By Christina Reid.
Beeswax! Chicken manure! No, these aren’t angry outbursts from someone who accidentally dropped gooey leftovers on the floor. They’re just hints of both new and ongoing gardening trends for 2014, according to industry reports and observations.
With an improving economy, people with extra time and income are vowing to find some balance in their technology-driven lives by spending more time outdoors. Besides seeing gardening as a stress reliever, people are also interested in becoming more ecologically minded, as in composting kitchen and garden scraps, planting native trees and plants and designing gardens specifically for wildlife, among other practices.
More and more people are aware that honeybees and other pollinators are in trouble. They’re losing habitat and getting damaged from toxic pesticides and herbicides. To counteract that, many gardeners are installing beehives in their garden and/or are planting things that bees, butterflies and other pollinators need, such as native plants. Gardeners are also shunning the use of chemical pesticides in their yards and gardens in order to maintain a healthy ecosystem, allowing beneficial insects, such as butterflies, ladybugs, and bees, to thrive.
Many of our grandparents, especially those in rural areas, kept a flock of chickens for eggs because it was practical, not popular. In the last few years, though, keeping a few chickens in the backyard has been getting more and more hip, with even urban homeowners in New York City keeping chickens. Not only do the hens provide the family with fresh eggs, the chickens also produce excellent fertilizer for the garden. For best results, thoroughly compost the manure in the compost pile before using it in the garden.
And speaking of compost piles, they are hot and not just the temperature! Composting is one of those practices that makes so much sense that one wonders why more people don’t do it. The composting process takes all the leaves, old vegetables, coffee grounds and other assorted bits from the family kitchen and garden and turns it into soil, over time. Along with having a simple pile in the garden, there are also some new precomposting products like a counter top appliance that grinds up kitchen scraps, speeding up the composting process considerably. And vermicomposting, where bins of composting earthworms do their thing indoors or out, continues to be popular.
Different ways of gardening are increasingly bringing in people who thought they were too busy to grow food. Keyhole gardening and straw bale gardening simplify the growing process and save space and water, as well.
Then there is the avid and continuing interest in permaculture classes, where people learn to question such gardening dogma as: Why do we plant the vegetable garden in the backyard? Why not the front yard? The permaculture movement, begun in the late 1970s, essentially promotes working with nature, instead of against it. Hugelkultur, or mound culture, described by Permaculture speaker Toby Hemenway, involves sprinkling compost on a moistened pile of logs, tree prunings and lumber scraps in order to then plant on it. The decomposing matter in the hugelkultur beds raises the temperature just enough to boost plant growth as it slowly releases nutrition. Not only can you start growing vegetables sooner but less fertilizing and watering is required.
Regardless of how or where people garden, it’s becoming clear that the new practices and systems are often a version of going back to tried and true basics. Now, that’s a trend worth following!
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