Are you wondering how to reduce your carbon footprint? If you are not in denial about climate change you are probably wondering how to make a difference!?!
A lot of suggestions on how you can reduce your carbon footprint seem life-changing. Even difficult to sustain depending on where you live.
For example, we live in a very rural area not having a car and trying to completely depend on public transport is not an option for us. We wouldn't get very far...
Life without a car here would seem rather difficult. Trying to offset our carbon footprint in our backyard is much more appealing and achievable as you will discover shortly.
And the good news ... a win-win is possible for the climate and for you! With the correct gardening techniques, you will help the climate and reduce your carbon footprint. You will also produce healthy and nutritious food right in your backyard! A no-brainer...right?
Climate-friendly gardening means to garden smarter (not harder!)...and produce food for yourself and your family. All that while increasing biodiversity, reducing the amount of hard work (e.g. digging), increasing soil fertility and resilience to climate instability. What is not to love about this?
In general, climate-friendly gardening can reduce your carbon footprint in 2 ways:
I know that this sounds a bit theoretical so let’s have a look at this in more detail and make it more understandable.
Download our FREE Gardening4Climate guide and learn how to do just that in your own backyard with permaculture gardening!
To learn how to reduce your carbon footprint with gardening you have to understand how plants can pull CO2 out of the atmosphere. Nature has perfected this life-enabling process millions of years ago: it is called Photosynthesis!
Plants can take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it into sugars (that contain carbon) and oxygen. The sugars are converted into plant fibers e.g. wood or leaves. Plant materials like leaves or wood can be transformed into stable organic matter by soil microbes and the carbon is now sequestered i.e. taken out of the atmosphere for a longer period. Now you….or the plant has reduced the greenhouse gas CO2! You get the idea….the secret sauce is biomass and soil organic matter.
These sugars are also excreted through the roots (root exudates) to attract beneficial microorganisms (which increase in numbers because the plant 'feeds' them) and are exchanged with fungi for other nutrients (mycorrhizae). More biomass...and organic matter :)
!!!!!!!!!!So what is climate-friendly gardening you might ask? In a nutshell… increasing biomass and sequestering as much carbon (organic matter) as possible in your garden soil..and keeping it there! We will explore gardening techniques that will do just that here!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Check out Climate-Friendly Gardening Part 2 here and learn about 10 ways to reduce your carbon footprint with permaculture methods.
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