Gardening Tips from Martha Stewart

As many of you know, Martha Stewart is a goddess of all things home related– but she is also super into green living in the outside world. We recently shared two posts from her magazine about her adventures with composting and (some composting basics) and also an article about edible plant foraging. Good, green stuff all around. Today we have some garden related pointers from MS herself.

Join a Garden Club

Find local gardening clubs to share the green energy with your neighbors. Perhaps there is a community garden in your neighborhood, or maybe you can find a gardening meetup group. Also check in with local gardening stores to see if they offer classes or workshops. Martha Stewart herself joined a Garden Club at her local store last year to learn more and share her favorite planting ideas, photos, recipes and tips with fellow garden lovers.

Create Your Own Garden

Once you learn how to get started with you own gardening, why not create your own garden at home?! With budgets tight and food prices on the rise, a great way to save money and improve the health of the planet is to grow your own food. Planting a vegetable garden requires some planning ahead. First think about where your garden will go. It should be in a spot that gets at least six hours of direct sunlight. (If you don’t have room in your yard, consider using containers or joining a community garden.)

Once you’ve identified your garden’s location, decide what you want to grow. You can find organic seeds by Martha Stewart Living™ at The Home Depot, including herbs such as cilantro-coriander and Genovese basil, and vegetables such as eggplant and cucumbers. But you can also check out local university extension offices, share seeds with other gardeners and farmers, and find heirloom seeds online. Click here to learn more about the importance of heirloom, hybrid, and organic seeds for sustainable gardening, and find our favorite organic and heirloom seed sources here.

Manage Your Garden

Trim small tree or shrub branches easily with simple garden tools (Martha Steward makes her own line, too!). Make sure you find tools that provide a balance of comfort and control to make trimming effortless. When it’s time to pick your first spring blooms, keep them fresh and vibrant—and slow bacteria growth—by adding 1/4 teaspoon of bleach to every quart of cool water used in the vase.

Go for Gravel in your Garden

“Gravel doesn’t have to be a poor substitute for people who can’t or don’t want to have a lawn,” says Stephen Orr, Martha Stewart Living Editorial Director of Gardening. In fact, using gravel can help cut down your water usage: a mere 10-square-foot section of grass requires 62 gallons of water per week. Putting down a layer of loose stones helps keep soil and water in place in wet regions. For an eco-conscious choice, buy local crushed stone over smoothed pebble, which is often dug out of glacial deposits.

To close, here is a great quote from farmer poet & activist, Wendell Berry:

Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating. -Wendell Berry

Happy gardening- cheers to actively working to “improve a piece of the world!”