You can’t have a truly green garden without truly green inputs. Make sure you’re stocked before you start your digging.

SUSTAINABLE SEEDS I normally cheat and buy seedlings, but you can save some serious coin if you start planting seeds right now. Don’t limit yourself to those conventionally grown and oh-so-blasé varieties on the seed rack at the grocery store. Urban Harvest has a wide array of seriously cool certified organic seeds, including atomic red carrots, chicory, okra and tomatillos (uharvest.ca). Seeds of Diversity’s members swap non-hybridized rare and heirloom seeds for the price of a postage stamp (seeds.ca).

RAIN BARREL I’ve got to be honest with you here: veggie growing is a water-intensive business. You can’t just ignore them and hope they’ll grow, and you can’t rely on spitting skies. If you’ve got access to a downspout, throw a rain barrel underneath it (one with a good screen) and use free Gaia-given rain instead of chlorinated hose water. Your plants will thank you and so will the city’s storm sewers.

BIG BOWL Why let all that water you use to wash your veggies or rinse your rice go straight down the drain when you have all those thirsty plants to feed? Do your rinsing over a wide-mouth bowl and cart it out to your tomatoes.

PVC-FREE HOSE Ideally you’ll never have to pull out your hose, but if you do, you want to make sure it ain’t made with lead-leaching PVC. Consumer Reports tested 16 brands and found that several leached unsafe levels of lead into water.

NON-LEACHING PLANTERS Beware of planting edibles in glazed terracotta since the glaze could contain lead. And FYI, black pots draw more heat and dry up more quickly.

KITCHEN-CUPBOARD PEST CONTROL Yes, Ontario’s banning the cosmetic use of pesticides, but that doesn’t mean so-called natural pesticides on shelves aren’t toxic. (Pyrethrins comes from chrysanthemums, but they’re also a serious neurotoxin.) Instead, just put a tablespoon of natural dish soap in a spray bottle of water as your basic insecticide. A few tablespoons of baking soda in a bottle with water will work on fungal attacks. Steeped garlic, orange peels, cayenne and ginger are excellent repellents.

GOOD BUGS Fight fire with fire. Beneficial insects can help keep nature’s pests in check. A bag of native ladybugs will munch on aphids but also eat mites, scale, thrips and whiteflies. Various types of nematodes will chew on root weevils, leather jackets, root worms, caterpillars, maggots, grubs, June and Japanese beetles and more.

FOSSIL-FUEL-FREE FERTILIZER Do you really want to reach for Miracle-Gro when its maker, Scotts, actually lobbies against stricter enviro controls on pesticides and fertilizers. Instead, reach for all-natural fertilizers made from seaweed, natural minerals, bird poop (aka guano) or worm poop tea (uharvest.ca; bustan.ca). TerraCycle’s certified organic, odour-free, squirtable liquid worm poop fertilizer comes in reused soda bottles and is available at some stores.

GOOD COMPOST/COMPOSTER Tilling a 4-inch-thick layer of nutrient-rich compost into your veggie plot is really the best thing you can do for it. Compost is also great mixed with potting soil for balcony gardens. You can, of course, buy compost from any garden centre, though if you can make it yourself, even better. Yardless folk not afraid to get their hands dirty can get a worm hotel (cathyscomposters.com), or if worm- phobic can check out Nature Mill’s plug-in automated composter that runs on a piddly 10 watts of power a day (naturemill.com).

CAGES Thanks to my friendly neighbourhood raccoons, I didn’t get to eat one single ear of corn last year. The bastards ate them all before I did. Don’t make the same mistake. If you see raccoons licking their chops nearby, immediately build a barrier for your plants with chicken wire and wooden stakes (sturdy enough that it stays up but saggy enough so they can’t scale it). Then pray to the maize gods that you get to enjoy the fruits of your labour before they do.