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As the new year kicks off good and proper, millions of people across the country are making a fist of their New Year’s Resolutions – whether re-joining the gym for the umpteenth time, cutting down on vices or simply picking up a new hobby. With a third of them projected to fall at the first hurdle, though, it can be hard to put much truck in the tradition!
If you’re a particularly green-fingered person, whether with decades of experience knee-deep in your flowerbed or a year into your houseplant obsession, there’s a good chance you’re starting this year in hopes of achieving some key horticultural ambitions. There’s also a chance you don’t quite know what they are yet. Here are some excellent examples of resolutions you could take to your gardening this year.
Use Less Plastic
Single-use plastics are well-known for their negative environmental impacts by now, but our consumption of them is often out of our hands – whether it comes to us as film packaging, netting or even in the form of seed trays. Eliminating plastics of any kind can only be a good thing for you and your garden, putting you in line with a more sustainable form of garden practice.
Plastic pots are ripe for re-use, while new pots can easily be constructed from recycling waste such as old newspapers. Biodegradable alternatives to plastic are also increasingly available in a variety of forms, enabling you to buy single-use items and dispose of them in a sustainable way.
Compost Your Waste
Reducing plastic waste might be a more general resolution, and as such difficult to track in terms of ‘progress’. Another sustainable resolution you might consider is to set up a proper compost bin, and compost as much waste as you are able. This is a resolution that is easy to follow, and that yields a real reward in the form of fertile compost to boost the potency of your soil. A simple wood compost bin is easy to set up, and the habit of keeping and composting food waste easy to form.
Update Your Tools
Oftentimes, gardening can feel like a serious case of ‘making do’. This is fun where it concerns repurposing scrap items for improvised structures and tools, but can become a bit of a fuss when it comes to your tools. If you’re new to gardening, there are some essential pieces of kit that will make your life much easier for owning:
- Secateurs – for trimming bushes and stems cleanly.
- Gloves – to protect from thorns, sharp branches and the elements.
- Hand trowel and fork – for churning, digging, planting and weeding up-close.
- Lawnmower – for mowing the lawn!
Even seasoned gardeners are guilty of making do, particularly with tools that don’t get used altogether often. Rather than continuing to make do with old, underpowered tools for rare fabrication, why not resolve to invest in a more reliable, contemporary set of Milwaukee drill drivers to make life a bit easier? The same goes for lawnmowers, where a new Flymo will improve quality of life no end over your old hand-mower.
Keep On Top of Weeds
But sometimes, the simplest resolutions are the best. Weeds are the bane of every gardener’s life, and it can be tough to keep on top of them – but if you resolve to stay on top of them this year, you might make your life all the easier in the long run. This is a basic, achievable resolution with immediate visible results.