How Green Is Your Garden?
It's easier than you think to create a healthier backyard.
By Marilyn Pribus

Some people spend hours every week tending a formal garden. Others are content to watch a dozen petunias grow. However they garden, people are becoming more concerned about the health effects of chemicals in pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers, explains Vinnie Drzewucki, horticultural information specialist at Hicks Nurseries in Westbury, N.Y. Children are especially vulnerable because they so often play around gardens.

To lessen these concerns, Drzewucki explains, grow "the healthiest possible plants in a way that uses the least toxic materials or none at all. You need to understand how plants grow and then grow plants that don't need remedies." It all starts with planning.

Planning ahead

"Beneficial landscaping," or planning your yard to suit your environment, is a favorite phrase of Dan Welker, an environmental protection specialist with the Environmental Protection Agency (epa) in Philadelphia. His personal garden has been featured on public television's "Victory Garden."

"Beneficial landscaping saves time and money," Welker says. For instance, "maintaining a wildflower patch costs less than 10 percent of the same area of lawn. The slightly higher installation cost [of the flowers] is quickly recovered."

An effective first step to reduce potentially harmful chemicals is to decrease your lawn area because lawns are so cost-intensive in terms of fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. Thankfully, this is an easy step—vs. the labor required to take care of a large lawn.

If you are landscaping from scratch, minimize your lawn area by using patches of native ground cover, wooded glens, rock gardens, or cactus, depending on your climate. If you already have a lawn, consider converting a section each year to something more natural. It will save you both time and money in the long run.

As you plan your garden, assess the site's characteristics (i.e., soil type, degree of acidity, hours of sunlight, drainage, etcetera), and select plants adapted to those conditions. If you need help determining your site's characteristics, call your local cooperative extension office (see "For More Information" on page 42). This office can provide unbiased information, based on university research, that is tailored to your local ecosystem. If you need additional advice, master gardeners are available to answer questions by phone and often conduct workshops or use demonstration gardens to show growing techniques for your specific locale.

Use native plants in your yard as much as possible; they are usually cheaper and require less maintenance. "[Native plants] have evolved over millions of years to live in your type of environment, are hardy with the amount of rain and kind of soil, and can fend for themselves," Welker explains.

Most states have national heritage programs and native plant societies that maintain lists of plants indigenous to your region. Again, contact your local cooperative extension office, or try typing "native plant society" + [your state] into an Internet search engine.

Plant nutrition

Plants need to be fertilized, but quick-acting fertilizers often result in weak plants, which are susceptible to pest attacks. Some fertilizers can build pest resistance in plants, destroy useful microbes in the soil, and, on a wider scale, seep into surface or groundwater. Composting is an excellent alternative.

"Composting has incredible benefits," says Chuck Ingels of the University of California Cooperative Extension Service, Sacramento County. Compost loosens soil, improves its water-holding capacity, and adds and stabilizes nutrients so they feed your plants instead of being washed away.

Compost itself is the end result of a mixture of organic materials—such as grass clippings and kitchen waste—put in a pile or box, kept moist, and mixed periodically. The natural process of decomposition creates an aerobic heat of up to 130-140 degrees Fahrenheit, which kills pathogens and weed seeds, leaving behind nutrient-rich matter.

In large yards, it's easy to find an out-of-the-way corner for a compost pile. In a small yard, Ingels concedes, composting can be a challenge. The compost boxes sold at garden stores may not have enough room for the bulk needed to provide the requisite heating, and if you use material that hasn't gone through the pathogen- and seed-destroying process, you actually could introduce pests to your garden. If you can't make your own compost, you can purchase it in a solid or liquid form at a local gardening supply store.

Pest control

Many people are uncomfortable spraying conventional pesticides—essentially poison—in a yard where children and adults play and relax. Education Coordinator Steve Urick of McDonald Garden Centers in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia offers several nontoxic strategies to employ before resorting to chemical pesticides.

• Rotate plants. Insects tend to favor specific plants, and their life cycles mean larvae or eggs are often in the ground waiting to attack. You can thwart them, even in a small garden, if you flip-flop your plants from one end to the other each season.
• Set insect traps. The beauty of traps is that pests can't build up a resistance to them. Traps usually use pheromones or food to attract the pests they target, so you don't want to put traps in the garden they are protecting. To snare Japanese beetles, for example, put a trap at some distance from your roses.
• Handpick and dispose of larger pests such as snails or hornworms.
• Use feeders and a water source to attract birds that can be your allies in the fight against pests.
• Plant marigolds, garlic, and horseradish, which are strong-scented plants known to repel pests.
• Apply sticky barriers (like Tanglefoot), insecticidal soaps, horticultural oils that suffocate pests, or neem (a tree extract).
• Use an insect field guide to get acquainted with beneficial insect predators, or good bugs. Most people recognize the value of ladybugs, for instance. "At the Epcot Center, Disney has entomologists producing beneficials," reports Steve Grace, retail manager of the Tampa, Fla., Worm's Way, part of a specialty gardening retail chain. "[Beneficial insect predators] are released all over [Disney's parks], and they are keeping bug problems to a minimum. [Disney] does it on a large scale, but you can do it on a home-hobbyist scale."
  
  You can purchase ladybugs and other beneficials and not worry that they'll fly away. "Ladybugs are curious little rascals," concedes Grace, "but there's a simple way to keep them at home." Spraying them with a sugar water makes their wings slightly sticky and keeps them grounded until they've found bad bugs to feed on. "Once they find aphids or other soft-bellied creatures, they won't fly away because they are happy. Their mission in life is to eat their designated bad bug."
• Use biological agents such as nematodes, milky spore, or a bacillus. Bacillus thuringiensis (BT) attacks the digestive systems of certain insects, but it is harmless to humans, pets, and beneficial insects. BT can control mosquito larvae in a backyard pond without harming the tadpoles that will become bug-munching tree frogs in the summer.
  
  Grace notes that BT doesn't create resistance and can be used on vegetables up to within one day of harvest because there are no residuals. "If your grandchild yanks off a tomato to nibble," he says, "you don't have to worry."
• For persistent problems, apply chemical pesticides. "Don't be afraid of using something a little more toxic," says Drzewucki, "but use it properly, and use it in spots. Don't broadcast over a large area."

Other pointers: Be sure you have identified the problem correctly. Use a product at the right time of day, the right temperature, and the right time in your watering cycle. Prevent drift onto unaffected plants—your own and neighbors'—and avoid runoff into nearby streams or waterways.

Misuse of pesticides can kill good bugs—and even your plants. For example, Clopyralid, often used for dandelion control, can persist for up to two years in foliage. If such tainted lawn clippings are subsequently used in compost, the chemical residue can kill plants on which the compost is used. (This is increasingly a problem in communities where green waste is collected, composted, and made available to gardeners.)

Drzewucki's most important tip? Always read the label! With a little study and effort, gardeners can cut back on chemicals in their yards and still enjoy a healthy, vibrant garden.