Archive for the ‘The Manic Gardener’ Category
The Manic Gardener – Greener than Grass
“Greener” here doesn’t refer to color, but to being environmentally friendly. Yup, it’s a metaphor. Last week’s show presented some information about the damage that conventionally maintained lawns can do. This week, we dive into the whole ocean of lawn alternatives.
Some people keep their lawn because they like them—which may be the only good reason to do so. Some of us believe that we need a lawn, perhaps because we don’t have the money to get rid of it, or because “natural” gardens are more work, or—and this is a big one—because we have kids.
For most of us homeowners, though, the lawn is a given, an unthought, default planting.
During our conversation this week, Evelyn Hadden, author of Beautiful No-Mow Yards: 50 amazing lawn alternatives, lays all of these fears to rest. She recommends walkable ground-covers or sedges for those who just love the look of a lawn, and for those who don’t, she explains how to kill turf for the price of some old cardboard or newspaper (and no digging whatsoever), leaving a surface that’s ready to plant. She describes plantings that need far less care than grass, which requires mowing, watering, and weeding. As for children—well, Evelyn is full of ideas for them. And she knows the research that backs those ideas.
She is full of wonderful ideas for all of us, not just children, and so is her book. Part One, called “Design Inspiration: the many possibilities,” consists of eleven chapters, and at one point I simply ask her to read through them—living carpets, shade gardens, meadows, ponds, patios, edible gardens and the rest—and to say few words about each, because this cornucopia of possibilities lies far beyond the imaginative reach of most of us.
Unless we have a guide, that is. And Evelyn Hadden is a wonderful guide to the possibilities of the lawn-free yard.
Check the blog, The Manic Gardener, for more links and information.
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The Manic Gardener – So—What’s wrong with lawns?
Lawns are practically an American institution, but they’re increasingly under attack. The amounts of pesticides, fertilizer, and water used on them are all matters of contention. If you’re wondering whether lawns deserve the abuse heaped on them, this show might help you make up your mind.
My first guest, Paul Tukey, is a writer, filmmaker, activist, and founder of Safe Lawns.org. He tells the story of Hudson, Quebec, where a persistent local doctor got the town to ban lawn pesticides, and of a school in Ohio where pesticide drift sent 47 students to the doctor. He has the facts on 2,4-D, an herbicide widely used in northern Canada, where so many farmers die of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma that it is referred to as “old farmer’s disease.”
But first he tells the story of his conversion from lawn-care professional to a passionate advocate of organic lawn-care. That conversion came only after his own health had deteriorated to the point where doctors told him that the chemicals he was using would kill him if he didn’t quit. But what he didn’t know even then was the effect those chemicals might have on his son.
My second guest is Cristina Milesi, a senior research scientist at California State University, who is affiliated with NASA’s Ames Research Center. Cristina has used satellite images and complex modeling techniques to produce increasingly accurate estimates of the number of acres devoted to lawn in the U.S.—it is only when we have some idea of how big this number is that we can have any sense of the scope of the problem. Cristina’s work extends to the ecological impact of that acreage; in this interview she talks about water use and carbon sinks.
When you think about the the kind of problems faced by Paul Tukey, multiplied by the acreage of lawn we have in the U.S., it looks like we need to make some changes.
Check the blog, The Manic Gardener, for more links and information.
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Tags: ban lawn pesticides, christina milesi, cristina milesi, effects of pesticides, gardening, gardening advice, gardening tip, gardening tips, green gardening, hodgkin's lymphoma, illegal lawn pesticides, kate gardener, lawn care advocate, lawn pesticide ban, non-hodgkin's lymphoma, old farmer's disease, organic gardening, organic lawn care, organic lawns, paul turkey, paul turkey film, paul turkey safe lawns, safe lawns, safelawns.org, the manic gardener, weekly gardening tip | Posted under The Manic Gardener |
The Manic Gardener – A Farmer’s story
When they try to make a movie of Atina Diffley’s story, some producer is going to reject it as unbelievable. Losing one organic farm to development, okay; but nearly losing a big chunk of the second to an oil pipeline? A pipeline owned by one of the two largest companies in the United States?
Start with this setup, and it’s a given that Atina takes them on and beats them. To top it off, she not only protects her own land from the pipeline, but she gets Koch to accept an agreement (at least in Minnesota) that will protect all organic farms threatened by pipelines. Then add that Atina had survived five years in an early, abusive marriage.
Isn’t that just a bit much, as plots go? Maybe. But it’s true.
Author of the beautiful memoir, Turn Here Sweet Corn: Organic Farming Works, Atina Diffley joins me this week to talk about the double assault on organic farms that she and her husband Martin have endured. She describes the “total ecological collapse” they saw as their first farm was gradually sold off to developers, and the shock when she discovered that their second farm might be subject to a claim of eminent domain by the Koch Brothers, who were planning to lay a pipeline across it carrying oil from Alberta’s oil sands. (No, the Keystone XL pipeline would not be the first.)
