5 ways to make a vegetable garden more sustainable
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The cheap version and the green version are mostly the same version
Sustainable gets talked about as though it costs you something, and in a vegetable garden it very rarely does. Almost everything on this list saves water, or saves you buying something, or saves you doing a job twice. That is worth saying up front because the real comparison is not what the sustainable option costs, it is what the other option costs you across a whole season in water, in replacement seedlings and in the stuff you bought and did not need.
1. Compost what the garden and the kitchen already produce
Kitchen scraps, grass clippings, prunings and the spent plants at the end of a crop are the raw material for next season's soil, and they are already on your property. You do not need a purpose built bin for this. A heap in a corner works, and a bay knocked together out of recycled pallets works better because it holds its shape and you can get a fork into it. The output is free soil improver, and the input is stuff you would otherwise be putting in a wheelie bin.
2. Mulch, and then mulch again
Mulch is the highest return thing you can do to a vegetable bed. It holds moisture in so you water less, it keeps the soil temperature steady, it smothers most of the weeds that would otherwise need pulling, and it breaks down into the soil as it goes. Sugar cane, pea straw, lucerne and shredded prunings all do the job and all end up as organic matter, which is the bit a gravel or a bark chip never gives you.
The one thing to watch is a mulch that has gone water repellent, where the water beads and runs off rather than soaking through. A wetting agent fixes that, and it is a much smaller job than replacing the mulch.
3. Water the roots, not the air
A sprinkler on a vegetable bed loses a lot of what it throws to evaporation and puts the rest on the leaves, which is how fungal problems start. Drip line or a soaker hose under the mulch puts the water where the roots are and keeps the leaves dry. Add a tap timer and you stop the 2 ways people waste the most water, which are forgetting it is on and watering in the middle of a hot day.
Rain is free, and anything you can catch off a shed roof into a drum or a tank is water you are not paying for. We do not sell tanks, so that is a conversation for somebody who does, but the drip line and the timer that make the rest of it count are on our shelf.
4. Grow the flowers that bring in the insects doing the work
A bed with nothing but vegetables in it has no reason for a predatory insect to visit. Marigolds and coriander left to flower will bring in hoverflies and the other beneficials, and they deal with aphids for nothing. Anything with a small open flower does the same job. It does not replace spraying entirely and it is not meant to. It means that when you do spray, you are dealing with a problem rather than a population.
When you do need to spray, the timing matters more than the product. Late in the day, on the plant with the problem rather than across the whole bed, and never over an open flower where the bees are working.
5. Buy seed rather than seedlings, and let some of it run to seed
A packet of seed costs a fraction of a punnet of seedlings and gives you several sowings out of it, which is the succession sowing that stops a glut before it happens. Open pollinated varieties will also come true if you let a plant or two run to seed at the end, so next season starts with something you did not buy at all. Lettuce and beans are the easy ones to start saving.
Shop related products
- Pope Drip Eze 13mm x 30m. Drip line for under the mulch, so the water goes to the roots.
- Pope Simple Set Tap Timer. So the watering happens early rather than when you remember.
- Martins Organic Sugar Cane Bale 11kg. Mulch that breaks down into the bed rather than sitting on it.
- D.T. Brown Marigold Seed. The classic companion flower, and it earns its spot.
- D.T. Brown Coriander Seed. Let a few plants flower and the hoverflies find them.
Did you know we also stock soaker hose in 10m, 15m and 30m, pea straw and lucerne bales, Easy Wetta wetting crystals and garden forks in store. Most of that is not on the website, so give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what is on the shelf.
The seed rack, the mulches, the irrigation fittings and the soil improvers are all in the garden centre, and the online range is in garden products.
Read next
- How to keep a garden green on less water
- Compost activators, and whether your heap needs one
- Which garden insects are worth keeping around
I am a big believer in recycling and upcycling, so if a pallet comes through here it rarely leaves again.
Cheers,
Candeece
