|
May, 2008
Everyone these days is concerned about the price of fuel and its
effects on our lives as these price increases spread throughout the general
economy.
We all know that the cheapest fuel is the fuel we don’t
use. Less use of non-renewable resources like natural gas and oil is not
only good for our pocket books and national security but our environment as
well.
One aspect of our fossil fuel use that many of us do
not consider is at the grocery store in the great amount of miles that food
must be shipped such as salmon from farms in Chile or asparagus from Mexico.
Even now in Great Britain, there are signs posted in
some grocery stores about the number of “food miles” a particular product
has traveled.
What does all of this mean to you?
Planting a garden today is like the victory gardens
that were planted during World War II. Planting a vegetable garden in
essence will:
- Reduce “food miles” and thus save energy as your
harvesting produce out of your own backyard.
- Reduce dangerous pesticide usage in the
environment as corporate farms use tons of dangerous chemicals. Less
demand for “their” products means less pesticide.
- The unseen benefits to planting a garden are the
increased family time planting, cultivating and preparing food from the
garden and the valuable lessons that children learn in that belonging to
the family unit means that helping out as a family member is required
and includes helping out in the garden and save you money.
- Increase supplies of fresh produce which will in
turn hold down prices.
- Give you more control over some of your food
supply in that you can be sure the produce on your table is fresh and
healthy to eat instead of relying on long distance domestic sources, or
even worse, foreign sources.
Our third president Thomas
Jefferson is well known as the author of the Declaration of Independence,
champion of public education and the persistent supporter of freedom of
religion was actually a passionate and avid gardener. So much so that he
wrote in a letter to his friend Vincent Peale in the year 1820 the
following:
“I have often thought that
if heaven had given me choice of my position and calling, it should have
been on a rich spot of earth, well watered, and near a good market for the
productions of the garden. No occupation is so delightful to me as the
culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden! Such
a variety of subjects, some one always coming to perfection the failure of
one thing repaired by the success of another, and instead of one harvest, a
continued one through the year. Under a total want of demand except for our
family table, I am still devoted to the garden. But though an old man, I am
but a young gardener.”
Thomas
Jefferson to Charles Wilson Peale
August 20, 1811
April, 2008
Earth Day and Arbor Day are upon us. What kind of tree will you
plant this month so that you and the birds might enjoy the fruits that it
renders? Or, will you plant a tree that maybe you and/or succeeding
generations can rest under the shade of its branches.
“To plant a tree is an act of faith in the earth
an act of hope for the future
an act of humanity towards coming generations
who will enjoy its fruits
after we shall be gone”
- Merrier
Just think what our lives would be like without trees
to shade us, feed us, shelter us and their grandeur and majesty for us to
gaze upon and wonder about.
In the construction of his mansion overlooking his city
of Barberton, Ohio, Columbus Barber’s home site was devoid of large trees
and being a man of vision and of great wealth, he simply had large trees
moved from across the state route 619 to his home site in the early part of
the 20th century.
Don’t worry if you’re not going to live in the same
house forever, just plant trees to cool the house, ones that flower in
spring, ones that turn from green to brilliant hues of red, orange, yellow
and purple in fall and ones that produce fruit.
You’ll be surprised not only how much monetary value
they’ll add to the resale price but even more important is the value of you
and your family’s enjoyment over many years.
And on the subject of flower and vegetable gardening,
remember these following organic tips:
- Having a problem with damping off fungus on small
emerging seedlings from the soil? Sprinkle the soil surface with one
part white vinegar to four parts water and then re-sow the seed. This
concoction will kill the damp-off fungus.
- Use Bi-Carb (Potassium bicarbonate +
spreader sticker) to keep powdery mildew and black spot off roses. Its
great for garden use too to keep mildew off of curcurbits like melons,
squash, pumpkins and cucumbers and is most certainly mild and
environmentally safe.
- Neem Oil made from the seeds of the Neem
tree in India is a natural pesticide for ornamental plants and herbs and
vegetable plants. Fortunately for us, a coalition from India fought an
American company’s efforts to patent this “wonder” insecticide and won!
I’m sure the patent fee and the restricted manufacture of the product
would not have made the product less expensive.
- Refined horticultural oils are another tool in the
arsenal of organic weapons against infestations of insects or spider
mites in the garden. Just carefully follow the directions as an
incorrect use can burn your plants. The refined oils are better than
the “old” types of dormant oil as much as the sulfur that burns plants
have been removed.
- Planting crops together that are compatible with
each other such as sweet corn and squash will make more use of a limited
garden space
Watch for more organic gardening tips on our website!
March, 2008
It won’t be long until the first day of spring and its not too
early to be thinking about fertilizing your landscape and perennial garden
with organic fertilizers Plant-tone and the almost organic fertilizer
Holly-tone for acid-loving plants.
The way organic fertilizers work is that they are low
in salts which is not harmful to beneficial soil microbes which in turn
means that these microbes can work to release the nutrients of the organic
fertilizer over time.
These various and sundry microbes are essential for a
healthy soil and one with good tilth.
A soil in good tilth is like “chocolate cake” an
expression used by the horticulturist at Kingwood Center in Mansfield, Ohio
as reported by Denise Ellsworth of the extension service of Summit County.
This type of soil is achieved over several years by
additions of large amounts of organic matter such as composted leaves,
twigs, grass and other plant debris which will “fluff up” an otherwise
compacted soil.
