Here's My Great Green Idea!

Does your yard look like it's been cursed by an evil fairy godmother? Maybe you feel that having a beautiful yard runs contrary to water conservation and the avoidance of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Maybe the efforts you have made to beautify your yard have left you madder than Donald Duck when you're left looking at brown and dying grass or bare dirt.

Our family found the usual options such as an expensive automatic sprinkler system (which can cause over watering due to over-coverage) and a barrage of lawn care products that are harsh on the environment. However, we aren't wealthy like Scrooge McDuck and fertilizers and pesticides are rarely green. We needed some cheap and green solutions to have the yard of our dreams.

Just like Pooh, we decided to "Think, think, think" and below are two simple suggestions that our family employed here at home which will leave your yard beautiful, easy to maintain, and eco-friendly.

Suggestion 1: We found ourselves wasting water by forgetting to turn off the sprinkler overnight. As frustrating as that was, the price of installing a $2,000 - $3,000 automatic sprinkler system was cost prohibitive. With some can-do Mickey Mouse attitude, we setup an automated sprinkler system of our own for $200 that will allow you to conserve water and yet maintain a healthy lawn. Pickup the following items at your local hardware store: large pop-up sprinkler heads that you can bury in the ground (get enough to cover your yard - we used three), 100ft of flexible PVC tubing, an automated timer that you can attach to an outside faucet, and the necessary converter attachment for the PVC to connect to the faucet and attachments to connect to the sprinklers. Since you only need to bury the tubing a few inches in the ground and the flexible tubing does away with irritating joints and corners, in no time you will have sprinklers in the ground and be ready to run your system in the early morning hours before the hot sun evaporates all that spraying water away! (Don't be Goofy and forget to add a good layer of mulch in your flower beds to retain as much moisture as possible.)

Suggestion 2: Just like Minnie Mouse, we like plenty of nice plants and flowers but don't like the pesky bugs that chomp on them so plant your garden plants in combinations where they are mutually beneficial to each other. Bugs attracted to the garden by some plants could actually be good for fighting the more undesirable pests that afflict other plants. With our own garden bed, we planted flowering Portulacas that attract predator insects to rid us of aphid problems that accompany the nearby roses. Totally Green! (Check with your local library for books that can help find other combinations. We can't wait to try some for the vegetable garden we'll plant next year!)

We enjoy a wonderful yard every year by following these simple "green" solutions and we are "happy ever after" that we have given back to our environment along the way.