Save The Bees And Get Yo’ Gardening On This Spring
With spring upon us and summer right around the corner, there is no better time to make plans for gardening and to start making small changes to increase sustainability and lower your carbon footprint. Even if you lack the space to plant a full vegetable garden, that shouldn’t stop you from trying to grow herbs, vegetables or flowers on a smaller scale. The first and most economical reason being that you can save money and a trip to the store when you need ingredients, but secondly and more importantly, with a small effort you can help bees and other pollinators thrive in your neighborhood.
If saving bees is your mission, it is easy to plant a diverse garden of flowers and herbs that bees love that can easily live in pots or flower boxes on a balcony or porch if no garden space is available. Some bee friendly flowers you can plant include lavender, sunflowers, cornflowers, marigolds, aster, poppies, zinnias, cosmos, hollyhock and black eyed susans. If you’re also wanting to keep fresh herbs at your fingertips, you can plant mint, rosemary, thyme, sage, cilantro, chives, basil or oregano- all which keep bees very happy and buzzing along.
Even with no green thumb at all, you can still help the bees by fashioning a small pond of fresh water so that on extra hot days they have a place to stop and take a drink. Local pollinators will be thanking you.
If you find yourself in a space without a balcony or outside space available, windowsill gardens can still produce a whole lot more than you’d think! Of course growing things like microgreens, tomatoes, lettuce, peppers, green onions, chilies and sprouts can easily be done from seed packets found at the store, you can even start growing a hydroponic garden from kitchen scraps. Carrot tops, romaine lettuce hearts, green onion roots, bases of celery stalks can all be saved from going into the garbage and placed in shallow water and sunlight to start regrowing within days!
With all the harvesting in the future, be sure to compost to lower landfill contribution. If you don’t have a composter yourself, let the city do it for you. Don’t forget about brown bins that are designated for yard waste- they will take any organic matter waste! They may vary a bit from state to state and city to city but they can usually be found at the majority of houses and apartment complexes.
Happy planting and may this be your greenest summer yet!
