Make compost, Compost the waste from your kitchen and garden and re-use it in your garden.	Composting kitchen and garden waste saves landfill, provides a ready source of organic material to improve your soil.	What: You can compost any organic materials really, but basically stick to only vegetable, garden waste. How: Build or buy a compost bin. If you are really serious, get into "red worms" to digest and produce your compost for you. Remember, decomposition will only start when suffient nitrogen is present, so you need to add some strater free nitrogen (manure is a good way). Lots of links on this	Green: Easy:

Create a “natural garden” as part of your garden

Tip 803	Why do it?	Do What? and How?	Is it Easy? Is it Green?
Create a “natural garden” as part of your garden	Gardens act as a food "supermarket" for many visiting and breeding animals. Your garden is part of the biodiversity of the planet. Help improve it. Also, they are the place where most children make their first contact with the natural world and are often one of the only places where adults encounter wildlife apart from on a television screen. Recent research has shown the following: 1. Contact with the natural environment improves children's mental and physical health. 2. A child's self discipline can be improved by 20% by simply having views of trees and vegetation outside their homes. 3. Children are more likely to play in a green environment than on hard tarmac	What: Allow parts of your garden to be natural. How: 1. Create a pond - or just let an upturned bin-lid or a sunken washing bowl fill with water. Make sure ponds have one sloping side to allow creatures an easy way out and add lots of plants. 2. Brighten your garden with flowers that provide pollen and nectar for bees, butterflies and other insects all year round. Many garden plants are as good for wildlife as wild flowers. 3.Leave a pile of dead wood in a shady spot. Any wood will do, though large logs are best and can make a home for anything from beetles to other useful mini-beasts. 4. Build a compost heap - it will save you money! It will also shelter creatures like slow worms that eat slugs. 5. Provide food and water for birds all year round. ·Relax! Don’t feel you have to be too tidy. Leave some areas undisturbed. Allow a patch of grass to grow longer. This will encourage the wild flowers; provide shelter for small mammals and food for some butterfly caterpillars. 6.Garden in a sustainable way to help protect wildlife and the environment worldwide. Use fewer chemicals and no peat; choose wood from sustainable sources; recycle all you can and save water.	Green: Easy:

Be Organic, with or without vegetables

Tip 804	Why do it?	Do What? and How?	Is it Easy? Is it Green?
Use Organic practices in your garden even if you’re only growing ornamental plants	Organic gardening is the best practice for preserving the biodiversity of land, including your garden. also means less work!	What: Don’t use chemical herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers, unless they are approved by soil association or recognized organic regulatory organization. How: use no chemicals, let the balance establish itself. Don't over-garden...... let things go a bit wild.	Green: Easy:

Create and maintain Biodiversity in your garden.

Tip 806	Why do it?	Do What? and How?	Is it Easy? Is it Green?
Try to make your garden as biodiverse as possible BUT favour indigenous species.	By making your garden as diverse as possible you can encourage a partial restoration of the habitat that should naturally exist and partly repair some of the damage we do.	What: Plant many species in your garden. Try to plant native species of plant and tree in your garden How: Get as many local plant species as possible into your garden, and create an environment where many plant, insect and mammal species can find a habitat. Water is a vital component in this.	Green: Easy:

Beware planting PLAGUE species

Tip 805	Why do it?	Do What? and How?	Is it Easy? Is it Green?
Some plants become plagues. Don't plant them	Plague species destroy indigenous species' habitats by being dominant and squeeze out native plants.	What: Plant indigenous species NOT imported species which may vreate plant plagues. Example is rhodedendrons in Ireland West of Britain/Scotland or Hotentot fig in Spain. How: Just stick with native species, preferably from your own area.	Green: Easy:

Encourage wildlife in your garden

Tip 807	Why do it?	Do What? and How?	Is it Easy? Is it Green?
Encourage birds and other wildlife and a balanced insect population	Providing habitat and feeding opportunities for birds, mammals and insects provides a vital lifeline to species which are under huge pressure from our urban development. If many people do it, it may be possible to establish a symbiotic relationship between the urban dweller and our natural world.	What: This takes time and patience. You have to start at the bottom. The 3 things most essential are habitat, food and water. Insects are really the basis for much of this. Plant species which are favoured by bees and butterflies, leave plenty of debris in your garden for insects to overwinter. For the same reason debris such as branches and piles of leaves provide habitat for small mammals. make sure there is always water available. When you have established an interesting insect population you will attract insect eating birds and mammals. Helpring birds in cold winters with feeding is also OK but do it in extreme conditions, to give a chance of survival, not as a means of entertaining yourself. How: Plenty of advice on the details of what you need to do on the internet,	Green: Easy:

