Make the garden environmentally friendly

collect rainwater

The summers are getting warmer and drier at the same time. This makes water a precious commodity. So collect rainwater in a cistern or in rainwater barrels and use this to water the plants. If possible, you should water before 7 a.m. in the morning, since at this time the evaporation of the valuable water is only 10 to 30 percent. For comparison: around 90 percent evaporates in the hot midday hours.

create compost

Fruit and vegetable leftovers as well as clippings from lawns, ornamental plants, herbs and trees in self-made compost to high-quality fertilizer. You save by self-generated compost soil a lot of store-bought, expensive fertilizers that are still offered in slowly-rotting plastic bags.

promote beneficials

Provide beneficial insects such as hoverflies, wild bees or bumblebees a habitat by using one insect hotel(€19.00 at Amazon*) hanging. Do not cut back perennials immediately in autumn and leave piles of leaves and brushwood lying around, offer insects and useful lodgers such as hedgehogs or toads a place for them hibernation. nesting and

bat boxes that are fixed in trees or on the house wall, offer these insect killers a protected place.

Avoid plastic

Who does not know that:

• After shopping at the garden center, stacks of plastic pots and plastic packaging pile up.
• In order to keep pests away, vegetable plants are often protected with plastic foil or nets.
• Because they are inexpensive and practical, for the sowing Plastic seed trays used.

However, all these things can be exchanged for more sustainable products:

• seed pots(€8.00 at Amazon*) you can fold them yourself from rotting newspaper or replace them with the cardboard rolls on which toilet paper and kitchen roll are wound.
• Alternatively, you can get decomposable growing pots from specialist retailers.
• Organic cotton gauze is reusable and fully compostable at the end of its life.
• More and more nurseries are starting to offer deposit boxes for the plants, which you can return after transport.

Use fewer electric garden tools

Whether mowing the lawn or cutting hedges and trees: rely more on manual labor again. High-quality devices made of metal are stable, durable and save both on the purchase and on the electricity that has become expensive. Another advantage: hand-operated garden tools make less noise.