Gardening for a 'green' planet

Gardeners are often "green" thinkers. They plant and nurture all kinds of living things. Some gardeners are greener than others are, composting, using organic techniques, conserving water, reducing or eliminating pesticide use, and building up soils. Green thinking makes care of the environment a daily activity.

One thing green-thinking gardeners can do is to recycle yard waste. Having a compost pile at home keeps green waste out of the landfill and provides a gardener with brown gold - compost.

In case you don't think that you can compost at home, or if you don't have a chipper, consider using the Carson City Landfill, which accepts untreated, clean wood, such as branches and pallets. They grind up these materials and use the resulting wood chips in the parks. Unfortunately, the landfill is not able to compost at this time, so leaves and grass clippings are just added to regular trash.

Gardeners can also take branches and clean wood to Carson City Renewable, just outside the landfill entrance at the green gate. Their service is free, but they cannot accept pine cones or needles, grass clippings or leaves. They request that all branches be loose, rather than tied together or in plastic bags.

Full Circle Compost also recycles green waste. They are at 3190 Highway 395, at the Northern Nevada Nursery in Douglas County. They will reopen Jan. 15, and accept just about everything - grass clippings, old sod, branches, weeds, pesky juniper bushes and more.

Another way gardeners can simplify their lives and be environmentally conscious is to focus on maintaining a healthy, rather than a perfect, lawn. Manicured, baseball-field perfection requires too much water, too much fertilizer, too many pesticides and too much work.

A healthy lawn is still lovely, but is properly installed with efficiently scheduled irrigation, and is fertilized at the right time of year with the correct amount of fertilizer.

Mowing the lawn with a push mower or an electric mower uses less energy and creates less pollution than using a gas lawn mower. A gas lawn mower used for one hour releases as many hydrocarbons into the atmosphere as driving a car 50 miles. We can make a significant dent in reducing air pollution in the United States by reducing the hundreds of thousands of lawn mowers and other gas-powered equipment used each day.

It may seem that what one household does to live more lightly on the land can't make much of a difference. But when added to the efforts of many households across the United States and the world, our individual acts of conservation do make an impact, so think and act green in 2007.

For more information, e-mail skellyj@unce.unr.edu or call me at 887-2252. You can "Ask a Master Gardener" by e-mailing mastergardeners@unce.unr.edu or call your local University of Nevada Cooperative Extension office. Check out many useful horticulture publications at www.unce.unr.edu.

• JoAnne Skelly is the Carson City/Storey County Extension educator for University of Nevada Cooperative Extension.