Eco-garden
The outside of the house is just as important as thie inside. Your garden supports your eco-flat. Not only can you eat from it, but you can also turn your waste into fertiliser, support the local ecosystem by enhancing biodiversity, and keep in touch with the natural world.
Scroll over the numbers to see what you can do to eco up your garden.
Compost
Compost is essential in a good garden. Make it in bins, or in a pile. To make compost bins see if you can find some free wooden pallets to use as sides. Two or three separate compartments should be enough.
The pile needs to ba a cubic metre, to be moist (not wet) and to have good aeration. Build the heap in layers of dry (leaves, sticks, newspaper, straw etc) and wet (kitchen scraps, lawn clippings, weeds etc). Leave the pile for a couple of months and then turn it. In a few more months it'll be beautiful compost.
Pest Control
Chemical sprays are expensive, time-consuming and harmful to garden ecology. If you get a bad infestation of aphids, spray them off with a hose, or make an organic spray with water, crushed garlic and some chillis blended together and sprayed.
Build up a good garden ecosystem with cow parsley, phacelia, French marigolds, chives and lots of good compost for less trouble with insect pests. Sprinkle crushed egg shells around your salad greens to ward off slugs and snails, or out out a bowl of home brewed beer for them to glide into.
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