Weekend Reading 11/24/23

This week: A movement to 'leave the leaves,' how gardening affects the water supply, how a butterfly festival is more than what it appears, cultivating the concrete jungle and a guide to square foot gardening.

There’s a movement to ‘leave the leaves’ in gardens and lawns. Should you do it?, Associated Press

AP gardening columnist Jessica Damiano writes that the idea is to avoid sending bagged-up fallen leaves to landfills. Instead, we’re asked to leave them be, allowing them to naturally decompose over the winter into nutrient-rich organic matter that also shelters hibernating pollinators and other beneficial insects. Done thoughtfully, leaving the leaves is one of the best ways to turn yard waste into free fertilizer, and that’s good for your plants, the environment — and your wallet. But it’s important to consider the types of leaves you’re dealing with and where they’re landing.

How Your Gardening And Lawncare Habits May Be Wreaking Havoc On The Water Supply, House Digest

Tiffany Selvey writes that our gardening habits affect watersheds in many ways. The chemicals we use to make our grass greener, the pesticides we apply to control aphids in our gardens, and even the way we deal with fallen leaves all impact the quality of water around us. Thankfully, by making a few small changes to the way we maintain our outdoor spaces, we can help improve the health of our watershed.

Texas Butterfly Festival highlights need for crucial gardens, AIM Media Texas

Travis Whitehead writes that while the festival is a visible event that highlights the importance of butterflies and the beauty of those butterflies and their important part of the food chain, a much deeper reality is the planting and the maintenance of those gardens. With the changing of the landscape and the rearranging of things and the expansion of farmlands and the cities, the creation of urban habitats have taken on a more vital importance. Aside from the preservation of a species and its right to exist in perpetuity, butterflies play a crucial role in the food chain.

A new generation of community gardeners have big goals for cultivating the concrete jungle, The Architect's Newspaper

Melody Stein writes about urban agriculture, which encompasses community gardens cultivated by volunteers as well as vast greenhouse and rooftop farms that sell their products to grocery stores across the country. The concept of food production in urban areas has gained visibility in recent years in tandem with discussions of food insecurity, climate resilience and equitable access to green space, but the challenge of understanding and representing such a diverse range of stakeholders persists.

Square foot gardening: How to grow more vegetables with less space, Better Homes and Gardens

Square foot gardening offers an ingenious solution to the challenges of limited space, writes Kylie Rees. It allows you to create a vibrant garden, no matter how small your outdoor area is. Using compact, grid-based plots, you can cultivate various vegetables, herbs and flowers efficiently and appealingly.

Enjoy your reading, have a great weekend and we'll see you next week!