Green tips for an environmentally friendly Easter

Almost everything we use originates in nature. Therefore, we should try to give back to it as much as possible. This is especially important during major holidays like Christmas and Easter, when we often eat more food than usual. And when it comes to Easter, it's not difficult. Spring and the growing season are underway – and paper, plants, Easter twigs, and other things can easily become part of the garden in various ways.

Here are some of the Easter treats that can easily be recycled:

There is little that is more associated with Easter than eggs. Eggshells contain, among other things, minerals and calcium, and they therefore add important substances to the soil. Feel free to use them in both pots and flower beds. Half eggshells even work excellently as pots for small seeds. The eggshells can also be filled with small, sweet flower bouquets and hung on Easter twigs as decoration instead of feathers, which are often treated with chemicals and in some cases taken from living birds.

Feel free to use twigs from a tree or shrub that has been pruned when making Easter twigs. Once Easter is over, you can use the twigs in a cultivation bed called a hugelkultur, which provides long-term nutrients, or you can build nice plant supports from them. Another way to recycle the twigs is to add them to the regular compost where they provide an important addition of carbon.

If you want new trees or bushes, you can let the twigs stand in water until they take root before planting them out.

All paper that does not contain toxins fits well in the compost. Just like wood, they provide an addition of carbon that the microbial life needs. Nice Easter eggs can also be saved for later years or used as pots for new sowing.

After the Easter coffee is finished, you can use both coffee leftovers and coffee grounds as plant fertilizer. Coffee contains a lot of nitrogen and also some potassium and phosphorus. Coffee grounds are mixed with water (1 + 10 parts) and can be used as fertilizer approximately once every six months. It is possible to spread the coffee grounds directly in the flower beds outside. And if you are lucky, the scent will manage to scare away the occasional cat that wants to use your flower bed as a toilet.

Let Easter's lovely bulbs, such as hyacinths and daffodils, move outside when they finish blooming. Easter flowers provide early food for insects next year and in the years to come. Narcissi such as daffodils and jonquils are placed at a depth of around 15 centimeters, while small bulbs are planted shallower. Pinch off the flowers, but let the stems and leaves wither and give strength to the bulb. If you plant a couple of pots each year, it can eventually become a beautiful field of daffodils and other lovely spring flowers.

Many of the herbs we use at Easter can be planted if there is any green left on them. It doesn't always succeed, as the root systems are often very dense, but usually it goes very well.

Can crafts be sustainable? Absolutely! You can, for example, sow grass in a half eggshell, plant spring bulbs in beautiful glasses, which you later plant out, or dye eggs with plants instead of chemicals. Onion skins, blueberries, beets, turmeric, and spinach provide very beautiful natural colors, and the process is simple – just add a pinch of salt and a small splash of vinegar to boiling water, mix this with the plant you have chosen, and cook the egg as usual.

Let your Easter dinner be an organic and green feast, and use what is in season for the meal. Spinach can be harvested already now if it is sown in winter, but there are also exciting weeds that are edible and bloom early in spring, such as garlic mustard.

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