For many, the thought of starting a garden is a daunting task. From tilling your land to buying all the special tools stores say you’ll need to have a successful garden, it almost seems like too much. For others, the thought of spraying potentially harmful pesticides to protect your plants from the army of summer bugs is out of the question.

But Jeff Hancock, who gardens with his wife, Cora, lives by the idea that gardening doesn’t have to be hard — on you or the planet.

“You can make gardening cheap if you just reuse what you have lying around,” Hancock said.

He also prides himself in not using harmful pesticides. Instead, he employs environmentally safe techniques to ward off bugs.

Hancock sums up on of his rules with this: “You don’t have to have a lot to have a lot.”

Most of his techniques involve avoiding pesticides. From companion planting to Hancock’s inventive forms of weed control, gardening is as much about protecting the planet as it is about harvesting from it.

“It’s about letting Mother Nature counteract itself without us going in and contaminating a food source,” Hancock explains.

Hancock recommends gardening for everyone.

“Gardening is a way to make a better life for yourself. It’s a good way to get back to the earth,” he says. “It’s just good for the soul.”

Companion Planting

Gone are the days of straight rows of a single plant, at least in Hancock’s view. Planting several things together is an easy way to ward off pests or attract good bugs and even improve the flavor.

“I plant borage with my tomatoes,” he says. “The borage will attract bees, which pollinate the tomatoes, and it will also sweeten the tomatoes.”

He also plants marigolds to deter certain bugs and rid the soil of harmful nematodes, which attack your plant’s roots.

Hancock has also decided to experiment with “three sisters” gardening, which is a Native American technique of planting corn, beans and squash together.

The beans add nitrogen to the soil for the corn and the corn gives the beans a structure to crawl up. The squash then provides cover for the soil, which helps the soil retain moisture, the way mulch does in many gardens now.

“The Native Americans didn’t know about nitrogen in the soil or mulching around plants, but they figured out that corn grew better with beans planted nearby and the soil was protected by squash,” Hancock said.

Recycling

Hancock incorporates recycling and reusing in many ways in his gardening.

Weed control is just one way. He’ll cover the ground where he plans a garden with old rugs and carpets to keep weeds from ever growing. In his raised beds, which he creates out of leftover pieces of lumber, he’ll put down a layer of newspapers first, then fill in with the soil.

“The newspapers will help to keep weeds out and then will compost into the ground, improving the soil over time,” Hancock said.

Another of his “experiments” stems from a trip to a garden store, which was selling bags to grow plants in for more money than he was willing to pay. Hancock decided to try growing potatoes in bags he already had — the bags that hold his chicken feed.

Even if the experiment doesn’t work — he’s growing more potatoes the traditional way to compare — he’s accomplishing something good anyway.

“It’s just another way to keep trash out of our landfills,” Hancock says.