The Eat the View campaign is mobilizing to get governors’ mansions across the U.S. to plant gardens instead of using the entire lawn for grass/landscape. Why not dedicate these spaces to food production for your family and neighbors? Even planting veggies and herbs in place of flowers can increase the environmental value of your property while reducing your carbon footprint. The Eat the View Campaign’s parent organization, Kitchen Gardeners International, has declared this July 4th “Food Independence Day,” encouraging folks to consume meals made from local and sustainably grown food. And they don’t forget to tell you how delicious it is.

Vermont was the first state to follow the lead of the White House and USDA, and this morning, Pennsylvania becomes the second state to plant its garden.

More research is emerging that organic agriculture stands to make a significant impact in efficient carbon sequestration– effectively aiding in management and mitigation of greenhouse gas production.

Here are stories:
Pennsylvania

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/prnewswire/2009/05/21/prnewswire200905211404PR_NEWS_USPR_____DC21214.html

Vermont :
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20090515/NEWS03/90515013/At+Vt.+Statehouse++even+the+thumbs+go+green+

If you haven’t yet declared your food independence, please do here:

http://foodindependenceday.org/

For the latest in research regarding organic agriculture and carbon sequestration visit:

http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/global_warming

Happy eating, friends!

BizzyBoots

If you’re a gardener, a simple way to reduce your impact on the Earth is to recycle your newspaper and yard waste into next spring’s flower bed.

A good time to prepare for planting next spring is coming up soon – autumn! If you prepare your flower beds right in the fall, they’ll be ready to go in the spring, when you need them. By using layers of material you would most likely throw away anyway, you can have a great flower bed prepared come planting time. You can even create a new plot – right over existing grass!

First, make a one-inch layer of wet newspaper over the area you would like to prepare (don’t use colored newsprint – only the black and white (and read all over) pages).

The next layer should consist of a couple of inches of peat moss, then do a few more layers of some kind of organic material like compost or grass clippings or chopped-up leaves (it will be autumn when you do this remember). Each of these layers should be about 4 or five inches deep. No more than three layers of organic material is necessary above the peat moss.

The last step is to plant your bulbs, then cover them with another two inches or so of mulch. Your total depth after all is said and done will be somewhere between one and a half feet and two feet or so. Over the course of the fall (before it gets to freezing temperatures), keep the plot watered (about an inch of water per week) and the “pile” will begin to disappear… it will sink right into the ground.

Once spring has sprung, you’ll see that your flower bed is now full of excellent, good, clean dirt. And the newspapers have acted as a weed-barrier, so you should have very few weeds to deal with, too!

And if you don’t keep the packaging or mark the type of flowers you planted (and your memory is like mine) you’ll have a nice surprise in Spring when they begin to grow and bloom!

Namaste,
A. Caleb Hartley

Water traveling through the water table feeds a river at a steady, gradual rate.  If we route water directly to the river via pipes and sewers then that steady water flow turns into abrupt floods of water during even mild rain events followed by long dry spells between rain events.  Water levels oscillate between high and low making them become unstable with their banks looking like cliffs and trees falling over into the river. 

The ground and plant life on the surface act as filters for the water before it arrives to the river.  It reduces pollutants and turbidity.  The sewer lines provide a direct line to the river without this filter.  For example, runoff from a yard brings with it the phosphorus from fertilizer.  Concentrated phosphorus in a river creates algae blooms which alter the amount of sun and oxygen the water in the river gets, which kills plants and fish.

A rain garden is an attempt at putting that missing piece of the water cycle back.  Instead of diverting rainwater runoff from a roof to a sewer drain, you divert it to a rain garden where it soaks into the ground.  At its most basic a rain garden is a shallow basin with native plants planted in it. 

Site selection:  You want to find a spot that’s ten to fifteen feet away from your foundation.  You can test the absorption rate of the ground by digging an 18 inch hole in the ground.  Fill it with water once- after that’s soaked up fill it up again and if it soaks up within 24 hours then you don’t need to amend the site.  If it doesn’t soak up within 24 hours then you’ll want to mix sand and compost in. 

Site preparation:  First, figure out how big your rain garden should be.  This formula is what the City of Ann Arbor recommends:  Take the square footage of your roof, divide it by the number of downspouts, then take one fifth of that- the resulting number is the square footage your garden should be.  So, if you have a 1,000 sqft. roof with 2 downspouts then you need a 100 sqft. garden.  Mark out the border of your rain garden and then start digging.  The center of the garden should be 3 inches below the border of the garden.  To get the water to the garden you can extend your downspout, or dig a little trench to the rain garden. 

