The Green Parent

Does your backyard need a rain garden?  These lovely little features are a great way to utlize the runoff from your roof and reduce the amount fo water entering sotrm drains.  Big or small, rain gardens also help to reduce water pollution by trapping sediments and excess nutrients before they hit waterways.   So what’s [...]

So, I was sitting outside with my family yesterday when my husband and I suddenly heard a very loud buzzing sound.  We looked up and saw a swarm of bees.  I don’t mean one or two bees…I mean a real bona fide swarm of bees.  I didn’t stick around to count them one by one, [...]

Finally, spring has sprung!  Are you ready to plant so seeds with your little ones?  You don’t need a bunch of store-bought seed starters and supplies to grow plants indoors.  Here are some great seed starter projects that use recyclables instead. Newspaper Take a sheet of newspaper and fold it in half so that it’s [...]

by Christine Heinrichs What’s greener than chickens? They consume kitchen trim and garden waste and turn it into eggs. Their manure can be part of a green garden program. They are the Companion Animal that Gives Back. Even if you live in town, you may be able to keep a few chickens. In rural areas, [...]

With fall in full swing, it’s time to starting think about fertilization…for your lawn and garden that is.  Why now? Fall fertilizing nourishes and strengthens your plants’ and lawn’s roots.  And stronger roots will give them a stronger base on which to thrive next spring.  Many of the fertilizers you find in the store are [...]

ATTENTION: Don’t miss the compost tumbler giveaway at the bottom of this post!! Did you know that food scraps make up over 12% of the US waste stream?  According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, Americans throw away more than 25 percent of the food we prepare, amounting to about 96 billion pounds of food [...]

by Michelle Andrade – co-founder, editor-in-chief, author, This year we decided to start a very small garden. We began with tomatoes, herbs, arugula, and lettuce. After a few weeks, I read that you could plant whole potatoes and decided to plant some. Just this week, we decided it was time to check on our potatoes. [...]

Susan Harris doesn’t believe in green thumbs. Instead, she says she learned the ins and outs of gardening by “trowel and error.” That sounds a lot like my current gardening plan…heavy on the error. So I’m happy to take as many tips as I can from Susan, who is now a Master Gardner and gardening [...]

Every year, Americans use 10,000 gallons of water, 70 million pounds of pesticides and over $5 billion dollars worth of fertilizers in order to get those “green” lawns to which we are so obviously addicted. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, “Homeowners use up to 10 times more chemical pesticides per acre on [...]

With a motto of “Turning Garbage Into Gold,” New Jersey-based TerraCycle is making it their mission to “eliminate the idea of waste” by creating products that are made from and packaged in garbage. To date they’ve kept over one million plastic soda bottles out of the landfill by using the bottles to package their cleaning [...]

Just when you thought you had this whole eco-friendly thing figured out, (with your organic, locally grown produce and cage-free, non-genetically modified poultry,) the guy next door goes and ups the ante by growing and raising all of the food he needs to feed his family of four in his own backyard farm. Every morsel. [...]