Posts Tagged ‘reducing your carbon footprint’

Many homeowners are not only looking for a way of saving money, but also saving the plant through a reduction in carbon.  Carbon is released into the environment when vegetation is cut down, and when fossil fuels are burned.  This fuel can be used not only through the use of personal equipment, such as lawn mowers and weed eaters, but also through transportation of goods and services. These goods and services include the movement of equipment and materials form one area to the next.  To create a turf and/or garden that has a reduced or carbon-neutral footprint, try some of the following suggestions.

Use Only Natural Fertilizers

One of the big carbon contributors to the carbon problem is through the creation of synthetic fertilizers.  The components of this fertilizer not only have to be trucked into the lab but once made it also needs to be trucked out.   A better approach when it comes to fertilizer is creating your own.  This is easily done through a compost and/or worm bin.  Another approach is to grow your own fertilizer.  Hairy vetch and soybeans are grown as a living fertilizer that is tilled under in the spring.  This releases nitrogen into the soil along with other nutrients.  All of these approaches will produce a local, Mother Nature made fertilizer that works as well, and in many situations better, than the synthetic form.

Read the rest of this entry »