It was early April, and Mark Easter鈥檚 backyard garden in Fort Collins was a tangled mess of dried-up, yellow, dead plants: the remnants of last year鈥檚 growing season. Now the ground was finally thawed and ready for an early spring refresh, but cleaning up all that leftover plant debris was not on Easter鈥檚 to do list.
He welcomed the messiness as a sign of a healthy ecosystem.
鈥淎 messy garden actually leads to better crops in the end,鈥� Easter said.
That鈥檚 because the plant debris is feeding the soil. It might look messy, but to Easter, an ecologist and retired Colorado State University researcher, it鈥檚 all .
Easter said the messy garden isn鈥檛 just good for his own backyard ecosystem 鈥� it鈥檚 doing work for the planet at large as a , which means it absorbs more carbon than it releases to the atmosphere.
say we need to a lot of carbon in our 鈥� nearly in the U.S. 鈥� to avoid . At that huge scale, soil carbon sequestration has a lot of potential to mitigate climate change.
But Easter is doing the work on a much smaller scale. He鈥檚 sequestering carbon in his backyard garden by using a specific set of cultivation practices.
鈥淏y disturbing the soil less, by leaving those crop residues in place, trying to get cover crops in place, you're essentially taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere through the action of the plants and storing it in the soil as organic matter,鈥� he said.
Conservation farming principles
Those practices all make up the backbone of , which is also often called , or or even just plain farming for :
- Keep the ground covered using mulch, living or dead plants. When soil is exposed, it releases stored carbon into the atmosphere.
- Minimize soil disturbance by not tilling or turning over the soil. According to CSU horticultural specialist Cassey Anderson, disturbing the soil exposes it to air and UV rays, which break the chemical bonds in soil carbon, turning into carbon dioxide that鈥檚 released to the atmosphere. 鈥淭he more you expose your soil to air, that's going to make that soil carbon release back into the atmosphere,鈥� Anderson said.
- Keep living roots in the ground year-round, which prevents soil erosion and maximizes the amount of carbon those roots fix in the soil.
- Cultivate plant diversity, which usually takes the form of rotating crops, to ensure a healthy soil ecosystem.
- Livestock integration, which means grazing cattle or other animals, in the croplands. The animals leave manure behind and do other helpful work in the fields.
As an ecologist, Easter spent much of his career helping farmers adopt those practices in their fields. It wasn鈥檛 a huge leap for him to decide to tweak the idea for his own backyard, where he said his conservation gardening techniques are very similar to what regenerative farmers would be doing on a commercial scale.
鈥淔or our system, at this scale it鈥檚 going to be a little bit different. But the principles are the same,鈥� he said.
Climate impact of the backyard garden
The of carbon gardening might be the same as carbon farming, but when it comes to climate impact, scale is everything.
鈥淭he carbon sequestration that's happening in somebody's backyard is tiny compared to the ,鈥� said Jane Zelikova, director of CSU鈥檚 Soil Carbon Solution Center.
The climate crisis clearly isn鈥檛 going to be solved by backyard gardens alone. But according to Zelikova, there are a host of other good reasons to build up the soil carbon content in your backyard: Soil carbon is a decent stand-in for soil health.
鈥淐arbon is just one . For most people who use regenerative ag practices, it鈥檚 not the main goal,鈥� Zelikova said.
Conservation practices build soil with water infiltration and retention, making gardens more 鈥� a particularly important quality in the arid west.
They also help improve other nutrient profiles in the soil.
鈥淭he water and nitrogen and carbon cycles are tightly interlinked,鈥� Zelikova said. Over time, as you build up the carbon content of your soil, 鈥測ou build a soil system in your garden that holds on to a lot more nutrients so you don't have to fertilize so much.鈥�
Cassey Anderson, the horticulturalist, advises that through a combination of regenerative practices, backyard gardeners can realistically aim to increase the carbon content of their soil to about 3-5%, over time.
鈥淥nce you get to that level, then you're really holding about as much as the soil is really going to want to hold before you start getting imbalances,鈥� she said, adding that is necessary to keep track of how much carbon you have and how much you鈥檝e added over time.
And while the climate impact of any one backyard garden might be but a drop in the ocean, Zelikova emphasized that to mitigate catastrophic climate change, we need to manage every acre of land optimally to keep carbon in the ground. Every backyard plot contributes something, and every gardener is part of something bigger.
"Just being able to see what it takes to do that in your backyard is really helpful for connecting to the broader effort."Jane Zelikova, director of CSU's Soil Carbon Solution Center
What it takes to do it in your backyard
Backyard carbon gardening can start out pretty simple. In Mark Easter鈥檚 backyard, the messy garden does a lot of work in and of itself. The soil is covered 鈥� protected 鈥� under all that yellowed plant debris he didn鈥檛 clear away at the end of the last growing season.
鈥淚t's just one less chore I have to do in the fall,鈥� Easter chuckled.
But he takes carbon gardening a few steps further, planting cover crops in the off-season. That helps keep the ground covered and provides living roots for much of the year. It also boosts crop diversity: He uses a custom mix of seeds.
鈥�We've got two different types of legumes in here. We've got field peas and Austrian winter peas and then some ,鈥� Easter explained, poking a finger around a handful of seeds. The mix also included yellow mustard, , buckwheat, oats and rye.
鈥淭he objective is a living root in the soil, 365 days a year,鈥� Easter explained. 鈥淵ou're trying to feed the microbial community below ground.鈥�
Home gardeners often turn over the soil to clear the ground before planting, but that鈥檚 an unnecessary disturbance that will cost you soil organic matter.
鈥淲hen you disturb the soil, you lose the carbon that it holds,鈥� Zelikova cautioned. She recommended planting new seeds into spaces between existing plants.
In Easter鈥檚 garden, the approach was to make room for the new seeds by gently brushing dead vegetation off to the side with a hoe.
鈥淚'm trying to disturb the soil, the deep soil as little as possible,鈥� Easter explained as he worked.
After sowing the seeds, he replaced the brushed-aside plant residue, sprinkling it back on top of the buried seeds.
鈥淲e鈥檒l put it back in place here and use it to cover the soil,鈥� he explained. 鈥淚t helps prevent erosion, helps hold moisture. It acts as a kind of a mulch.鈥�
As those leftovers decompose, they will enrich the bed with organic matter. Meanwhile, the new seeds will sprout into the next generation of carbon-absorbing soil cover.
As for bringing grazing cattle into the mix, Zelikova conceded that integrating livestock probably wouldn鈥檛 work for most home gardeners. 鈥淭hat's challenging to do in a tiny backyard,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hat's probably going to be a principle that's hard to pull off.鈥�
Easter doesn鈥檛 attempt to bring animals onto his property, but regularly feeds his soil with compost, which provides some of the same benefit, and certainly enriches his soil.
And all that work has paid off. Easter has been testing his soil since 1995, when he started adapting the principles of conservation agriculture in his own backyard. In that time, he calculated that he鈥檚 increased the carbon content of his property by 757 pounds, which means he鈥檚 taken that much carbon out of the atmosphere and stored it in his soil.
That might not be a lot in the grand scheme of things. But Easter said that over that same period, his yields have improved, and his crops have become more pest- and drought-resistant.
鈥淲e're not just getting delicious food, We're getting a garden here that's just a lot more resilient to the sorts of challenges it faces.鈥�Mark Easter, ecologist and retired Colorado State University researcher
