Ingrid Callot Tips for a Life of Glorious, Green Gardening

From Ingrid Callot Photos

I’m Ingrid Callot and my three favorite people are Oprah Winfrey, Martha Stewart, and the Dalai Lama. I would love to have them over one night for a Mexican dinner with my husband Roger and son Jacob. After that, we’ll play charades over tubs of cheese popcorn and cream soda. When Jacob’s off to bed and Roger’s sauntered over to his nightly bout at his workstation, the four of us will collapse on the living room couch for a marathon of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, Friends, Arrested Development, and The Real Housewives of Orange County.

From Ingrid Callot Photos

I live to keep house and keep house in order to live. Little by little, I am replacing bad habits for eco-friendly practices to usher in sustainability. “Ingrid Callot, you have so much fertilizer now,” my friend Edgardo Versoza declared one day after seeing the fruits of my composting, a habit I started over a month ago. “You need to plant yourself a nice, little garden.”

Unfortunately, I am no green thumb. I wouldn’t be able to tell the plants from the weeds if the darned parasitic growths were killing my crops cold. Thanks to Oprah.com, however, I now know a thing or two about gardening.

From Ingrid Callot Photos

• Plant locally – Vegetables and greens native to your area will be adaptive to the climate and temperature extremes, and will tend not to need too much extra water.
• Mulch it over – Mulch preserves soil moisture, saving you gallons of water. It also prevents the growth of weeds.




From Ingrid Callot Photos




• Re-use water – Put rain buckets under the house gutters and use the extra runoff to water your garden.
• Keep things simple – A frenzied backyard mess will only stress you out rather than relax you. Small gardens prove to be more manageable and rewarding.

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