Healthy Gardening In Islington
Posted on 09/03/2015
Easy Ways to Keep Your Garden Healthy
If you have a green thumb, it naturally speaks volumes about your love for nature. However, there are many gardeners in Islington who do not practice healthy and reliable gardening. This mostly comes from a need to look for short term fixes and ignorance about the more healthy alternatives. But there are ways to get a thriving garden without having to kill off the soil’s living network. In the next growing season, make a resolution to use fewer sprays and other chemicals and to use a lot of good quality mulch instead.
Benefits of mulching
Many of you who do compost have probably also heard of mulching but not many are aware of the extent to which mulch can be used in garden maintenance in Islington, N1. Gardening experts use mulch not only as a gradual source of nutrients to reduce the need for fertilizers but also to thwart weeds, conserve moisture and reduce the amount of work one has to do to maintain a functional composting heap. This method, generally known as sheet composting, involves layering all your organic waste on top of the garden soil. This is a good way to make use of everything that the nearby flowers and other plants produce in the same garden. Additionally, some people also add spoiled hay, sourced from organic origins to mulch the garden. Alternatively, if you already have a compost heap going then you can apply a layer of the end product on your garden bed, and build up the layers of mulch on it, finishing it off with a top dressing of decomposed compost in the end. The layers in the mulch will take their own time to break down, thus giving you a consistent supply of nutrients and holding in moisture, both of which work to improve the soil beneath.
When you do away with the need to turn and till your compost pile into the soil, you do a considerable deal to improve your garden in the NW1 area. A minimally disturbed topsoil means that you have exposed few weed seeds to light and done less soil damage by overworking the layers. Applying layers of aged mulch helps to provident a continuous supply of nutrients which you only need to pull back to dig a row in the soil to plant seeds or seedlings. The fauna that feeds on the organic remains and decomposes them also burrows and moves within the soil, making sure enough air and water get in for the roots to uptake.
Harmful effects of chemicals
You must have heard a lot of gardening professionals in Islington demand for more organic gardening, which is only another way of saying, reduce the number of chemicals you use in your garden – whether they are fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides or fungicides. Many will argue that you need to use a certain amount of these substances in order to get good growth, and while that depends almost exclusively on the quality of your soil and gardening practices, there are so many ways you avoid chemicals in your garden yet get all the necessary improvements made. You can build healthy soil organically, practice good garden clearance and sanitization, encourage beneficial insects and stay vigilant over your crops to make sure that you spot pests before they can do much damage. True that takes some commitment, but that is a price worth paying for clean eating. Concentrated seaweed and fish emulsions, along with lime, are useful home remedies that will help you protect your crops from various pests.