Yesterday I announced a new weekly homesteading and gardening contest where I asked people to write a post sharing something they did on their homestead or in their garden to work with nature.
Today I want to give some examples of what it means to work with nature on a homestead or in a garden.
35 Examples of Working with Nature
Sometimes small things make a big difference and a collection of small actions can really add up too. Please don't feel like in this contest that you need to have big things to enter or to win.
Here are the examples of what you could do:
- Decide not to till your soil before planting.
- Plant flowers to support beneficial insects and pollinators in general.
- Decide not to use chemical fertilizers.
- Decide not to use pesticides.
- Decide not to use herbicides.
- Use mulch around your plants in your garden.
- Use mulch around your plants outside your garden.
- Plant perennial vegetables.
- Forage the edible plants growing wild on your property.
- Use animals (chickens, goats, sheep, etc.) to prepare land for planting instead of a tractor or tiller.
- Dig a pond or swale to slow, sink, and spread water.
- Plant a polyculture instead of a monoculture in your garden.
- Plant shrubs and other plants around your fruit trees to support them.
- Plant native plants or designate areas on your property that you will leave existing native plants.
- Add rock piles to create habitat.
- Add woody debris (logs, snags, brush piles, etc.) to create habitat.
- Plant trees and shrubs to provide habitat (and potentially a harvest for you!) for wildlife.
- Create a hugelkultur bed.
- Plant self-seeding vegetables.
- Let the self-seeding vegetables come up and harvest them instead of just pulling them.
- Practice chop-and-drop when pruning your shrubs and trees.
- Plant fruit trees from seed instead of grafting.
- Designate wild areas on your property that are set aside for wildlife.
- Start a food forest.
- Replace excess lawn with edible plants or plants that support wildlife.
- Plant a hedgerow.
- Use human powered tools instead of gas or electric powered tools.
- Setup a birdbath to support your local birds.
- Decide not to try to eliminate all pests--just find a balance instead.
- Plant tall plants around your garden to reduce the wind blowing over your garden to reduce your watering needs.
- Plant tall plants on the western side of your garden to provide afternoon shade to reduce your watering needs.
- Keep fall leaves on your property instead of hauling them off.
- Keep yard waste on your property instead of hauling it off.
- Compost your food scraps onsite instead of sending them to the landfill.
- Grow your own food using some of the techniques listed here to reduce your overall impact.
Share What Your Are Doing to Work with Nature
I hope that list of 35 things you could do to work with nature gives you some ideas! If you are growing your own food you are likely doing some of these things already.
If you need some additional help with these ideas at the end of this post is a list of related blog posts that I have written that can help you get started.
So now is the time to share what you are doing and enter the weekly contest for your chance to win a SBI unit, an upvote and resteem.
Tell the story about what you are doing.
Even small things have big impacts and by sharing your story you can help inspire others to work with nature on their homestead/garden. We all start with small steps so please don't feel that what you are doing is too small to inspire others.
Just make sure to tie it back to something you did in the last week. It could be as simple as adding a bit more mulch or planting your seeds and then telling the story about how that ties back to working with nature.
Thank you and I hope you will enter the contest and help inspire us all to work with nature on our homesteads and in our gardens!
Weekly Blog Post
- What is a Food Forest? (And How to Get Started)
- Companion Post on Steemit - How to Get Started with Food Forests
Related Blog Posts
- Plant Once With Perennial Vegetables
- How to Work With Nature to Rewild your Homestead (And Why You Should Do It.)
- 5 Ways Your Homestead Will Benefit from Native Plants
- 5 Ways to Transform Your Garden into a Low Water Garden
- Hugelkultur Beds: The Best Raised Beds for Your Garden
- 11 Self-Seeding Vegetables to Save You Time and Money
- 3 Things Your Garden Needs to Attract Birds
- What is a Hedgerow and Why You Should Plant One
- Control Garden Pests without Toxic Chemicals
- What is Mulching? The Complete Introduction to Mulching
- Fall Leaves – 3 Ways to Put Them to Work on Your Homestead
- Chop-and-Drop: A Quick and Easy Way to Abundance
Follow me for more posts all about homesteading, working with nature, and growing your own food:
And check out my blog - www.wildhomesteading.com for weekly in-depth posts on working with nature to grow your own food and start/build your homestead.