Lawn and Garden - How to be greener?

So back to the topic – how to make our lawn and garden greener?

The only vegetable we kept from our previous veggie garden is the roots of chive, which is a perennial, meaning it can come back year after year. It can also grow back once cut off above the ground several times a year, and in July the flowering buds can be harvested as well. The chives are great fried, sauteed and in soups, especially great for making dumplings!

We compost our kitchen scrapes, weeds, and lawn clippings in our self-made compost bin. Though I do not turn it over often, the free natural fertilizer would be ready for the vegetable garden in summer.

We seldom water our lawn, though I have to admit, our backyard grass is ugly-looking compared to our neighbors’ lawn. I have tried reducing the area of grass by planting flowers along the fence and growing ground cover plants in the shady area.

I plant most perennials over annuals in the flower bed. When I introduce a new variety into my flower garden, I take good care of watering at the beginning, then let it be itself to withstand our natural climate. Only the fittest survive, aha, Darwin’s natural selection. My jewel in the garden is Peony (Paeonia species), though not a native plant in eastern North America, which grows happily and blooms splendidly now in May. A must-have.

When we first moved in our house in April nine years ago, we had the most dandelions in our court. One neighbor showed us Weed B Gon he used to kill those pretty yellow flowers. We pulled and dug the weed year after year, and finally we have fewer and smaller dandelion plants in our lawn this year. We control its growth by skipping those poisonous lawn chemicals, which filter into our watersheds, and are ingested by people and animals.

This year we have another weed problem with abundant green ash (Fraxinus pennsylvanica) seedlings. One dead ash tree was cut off last year, leaving space and resource for its offspring to compete. I pull and pull the seedlings whenever I step on the lawn, and wonder what the lawn would look like in a couple of years if I do let them grow. Many state park campgrounds don’t allow firewood from outside source, one of the main reasons is being afraid of the high germination rate of ash fruits (called samara).