Regenerative Gardening: 7 Ways to Make Your Garden Self-Sufficient
Gardening can be a costly, repetitive hobby if done without forethought. Not only that, it can actually cause more harm than good to the environment when proper steps aren’t taken.
But it doesn’t have to be either of these things.
As long as you are educated and willing to put in the time and effort, gardening can be an affordable, eco friendly, and rewarding hobby. Knowing how to garden in a regenerative fashion can affect the quality of what we produce and how productive our garden is. This not only benefits us, but also the environment.
Skip the chemical fertilizers and pesticides
The cons of chemical fertilizers and pesticides far outweigh the pros. Not only do they kill everything, including pollinators and natural predators insects, they destroy your soil, contaminate water supplies, and can cause cancer and birth defects in humans.
Fertilizing your yard can be done completely naturally. The most common method is composting. This can be achieved by devoting a corner of your yard to a compost pile, or burying your organic matter straight into the soil.
Another way of fertilizing is to maintain a worm farm. Worm farms creates two different types of fertilizer, one being worm castings, and the other being ‘worm tea’. Worm castings are what is left over after the worms eat the organic matter you feed them; their poop. It’s full of nutrients processed down into something that can be mixed into your garden soil. Worm tea is the urine produced by the worms. When mixed with water, it creates a potent fertilizer that can be poured over your plants.
When it comes to pesticides, the best method is to plant things that repel pests and attract their natural predators. Many of these plants are strong smelling herbs, like sage or chives, that you also get the benefits from.
Plant native, perennial plants
Filling your garden with noninvasive perennials is a quick way to establish your garden. The more perennials you plant, the less you have to plant the next year. You get a head start on future harvests this way. Perennials can be anything from fruit trees, berry bushes, perennial herbs, or even just native plants you keep for decoration. All of these plants benefit their environment in one way or another.
When you choose to plant natives, you are working to improve your local ecosystem. Native plants are used to your specific soil types, temperatures, and average rainfall. This means they thrive in your planting zones. Non natives require more help from us, and they can eventually grow out of control, pushing native plants out and taking over great amounts of growing space. They provide nothing to local wildlife, and only destroy the environments they take over.
During harvest season, you can harvests seeds from these plants, either to plant more of, or to share with others.
Return garden waste to the soil
As long as you aren’t using plants treated with chemicals, or poisonous plants, you can take garden waste and drop it right back into the soil. This can be done throughout the growing season and when plants reach the ends of their lifecycles. Usually, when the time comes to pull my dead and dying plants from the ground, I rip them up and leave them. Be mindful that some plants can be harmful, so be cautious when doing this. I let my cucumber vines, zucchini plants, and pumpkin and watermelon vines stay in the garden after being pulled.
Rake your leaves and fallen sticks into the spring into your garden beds. By doing this, you reduce not only the overall amount of work you do in your garden, you keep unnecessary waste from entering landfills. Up to ten million trash bags of leaves are thrown in the landfill each year. Why don’t we reduce this number by putting the leaves to good use? When you put raked leaves in your garden bed, the leaves break down over time to nourish your soil, act as mulch to shelter plants from cold weather, and provide vital shelter for wildlife. Over time, even garden soil begins to erode. The leaves you add get broken down and replaces what gets worked away by rain and time.
Typically, I mulch my leaves and put them around all my perennial plants, like my strawberries, rosemary, and fruit trees. They’re insulated from the frost this way, and the leaves break down over the next growing season.
Plant what benefits you
Knowing your own personal workload and flow sounds obvious, but it can make a huge difference in your yield. If you can’t devote a lot of time to your garden, don’t plant more than a few things. If you plant too much, it becomes very easy to overwhelm yourself and fall behind on your daily chores. This leads to neglect, and will lead to excess garden waste.
You should also only plant what you know you will consume. If you hate certain vegetables, don’t plant them. If it’s only you, don’t plant a dozen of one plant. You will end up with more than you can use, and ultimately throw away large amounts of wasted produce.
Native plants are also important to fill your yard with, especially native wildflowers. They improve your soil, meaning you can rotate them through your garden beds each year. They will also attract beneficial insects that will pollinate your garden and consume pest insects.
I have multiple garden beds in my own yard. One year, I’ll plant native, annual wildflowers in some, while my produce plants are in the others. The next year, I’ll rotate out to let the wildflowers fix the soil from the year before.
Know how to collect and store seeds
Knowing how to collect, dry, and store seeds is important for saving time, money, and preparing your garden over the upcoming years.
All seeds should be kept in cool, dark, dry places. Many of mine, I store in seed packets, which I then seal in mason jars and place at the back of my fridge or pantry to forget about until next spring. By doing this, your seeds also go through a stratification period, meaning they believe they are in natural winter conditions that can improve their germination rates. I typically end up with way more than I can use, so I give a bunch out as well. This insures other people are turning their yards into natural havens for nature and themselves.
If you can, let seeds dry out naturally on the plant before harvesting, and leave some behind for the animals. Plants usually put out far more seeds than we know what to do with, and many animals need these seeds at the beginning of the cold seasons to prepare their bodies for the harsh weather. Some plants, if you leave seeds behind, will also reseed themselves. This means they will pop back up next growing season with no work from you.
Leave some of your yard wild; let nature reclaim
Many beneficial insects are on the decline due to shrinking natural environments. These are insects that our gardens rely on, both for pest control and pollinating our plants. Many people don’t understand that with no insects, there would be no us. Many fruits and vegetables can’t produce without insect intervention. Harmful insects to use would run wild and take over without the predator insects that prey on them. We can help these insects by making our gardens safe havens for them.
Fireflies, ladybugs, butterflies, and many other insects mate in tall grass and leaves. They also use these spots to hide from predators and weather conditions, so the loss of these space means the decline in these populations. I keep a patch against my back fence that is completely wild; whatever plants grow in from the woods in that spot gets to stay. Not only do I notice a lot of beneficial insects hanging out in that area, I also notice many frogs, and salamanders, and birds occupying that one tiny spot.
Pick patches of your yard to leave natural that work for you. This means no mowing, no raking, and no planting unless adding native plants. This could be a back corner of your yard, a spot at the base of a tree, or an old garden bed you no longer use, the choice is yours! You can also throw leaf litter there, pile up sticks and provide stones for shelter to allow even more animals to make themselves at home.
Raise chickens
Of course, not all of us have the luxury of raising chickens in our yards. As much as I would love to have my own flock, I have an HOA, and I know many of us face this same conflict. My goal for the future is to move out of the city and create my own little homestead. These birds are very addictive to have around and keep as little companions, but they are also beneficial to keeping your garden running.
Chickens aren’t just good for eggs or meat. The average chicken eats around 80 ticks per day. They’ll consume slugs, hornworms, and other pests that would otherwise destroy your gardens. They also produce a strong and effective fertilizer through their waste, which can be sprinkled into gardens during cleanup. Also, as they graze, their nails scratch the soil as they walk and graze, aerating the soil to allow oxygen and water to penetrate the surface. In off seasons, you can allow chickens into your garden beds to prepare them for the next growing season. This means virtually no tilling or fertilizing from you, the birds do everything.
Summary
By taking the correct steps, we can improve our gardens each and every year. We shouldn’t expect our plants to produce an abundance of food in the first year, but we can do our part to help our future selves create the strong and healthy gardens of our dreams.
We have to think beyond ourselves and what our garden can do for us. What can our garden do for the environment? Can we improve it? Can we use our garden to educate others, provide them with resources, and help other people start their own environmentally friendly gardens? Now more than ever, everyone needs access to their own food sources, and we need to do our part to keep nature flourishing.
