Sunday, March 21, 2010

Eco-Friendly Flowers

If, like most normal people, you love flowers, it is quite possible that you will be spending a good deal of money buying flowers. Flowers can be costly, even if rightly so, and some out of season or rare flowers can be extremely costly.

Flowers form a large component of wedding day expenses, parties, celebrations, and the like. If you want to save some money on flowers, why not buy flower seeds and grow your own? Growing flowers can be a very pleasant pastime.

However, make sure your flowers are eco-friendly. Most flowers that you buy in the market or at florists are grown in an eco-unfriendly manner, using pesticides and herbicides. Some of the larger florists grow their flowers outside the US, paying very low wages to workers there. If you are conscious of these issues, try and grow eco-friendly flowers at home yourself.

Growing eco-friendly flowers is not rocket science. All that is required is a little environment consciousness. Do not use pesticides, do not cut down trees to create your garden, but try to arrange your flowers around trees if you have them. Using kitchen based compost is a good way to protect nature while recycling something useful. Rotten fruits, leftover fish and other food items can be used as very good compost.

The most important part of growing eco-friendly flowers is the use of homemade compost and manure. These are absolutely eco-friendly materials, and unlike chemical fertilizers, do not harm the soil or the environment.

These have an untold number of uses. Firstly, homemade compost use is a good way to get rid of the household’s waste product without much expense. A substantial part of the cost of waste management can be saved in this way.

Secondly, compost is organic, non-toxic and does not contain harmful chemicals. As such, it does not kill nitrogen fixing bacteria in the soil, or other organisms in the soil that add to its nutritional value for plants. It does not have acidic content, and so it does not increase the PH of the topsoil. Compost does not harm the air in any way, not releasing any toxic fumes. About the only negative thing that can be said about it is that compost has a strong smell.

Thirdly, and most important, compost is a very good fertilizer. Many kinds of flowers grow especially well in compost and manure. Roses, for examples, take to compost extremely well.

However, you may still occasionally have to buy flowers from florists, especially if you need flowers in large amounts, for parties and celebrations. In those cases, too, you can ensure that you do your two bit for Mother Nature. Check that the florist is offering Veriflora certified flowers. Veriflora is an organization that has set the standards for organic and eco-friendly flowers, also ensuring the flowers are grown under fair labor conditions, without chemical fertilizers and toxic pesticide usage, among others.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for sharing the information on eco friendly flowers. Your blog is informative and you are resourceful. Iflorist.co.uk

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