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Lawn and Garden

• Use natural fertilizers such as compost, manure, bone meal or peat whenever possible. Ask your local hardware and garden supply stores to stock these natural fertilizers.
• Buy a composting kit at a garden supply or hardware store to convert foods scraps into garden nutrients and soil, reducing the need for fertilizer
• Avoid over-watering lawns and gardens by adopting slow-watering techniques on lawns and gardens. Trickle or "drip" irrigation systems and soaker hoses are 20 % more efficient than sprinklers. In most areas an inch per week is enough to sustain lawns and gardens. Place an unpside down frisbee in your yard to measure your watering. Over-watering of lawns increases leaching of fertilizers into groundwater.
• Water grass and flower beds early in the morning. To stay green and healthy, most lawns and gardens only need 2 to 3 cm of water per week (eough to fill an upside-down "frisbee"). Lower early-morning air temperatures reduce water lost to water evaporation. When it's waremer, up to 50% of the water from a sprinkler can evaporate before hitting the ground.
• Replace hard and impervious surfaces like concrete and asphalt around your home to improve drainage around your home and in your yard. Use vegetation, gravel or other porous materials, wood decking, or interlocking bricks and paver stones for walkways. This allows rainwater to seep into the soil where it can be aborbe by plants, rather than run off into storm drains and sewers.
• Redirect rain gutters and downspouts to soil, grass or gravel areas. Planting vegetation at lower elevations than nearby hard surfaces allows runoff to seep into soil.
• Maintain septic systems properly, and have the septic tank cleaned out every three to five years. Effluent from failed or poorly maintained septic systems can contaminate groundwater.