Green Waste and Your Garden

What may seem like typical yard and garden debris can actually be a source of rich nutrients called green waste. At Miracle-Gro®, we love green waste and all the amazing things it can do for your garden!

What is Green Waste

Green waste is any organic material, which includes your yard and garden waste like tree and shrub trimmings, grass clippings, branches, twigs, leaves and weeds.

Green waste can be categorized as green or brown. While it’s still green or freshly cut, most of your yard and garden waste is considered green waste. Green waste is rich in nitrogen, which is a macronutrient that plants need to grow. Brown waste can be woody materials like branches and twigs or dried out plant matter like dried leaves and grass clippings. These materials are higher in carbon, which helps absorb moisture and creates air space in compost and soil. Both nitrogen and carbon are beneficial for soil and plants and feed helpful microbes, or bacteria and fungi, that enrich your soil.

How to Use Yard Waste

So, how do you turn yard waste into nutrients for your soil and plants? That depends on what you have. For instance, you can leave grass clippings on the lawn since they’ll naturally break down into the soil. But clippings might not be the look you want for your yard, and removing tree branches and other large waste items requires a little more work and planning.

1. Compost your Yard Waste: Another option for your brown and green waste? Your own compost bin! Here’s where the difference between green and brown waste becomes important: a healthy compost pile needs both for a nutrient-rich, balanced blend. Before adding anything to your compost pile, make sure that it hasn’t been treated with persistent herbicides. Cut any large chunks of wood or branches down to a small size so they’ll decompose faster. If you choose to add weeds, watch out for weeds that might go to seed and take over your compost pile. For more on composting, check out this article by Martha Stewart.
2. Mulch Wood Materials Like Branches: If you like the look of mulch, why not use what you have on hand? Larger pieces of wood can be chopped down to small chips for your garden beds and other landscaping projects.
3. Recycle Yard Waste through a Local Green Waste Facility: Asking someone else to take care of your yard waste for you is probably the easiest way to handle green waste. Find a local agency near you that removes green waste so it can be upcycled for future use. Your neighborhood, city or county may offer green waste recycling as part of their trash collection services, so check with your local authority or waste company. Be sure to read and follow all disposal instructions, such as how to bundle branches and what yard waste bags to use, to ensure it will be picked up.

Miracle-Gro® & Green Waste

While green waste might look unsightly to you, it’s gold to us at Miracle-Gro®. We take pride in our partnerships with green waste facilities across the country that enable us to use upcycled green waste in our products. Once your yard debris is collected, it can be distributed to partners like Miracle-Gro®. We take various forms of green waste, maybe even those clippings, branches and leaves from your yard, and create the green waste compost that enriches our products, such as Miracle-Gro Organic™ Raised Bed & Garden Soil. Essentially, we use upcycled green waste to make great things for your garden and plants.

Miracle-Gro® is dedicated to giving green waste a second life in your garden. In fact, we use over 3 billion pounds of recycled green waste in our products every year. By choosing Miracle-Gro® products, consumers are partnering with one of the world’s largest green waste recycling efforts.