Our backyard exists within the larger world
There are many ways in which we, as individuals in industrialized nations, contribute to the problems of habitat destruction or unhealthy habitats - for people as well as for animals. I strongly believe that practicing the Backyard Wildlife Habitat conservation practices not only leads directly to a healthier world, but that they also vividly illustrate why these same practices are important in the world outside our backyards.
"The Whole World in My Backyard"
Here's an article about this subject I wrote for the 30th Anniversary edition of the National Wildlife Federation's Habitat newsletter. It describes how my conservation efforts in my own Backyard Wildlife Habitat have been vivid examples of the same problems in the world outside my backyard.
Here are some ways you personally can create a healthier world through your gardening practices:
Compost your food and garden wastes
Don't let your waste go to waste by throwing it in the garbage or down the disposal! You can compost your kitchen scraps and garden wastes either in a traditional compost pile or bin system -- or let the worms do it! We do both. We have a three-bin composter in the back of the garden for all our garden wastes, fall leaves, and for everything the worms don't like.
"A real gardener is not a man who cultivates flowers; he
is a man who cultivates the soil... If he came into the Garden of
Eden he would sniff excitedly and say: 'Good Lord, what
humus!'"
~ Karel Capek, Author
We also have four worm bins in the basement for kitchen scraps. Besides creating the "Cadillac" of compost -- called vermicompost -- worm bins are great for composting the kinds of things we wouldn't want to put in an outdoors backyard compost bin: things such as leftover rice, stale bread, as well as the usual kitchen scraps. Of course, we don't use any meat or dairy scraps, and the worms don't like tomatoes, citrus, onions, and a few other things, but you'd be surprised at how much material your household might generate in a week that the worm will process. Here's an article I wrote for the CNY Environment newspaper.
Do you think you don't have enough space for composting leaves? Think again! They may look like they take a lot of space, but they quickly "cook down." Just as an experiment (since we grind leaves and use them as mulch rather than just compost them), we completely filled this easy-to-make container with leaves. Here's how much space those leaves took after just one year: (It's hard to see, but the original level is just below level of the gas meter.) After two years, you have the rich leaf mold you see below. Who doesn't have this much space in exchange for wonderful leaf mulch? Just tuck a few of these containers (just fencing with its ends bent to hold it together) into an out-of-the-way spot in your yard.
Of course, you don't even have to compost your leaves - just mow them with a mulching mower and let them stay on the lawn to enrich the soil. You can also dig them right into your garden soil, a process called sheet composting. Bottom line - never put them out to the curb as waste.
The power of compost was dramatically demonstrated with two beds of salvia I had. Both beds were new, but I planned for one bed to be permanent, so I added a lot of compost to it. The other bed was going to be a path next year, so I didn't waste any compost on it. I planted half a flat of salvia in each. The salvia in the compost bed were almost five feet tall while the salvia in the other bed was normal height of about two feet! Other conditions were similar.
Compost is so important that when we eliminated our lawn and created planting beds, we ordered a truckload of compost from a local composting farm to improve the soil.
Here are some websites with good basic info:
Cornell's Composting in Schools Canada's Office of Urban Agriculture (Does the US have an office of Urban Agriculture!?) Worm DigestCheck out the books and websites for more information on how-to.
We think leaves are so valuable that we asked the town dump truck to dump all its leaves on our front yard so we could have even more! (Our town leaves all are trucked away by these massive trucks, filled by huge payloaders!) I imagine that the truck driver thought we were nuts!
Pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizers
Native plantings will be best able to stay healthy without help. How can you expect to have a backyard full of life at the same time you have a backyard full of poison?
My pesticide sign was featured on the Beyond Pesticides website. My sign is displayed facing the street and is meant to give a positive message: instead of emphasizing all the harm pesticides do, I'm emphasizing the benefits of NOT using them. The real power of the message though is that the sign is in the middle of a yard with lots of plants with virtually no insect damage! Why on earth are people using these things??
Pesticides also kill pollinators ... and the services of pollinators are responsible for one of every three mouthfuls of food we eat and beverages we drink. For more about the important role of pollinators and the problem of their declining populations, see the Buchmann book The Forgotten Pollinators (details in the Learn More page) or visit the website at the Migratory Pollinators campaign website.
Water
There are many ways you can conserve water. Perhaps most important is to use native plantings which are adapted to the conditions of your area. We also use some underground soaker hoses. These put water just where you need it - at the plants' roots.
Lawns don't really need to be watered; let them go dormant during a drought. If they are frequently watered, their root systems will be shallow which will lead to being less drought-tolerant, which will lead to needing to be watered more frequently, which will lead to shallow root systems. . . you get the picture. Yet another reason to reduce your lawn area.
Make (or buy) a rain barrel
My husband has invented a rain barrel system for the corner of our garden. It was made from old $15 barrels that had contained apple juice concentrate. He cut out most of the top, put in a spigot at the bottom, and covered it with window screen held on by a bungee cord to protect against mosquitoes. The rain from one of our four roof gutters is directed into the barrels. We found that so much rain falls even in a short shower that we needed more space. That's when we added the second barrel and a bent piece of metal so that the water is directed into both barrels. It's incredible to realize how much rain water otherwise goes into our sewer system! Here's a picture of the current state of our rain barrels (they're still under development, but really work pretty well).
Create a Rain Garden
Have you ever heard of a rain garden? Maybe you haven't yet, but you probably will in the future. This is a new concept sweeping the country. It's a beautiful way to conserve water. We plan to put a small one in next year to take care of the water from the second of our four rain gutters. Here's one of the many websites devoted to this idea.
Indoor conservation tip: While I was letting the water run, waiting for it to become hot enough to wash dishes, I noticed how much water was being wasted. I now keep a clean plastic milk jug near the dish area and let the not-yet-hot-enough water run into the milk jug. I use that water to fill the birdbaths. It may not be a big thing, but it adds up over the course of a year - especially if you multiply it by thousands of households.
And, as you enjoy that cup of coffee out in your backyard habitat…
You probably know that many of our migratory birds spend the winter in Central America, but did you know that the kind of coffee and chocolate you purchase either leads to the further destruction of their winter habitat or helps preserve it?
By purchasing shade-grown "Bird-Friendly" coffee and chocolate, you'll support the type of coffee production that preserves the rain forest habitat required by our own migratory birds for their winter homes.
For information and resources about shade-grown coffee…
Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center Fact Sheet
Conservation Agriculture -Conservation Coffee Organizer's Kit
Atlanta Audubon Shade Grown Coffee Committee
Songbird Foundation Note: You can see the difference between a shade coffee plantation
and a sun coffee plantation if you click on the Shade vs. Sun link at the Songbird Foundation site.