Control plaugues and infections with organic methods

Tip 808	Why do it?	Do What? and How?	Is it Easy? Is it Green?
If you have to control an insect of fungal infection then use natural methods or the least environmentally damaging methods	Most modern pesticides kill all insects, friend and foe alike, They create an imbalance between pest insect (foe, now dead) and predator insects (friend, now also dead). When there is a new infection, as there always is, you end up having no natural defenses because you killed them last season! Its a bit like misuse of antibiotics.	What: Natural methods exist for controlling fungus and insect plagues. How: Many insects can be simply controlled by using complimentary planting of plants which repell some insects. More sophisticated is the intrioduction of predator insects into your garden (lady birds eat aphids, for example). You can do this by yourself of contact your local Organic organisation for advice on where you can obtain either predator insects or "green" chemicals such as bio. fungicides Really severe problems can be controlled by the use of plant.based insecticides like pyrethrum, made from the petals of the pyrethrum plant. It is totally biodegradable has a short "resident" effect. Very powerful, green BUT a LAST resort.	Green: Easy:

Plant Trees from Local stock

Tip 809	Why do it?	Do What? and How?	Is it Easy? Is it Green?
When planting trees, use stock from locally obtained seed	Because of the minute adaptation of the species to your locale. Trees propagated from local stock are minutely genetically adapted to the environment in your area. By planting trees from local stock you help maintain general biodiversity AND the trees have a better chance of survival and sucess because they are already better adapted to conditions. Strange to say that trees from seed collected from a 100 year old oak down the road is slightly different from those take from a tree of the same species 200 kms away.... but indeed its true.	What: When you buy trees, ask the grower where they are from, and buy only stock from locally collected seed. How: Check the source or better still, gather your own seed and propagate them yourself. Its dead easy.	Green: Easy:

Tip 810	Why do it?	Do What? and How?	Is it Easy? Is it Green?
Protect Old Trees very especially	Trees are at their most important when old because of the other species dependent on them. Dead trees are actually at the Apex of biodiversity because they are colonized by lots of insects, mosses, lichens, etc. Old trees also carry important genetic material which has made them survivors of the local and current environment. They need respect.	What: Look after old trees very carefully, even when they are dying or dead. They are their height of their ecological importance. How: Be careful with pruning, get a pro. Make sure old trees are given preferential status and if possible, gather seed from failing trees and propagate them or give them to a nursury to do it for you.	Green: Easy:

Protect old trees especially even when dying

For every old tree felled you need to plant 100 young trees

Tip 811	Why do it?	Do What? and How?	Is it Easy? Is it Green?
From a CO2 point of view, and in general, for every old tree felled you need to plant 100 young trees to compensate	A young tree does not absorb Co2 with the same efficiency as a mature tree.	What: A german forestry institute study has shown that it takes 100 young trees to substitute the CO2 absorbtion of a single mature tree. How: If you cut a mature tree, you need to be prepared to plant 100 young trees to compensate for the CO2 absorbtion of the old tree.	Green: Easy:

Use "complimentary" planting

Tip 812	Why do it?	Do What? and How?	Is it Easy? Is it Green?
Use Complimentary planting to avoid diseases and infestations	You can save yourself a lot of work, pesticides and hassle by understanding this ancient technique.	What: Planting certain species together, keeps pests from attacking your harvest or "pride and joy" in the garden. How: Complimentary planting is a huge subject and its OLD and it does work. You need to read about it and try it out. You got slugs and snails, plant garlic, for example. There are tons of links on the internet.	Green: Easy:

Don't use slug pellets

Tip 813	Why do it?	Do What? and How?	Is it Easy? Is it Green?
Use beer traps or ash for slugs rather than slug pellets	Slug pellets contain metaldehyde which is poisonous to birds and mammals. Don't use it.	What: Use complimentary planting, beer traps, soot or ash to protect your plants from slugs. metaldehyde slug pellets kill birds, small mammals How: Just DON't but them, whatever it says on the package.	Green: Easy: