Tee Cee’s Tip

Dear Tee Cee,

I’m a backyard gardener gearing up for spring, and I’m itching to clean out my beds and prep for the coming season. I want to create my garden in the most environmentally mindful way I can. Do you have any gardening prep tips for me?

Thanks, Steph

Dear Steph, ’Tis the season for worms, microbes, and dirty hands. Gardening is inherently eco-friendly. Any activity connecting us to the Earth and soil is a radical act of environmentalism. In that spirit, let’s dig in and boost your gardening game.

Consider a “no-till” garden. Instead of digging up last year’s roots and overturning soil, let organic matter build up as plants and mulch decompose. Clip plants at soil level, avoiding root disturbance, then plant your garden. This method prevents erosion, preserves soil microbes, and retains moisture.

Put clippings from last year’s garden back into circularity. If you’re a backyard composter, break up dried stalks for your compost bin. No backyard compost? No worries. Here in Longmont, we are lucky to have access to curbside composting. As it gets picked up, you can wave and know that it’s not “goodbye,” it’s “see you soon!” These bits from last year’s garden will soon be turned into nutrient-rich compost to nurture your garden.

Feed your soil. Close the loop on composting by buying back finished compost made from your food and yard scraps. “Eco-gro” compost, available at Ace Hardware or Mcguckin, is compost created from scraps collected from communities along the Front Range. This amendment boosts garden health, enhances local soil carbon cycling, sequesters greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, and returns nutrients back to our soils for future harvests. Boost and feed your microbes. Microbes are the invisible life forms in soil that drive nitrogen fixation, carbon sequestration, plant growth, pollutant purification, and more.

But harvesting and other practices can deplete microbial activity, and they need a boost. Ecocycle’s Microbe Brew can do the trick — it’s brewed from castings produced by Eco-cycle’s mighty worms on staff who are fed food scraps from local food markets. Once you’ve added compost to your soil, simply pour the brew over the soil and the microbes will go to work digesting the organic matter and minerals and turn them into plant-available forms that can be readily absorbed by roots, stimulating growth. Microbe Brew goes on sale in April at the Eco-cycle Center for Hard-to-recycle Materials (CHARM) located at 6400 Arapahoe Road in Boulder.

With that, I’ll send you off to your 2024 gardening with a salute — thank you for engaging directly with your soil and working to heal the land. Happy gardening!

Tee Cee