Plants:  Native plants are among the best plants for this job.  They have deep long roots that can help water find a path down to the water table.  The deep roots also help the mature plants survive periods of no rain.  You’ll need to pick plants that are accustomed to becoming temporarily flooded.  A few good candidates in Michigan are swamp milkweed, new england aster, blue flag iris, and big blue stem grass.  In natural settings most of these kinds of plants are found at the edges of ponds and streams. 

http://www.raingardens.org/Index.php

http://www.ewashtenaw.org/government/drain_commissioner/dc_webWaterQuality/rain_gardens/tour/raingardentour.html

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Interested in a type of garden but want to know more about it?  Looking for a plant to fit a specific site?  Add some comments and I’ll make sure to factor in your feedback when deciding what to write about next

What if I told you that there were flowers you could plant in your garden that required no fertilizer, bug sprays, or even watering in most cases? They come back up every year without any intervention, frost fears, or digging up bulbs. These magic plants are native wildflowers. A plant that is native to your specific climate and land conditions has already figured out how to survive and thrive. All we need to do as native plant gardeners is match up the planting site with the correct plants.

Native Plant Nursery of Ann Arbor has a great site that allows you to search and filter through a database of native wildflowers to match plants up with your specific site needs.

Valentine’s Day Flowers

Everyone enjoys flowers for Valentine’s Day, whether they are giving them or receiving them – so if you are a flower person, make sure you give eco-friendly flowers this year.

Flowers, like any other plant – be it a food plant or otherwise, can be tough on the environment if they are grown using harsh, chemical pesticides.  So when you order flowers this year for your loved one, look into these places to find organically-grown and earth-friendly flowers: 

• OrganicBouquet.com
• California Organic Flowers
• Diamond Organics

Another thing to think about when buying flowers is where those flowers are grown.  Often, your flowers are delivered from halfway around the world.  Flowers sent to people in the USA are grown in South America. This means that, even if the flowers are organic, that significant amounts of fossil fuels have been burned just to get them to you or your recipient.  So buying local is very important as well.  Local Harvest can help you locate a local florist in your area that offers organic flowers, grown near you – so you can cut the pesticides and the carbon emissions.

One last thing to think about regarding flowers on Valentine’s Day (to avoid being completely cliche’d this Valentine’s Day, I feel I need to offer something a little more creative):  instead of giving cut flowers to your Valentine this year, give him or her certified organic seeds from Seeds of Change so s/he can grow the flowers and watch them live, instead of just throwing them away when they die.

Namaste,
A. Caleb Hartley

It is a proven fact that live plants can help people feel better when they are down (I made this up).  With that in mind – I’d like to discuss a not specifically green product that may still be of interest to my green readers: The AeroGrow AeroGarden.

This product allows you to grow plants (herbs, flowers, small vegetables, etc.) year round, in your house, without making a mess.  There’s no mess because there’s no dirt!  The AeroGarden is a self-contained “garden” which uses seed pods and suspends the plant’s roots (once the plant germinates) in a “rain-forestlike” chamber where they are “misted” by water pumped through the chamber.  The garden will even alert you when the water is running low. 

The AeroGrow AeroGarden costs between $150 & $200, depending on where you go: Macy’s 199.99 | cooking.com 149.95 | Cook’s Quarters 149.95.

OR, through environmentastic!, you can try AeroGarden for only $19.95 [aff] for 36 days.  The 19.95 is the shipping cost, and you have 36 days to try the product out before you decide if you want to keep it.  If you click the above link, you’ll not only get a “free” trial (not including shipping), but you’ll be supporting environmentastic! as well.

Before you make a decision on whether or not to try this product out, click on some of the links below to read more about the product and some reviews of it.

Treehugger reviews the AeroGarden here.  This is a positive review.

Another AeroGrow affiliate reviews his own success with the product here. Obviously, as an affiliate, another positive review.

Here, BoingBoing reviews the AeroGarden. Verdict was “skip it” – but the only reason was becasue it is just as easy to grow things with pots and dirt.  The review was actually positive about the product itself.

NewsTarget reviews the AeroGarden here, as well.  I am a big fan of Mike Adams, because he seems to do very good research and thorough reviews of products and services.  Mike initially recommended against the product, but found that the particular product he reviewed was faulty.  He still hasn’t fully recommended the product, but he has stated that AeroGrow has been working with him (and on the product) regarding his concerns, and that “the fact that AeroGrow is constructively engaged in problem solving and is interested in a conversation about these criticisms speaks volumes about the company’s integrity.”

Namaste,
A. Caleb Hartley