This organic matter and the resulting invasion of
beneficial microbes therefore has a synergistic effect on the soil and the
growth of plants.
Organic fertilizers do not interfere with this synergy
when added to supply plants with additional nutrients essential for growth.
Lawn fertilizers have long been a source of non-point
source pollution of creeks and streams because of the runoff during heavy
rains especially phosphorus which is conducive to algae growth.
Now the Espoma Corporation, the manufacturers of
Plant-tone and other organic fertilizers, has come up with Espoma Organic
Lawn Food that has only 2% phosphorus that lawns usually don’t need because
there is enough in the soil already.
Like other organic fertilizers, this new product is low
in slats that will keep the beneficial microbes, earthworms and other soil
life happy and intact.
Another product I’m excited about is Espoma’s new lawn
weed control product called Espoma Organic Weed Preventer Plus Lawn Food in
which the active ingredient of corn gluten has been proven to reduce weed
numbers in most lawns by 60% the first year of use.
Its important to apply the product at the right time;
that is, before weed growth begins.
Just think about it, a lawn weeder product that is safe
for pets, people and the wider environment.
I cannot testify to the efficacy of this new product as
I have not used it as of yet but we’ll for sure be using it on the lawn
areas around the nursery as I get nervous on using the traditional products
as the runoff from the lawn areas goes back to our lake that we use for
irrigation.
In later blogs, I’ll let you know how it works.
February, 2008
One of the major headlines in the news today has been about regional
droughts such as the one in the southeast in 2007 and areas out west.
Water resources and the debate of how to distribute water whether it is for
agricultural use, urban use or used to protect species’ habitats is becoming
increasingly serious as water demand increases from an ever-growing
population and more frequently occurring water shortages or even floods
caused partly because of global climate changes. It seems everyone
these days worries about the price of oil and other fuels but until
recently, clean water was taken for granted which is for sure a more
valuable commodity. At the nursery, we have taken a proactive approach
to better water use since 1998 not only because of my desire to be
environmentally friendly but because the water quality in the creek that
runs through the nursery, Van Hyning Run, is too poor to water our nursery
stock as it is high in salts and other pollutants on its short 3-4 mile
course from Loyal Oak Lake through the nursery and then on to Wolf Creek.
In late summer, the foliage on our plants would have a burned edge because
of the high concentrations of salt revealed in our frequent water tests
since 1997. Completed about the same year was our one-acre lake
that was fed by runoff water that tested much better than the creek water.
It was obvious that this was our new water source as much of the lands and
drainage ways of the nursery drained to this lake. An electric pump
was installed in 1998 to pull water from the lake for irrigation and a
second smaller pump was used to pull water from the creek was now used to
pump rain water and run off water from irrigation that would run back to the
holding pond instead of directly to the lake because of the elevation
difference. This system now supplies all of our outside irrigation
water and captures the runoff from our irrigation in order to recycle it and
use it again so that very little water including rain water leaves the
property. In this way our needs are met for good quality water and
since almost no water leaves the property with its resulting leachates of
fertilizer, pressure is not placed on the stream as far as pollutants such
as phosphorus and additional runoff from rain storms that would contribute
to flooding downstream. Our other challenge though was the fact with
our irrigation water used over and over that over time salts would increase
to an intolerable level because of fertilizers used on the plants. The
above concern has never materialized as rain water is always collected and
added to the system and more importantly, the ditches and settling ponds
used to capture silt and other debris have all been naturally colonized with
Acorus (Iris), Marsh Marigold, Cattails, Rushes and other aquatic plants
that just love the boggy effect these waterways have created. In fact, the
natural colonization of water plants has acted like a giant water filter as
water flows through the system. You might say our whole system is like
one big rain garden. A rain garden that meets the nursery’s needs for high
quality water.
January, 2008
I think I first starting thinking “green” when I was a teenager
and the environmental movement got started in the 1970’s. The book
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson had a message back then that was powerful
enough to change human behavior just as Uncle Tom’s cabin had done more than
150 years earlier on the subject of slavery. I always thought of the nursery
business as an honorable one in which the resulting production; that is,
trees, shrubs, flowers, would clean the air, provide food and shelter for
wildlife, prevent soil erosion and just plain beautify the earth.
While the above statement is obviously true, I realized more and more over
time that many of the practices used in the nursery to produce a beautiful
product were in themselves not “green”. For example, some crops required
large amounts of deadly pesticides such as chlorinated hydro-carbons and
organophosphates that were definitely bad news for the environment and
humans as well. Erosion has been a problem with long rows of nursery
stock in which a wide band of bare soil between the rows is constantly
cultivated and churned to kill weeds resulting in wind and water carrying
the “gold” away. In fact, Mr. Grulleman, who founded Wayside Gardens
in Mentor, Ohio in 1920, always shipped plants bare-root because not only
was it more practical for mail order but his comment to my late friend and
propagator John Ravestein, was that he (Grulleman) was selling plants, not
soil! In fact, there is a quote from an unknown author that the only
thing that makes it possible for humans to survive is a few inches of
topsoil and the fact that it rains once in a while. Herbicides are
another factor in nursery stock production and until recently, methylbromide,
a gas used to kill weed seeds in plant and seed beds, was one of the gases
responsible for depleting the ozone layer in the atmosphere. As the
year progresses, I’ll be giving you an insight as to the changes that are
occurring in the industry and what we have done, are currently doing and
plan to do to lessen the impact on the environment to make our products even
“greener’. Stay tuned.
|
Going Green...