You Don't Need to be a Farmer
It is easy to believe that in order to make a difference in climate change you need to take big actions. Buy an electric car or only ride a bicycle. Stop eating all meat. Or move to the countryside and buy a farm. But that just isn’t true, you can make a difference in the world with whatever little bit of land you happen to have. Even if it is just a windowsill.
Every Little Bit Helps
The truth of the matter is… every little bit helps. Sure, someone who owns 100 acres of forest is going to sequester more carbon than someone with only a window box on the fourteenth story of a city apartment building. But how much carbon can be sequestered if 100,000 people with only a small window box on the fourteenth floor all take action? A lot!
It doesn’t really matter how much, or how little, space you have to work with. You can take action. And if enough people do the same, it will have an impact on the world. As things stand right now, there are far too many people who think “I am too small, why should I bother?” and that is a huge part of the problem.
In order for things to get better, many many more people need to change their viewpoint. “I may be small, but I can make a difference!” and together, it will.
The more yard space you have, the more you can do. But every little bit does help.
What Can You Do?
The actions that have the biggest impact are actually quite simple.
More plants and less chemicals
That is really all it takes. It is no secret that plants sequester carbon, clean the air, and create oxygen. And it is no secret that using chemicals (pesticides, herbicides, and synthetic fertilizer) is bad for people and the world. So the essence of the solution is simply to have more plants and use less chemicals.
But Without Chemicals My Lawn and Garden Won't Grow?
This is a common argument against holistic growing methods. And it is one of the most damaging mindsets to have. The majority of commercial farmers feel this way, and that leads to heavy fertilizer run off that gets into and pollutes the oceans. It leads to humans ingesting high levels of toxic chemicals that increase health problems like cancer and autism. And it leads to massive amounts of carbon escaping into the atmosphere from depleted and destroyed soil ecosystems.
The truth of the matter is, chemical use leads to more chemical use.
It is essentially the same thing as the antibiotic cycle. The more antibiotics used, the more that are needed. Antibiotics are prescribed to fight one type of bacterial infection, but as a side effect they wipe out all similar bacteria as well. And most of those bacterial casualties are beneficial bacteria. There are more bacterial cells in the human body than there are human cells (that is true, look it up!) So it is no surprise that killing off too much bacteria would hurt the body.
Taking out beneficial bacteria allows other infectious bacteria to get in, which requires more antibiotic to fight, which kills of more beneficial bacteria, which leads to more infections…. and the cycle continues. This is the reason that less and less antibiotics are being prescribed these days.
And chemical lawn and garden treatments do the same thing to the microbial communities in the soil. And when the soil microbes die, the soil becomes less healthy, and plants don’t grow as well. So you end up using more chemicals to make up for it. Which kills more and leads to more chemicals. Just like the human body on antibiotics.
Chemical Alternatives
But where to begin?
Start by ditching the Round Up. While it does take more effort to pull weeds by hand, it is effort that is well worth it. Round up (and similar herbicides) have been proven many times over to have nasty effects on health. It is better for everyone, and the environment, to not use herbicides. Just think about pulling weeds as a mini gym workout for you. That is a win-win.
Switch from chemical fertilizer to compost. Needless to say, compost is natures fertilizer. This is essentially the same as comparing a person who eats a healthy diet to a person who eats fast food every day. We all know which person is healthier. Compost feeds the soil, and the soil feeds the plants. This is how it is done in nature. And those weeds you pulled can feed the compost.
If you have the space to make your own compost that is fantastic. Less kitchen waste and less cost for you. If you don’t (which is ok, many people live in places where compost isn’t allowed) you can buy it from garden stores instead. Buying compost, obviously, has a cost. But so does buying fertilizers and pesticides.
Mix It Up
Grow a variety of plants. Monocultures (just one or a few species) are not good for the world. Think of a monoculture like someone who eats only one type of food. Even if it is a healthy food, lets say carrots, that person is going to be lacking in a lot of vital nutrients because carrots don’t have everything the body needs in them.
Plants pull nutrients into the ground, which sustains the microbial community living there, which in turn sustains the plants. But every species of plants pulls down a different mix of nutrients. So soil with a monocrop is essentially the same thing as that person who only eats carrots. Growing multiple species together, and/or rotating the plants grown in any given spot each year, makes a huge difference. And in the case of a lawn, growing multiple grass species, or maybe even switching out grass entirely for low growing ‘stepables’ will also make a big difference in health.
Choose Native Plants
There are several good reasons for choosing to plant native species in your yard.
For one, being native they are already adapted to the climate. So they are a lot less likely to either die off because of unfavorable conditions or to grow out of control because they are out competing everything else.
Another reason is that cocktail of microbes supported by plants we just talked about. Native plants support the native microbes. And that is a good thing.
Native plants also support native wildlife. Pollinators are taking a massive hit from humans, between loss of habitat and chemical use on crops and landscapes. Getting rid of chemicals in your garden by switching to holistic approaches makes a huge difference in this problem. And choosing native plants to feed the native pollinators is the icing on the cake.
Every Yard Matters
It may feel like changing a 1/16th of an acre lot to holistic growing methods doesn’t really do much. But it does. It means less chemicals used, more carbon stored, and more pollinators not killed. That absolutely matters. Don’t get caught up in the feeling of ‘I’m not enough’ millions of people today feel like they aren’t enough. But if all of those people realized they were, the world would be a lot better off.
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