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Celebrate Earth Day every day

Sacramento Digs Gardening
BY Debbie Arrington PUBLISHED APR 22, 2020

Whether it's from annual flowers, native perennials or fruiting bushes and trees, bees needs food throughout the year, so keep them and other pollinators in mind when you choose plants for your garden. And avoid pesticides and herbicides, too. (Photo: Kathy Morrison)

Five quick tips to help nature, one garden at a time

Happy Earth Day!

We’ve had 50 years of practice on how to celebrate our connections to Mother Earth. But we can always do more. (Remember: Be kind to Mother!)

Here are five quick tips on how we can make a difference, one garden and one day at a time:

1. Stop spraying toxic chemicals. Say goodbye to harmful pesticides and herbicides. Embrace integrated pest management and let nature help us control the bad bugs while nurturing the good guys.

2. Help the bees (and butterflies, too). Be a friend to beneficial insects. Plant flowers that attract bees and butterflies. Try to have something in flower (and potentially a bee buffet) throughout the seasons. While some bees hibernate in winter, honeybees remain active year round.

3. Respect your soil; don’t treat it like dirt. Healthy soil is teeming with important life. Those multitudes of micro-organisms are crucial for a healthy garden. Feed your soil a steady diet of organic material and other nutrient-packed amendments, so your garden can feed you.

4. Make more compost. This is going to be part of daily California life very soon – it’s the law. We’re all going to have to cut down on the amount of organic (carbon-based) waste that we put in the trash. Turn those peelings and coffee grounds into garden gold.

5. Rethink your waste. Follow the familiar mantra, “Reduce, reuse, recycle.” But take it to the next step with some thoughtful small changes. Got lots of cardboard boxes? That cardboard can be used for weed control under mulch. (As it breaks down, it provides more nutrients.) Newspapers can be turned into mulch, too, or shredded and composted. It’s not “trash”; it’s opportunity!

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coffee grounds Sacramento pesticides Earth Day organic gardening gardening soil health herbicides amendments pollinators recycling compost

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Garden Checklist for week of May 5

Survey your garden after the May 4 rainstorm. Heavy rain and gusty winds can break the neck of large flowers such as roses. Also:

* Keep an eye on new transplants or seedlings; they could take a pounding from the rain.

* Watch out for powdery mildew. Warmth following moist conditions can cause this fungal disease to “bloom,” too. If you see a leaf that looks like it’s dusted with powdered sugar, snip it off.

* After the storm, start setting out tomato transplants, but wait on the peppers and eggplants (they want warmer nights). Pinch off any flowers on new transplants to make them concentrate on establishing roots instead of setting premature fruit.

* Trim dead flowers but not leaves from spring-flowering bulbs such as daffodils and tulips. Those leaves gather energy to create next year's flowers. Also, give the bulbs a fertilizer boost after bloom.

* Pinch chrysanthemums back to 12 inches for fall flowers. Cut old stems to the ground.

* Mulch around plants to conserve moisture and control weeds.

* From seed, plant beans, beets, cantaloupes, carrots, corn, cucumbers, melons, pumpkins, radishes and squash.

* Plant onion sets.

* In the flower garden, plant seeds for asters, cosmos, celosia, marigolds, salvia, sunflowers and zinnias. Transplant petunias, zinnias, geraniums and other summer bloomers.

* Plant perennials and dahlia tubers for summer bloom.

* Don’t wait; plant summer bulbs, such as gladiolus and tuberous begonias.

* Harvest cabbage, lettuce, peas and green onions.

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