In part, this is the story of Atina’s transformation, from a battered woman almost devoid of self-esteem, to the woman who took on the Koch brothers and won. But it is also the story of the community she and Martin had built, for Atina stresses, both in the interview and in the book, that she did not win this victory alone. Her intrepid attorney was essential, as was Martin’s support on the home front. But the thousands of letters written by satisfied customers may have tipped the balance, for they made clear to the judge that this farm could not simply be replaced by another. Establishing that fact—that the farm was not fungible—was essential in arguing that Koch should not be allowed to damage it.
This saga is rife with smaller anecdotes, often funny ones, for Atina has retained her sense of humor even about some of the most devastating moments in these crises. There’s not much to laugh at when she tells how she and Martin lose an entire potato crop in a single night of rain after the adjoining hill has been stripped bare. But when she adds that the developer—of Irish extraction, no less—doesn’t know that potatoes grow in the ground, a touch of the ludicrous leavens the scene. And when she tells how her gentle husband terrifies the developer into buying the ruined field from the old woman who owns it—well, I, for one, laughed out loud. I hope you do too.
Go to the blog, The Manic Gardener to see more on this topic.
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Tags: atina diffley, atina diffley farm, ecological collapse, gardening, gardening tip, green gardening, irish extraction, kate gardener, keystone xl pipeline, koch agreement, koch brothers, oil pipeline through organic farm, organic farm, organic farming, organic gardening, organic potato crop, the manic gardener, turn here sweet corn, turn here sweet corn organic farming works, weekly gardening tip | Posted under The Manic Gardener |
The Manic Gardener – How to Buy a Plant
On one level it can’t really get much simpler: you give them the money, they give you the plant, and you’re done. But then there’s the question of whether you and the plant stay happy with this arrangement: is the plant content in its new home, and do you remain pleased with the plant?
Toby Day, Extension Horticulture Specialist at Montana State University, returns to The Manic Gardener, this time to guide gardeners through the intricacies of the plant purchasing process. We look first at how to choose your basic herbaceous plants (vegetable starts, bedding plant, young perennials); then at selecting healthy bare-root asparagus, strawberries, and small fruits; and finally at choosing trees and shrubs. We also talk about getting these into the ground with the least effort and the greatest chance of success.
There are numerous surprises along the way: choose a stocky plant, not a tall one; look for a plant with no flowers—even if it’s a flowering plant; holes for trees and shrubs should be wider than they are deep; male asparagus live longer than female; a pampered fruit tree may bear less fruit than one under some stress; circling tree roots can strangle the tree; foliage on bare-root plants lowers their chance of survival.
Toby also shares numerous tips: he goes to nurseries armed with a sheet of white paper, which he holds under candidates while giving them a gentle shake so that pests will drop onto the paper, becoming suddenly visible. This is a plant to avoid. He also chooses plants from the middle of a table or bed, as they tend to be better watered than those at the edges. (How many people think about that?)
Many of us have brought home a plant only to watch it die, and it’s an experience most of us would prefer not to repeat. Toby can help with that.
Check the blog, The Manic Gardener, for more information and links.
Podcast: Download
Tags: annual flowers, annual versus perennial, backyard gardening, biennial flowers, botany 101, botany made easy, botony, buying plants for a garden, dicot, difference between annual and perennial, difference between monocots and dicots, gardening, gardening advice, gardening answers, gardening help, gardening questions, gardening tips, horticulture, how to buy plants, kate gardener, manic gardener, monocot, monocots versus dicots, organic gardening, perennial flowers, photosynthesis, plant physiology, plant respiration, plant transpiration, pruning, the manic gardener, toby day, what is pruning | Posted under The Manic Gardener |
The Manic Gardener – Composting 101: Bite the Silver Bullet
Spring has sprung just about everywhere in North America, and certainly across the pond, and in spring the avid gardener’s thoughts turn to—composting. All that pruning and mowing and clipping and raking of last fall’s debris and this spring’s growth produces plenty of garden waste.
But just how does one start with this composting business, anyhow?
The number of books out on the subject—or the fact that even one person, much less several, thought the topic deserved an entire book—can make the task seem daunting. Then there’s the question of hot or cold processes, and the problem of balancing brown and green ingredients, not to mention what it means (something bad, clearly) if a pile “goes anaerobic.”
And if you’ve ever happened upon a commercial composter costing several hundred dollars, you may well have concluded that the whole thing is way more expensive than it’s worth.
But despite all those books and dollars, backyard composting can actually be pretty straightforward, and its price can be zero.
My guest this week, Graham Golbuff, makes that quite clear, by clarifying the many mysteries of composting.
Graham directs the Master Gardener program at Seattle Tilth, a non-profit that’s been teaching and promoting organic gardening in Seattle for 35 years. (Check out their compost resources.) He guides us through the composting process, starting with an overview of its benefits to your wallet, your garden, and the environment. Then we turn to the how-tos, from the simplest, passive method, right through the intricacies of hot composting.
Join us for an introduction or refresher course on pile composting. It may answer a few questions, and it’s definitely good for a few laughs.
(Visit the blog, The Manic Gardener, for more on this topic.)
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Tags: compost, compost advice, compost questions, compost resources, compost tips, composting, composting advice, composting tips, gardening, gardening advice, gardening tip, graham golbuff, green gardening, hot composting, kate gardener, organic fertilizer, organic gardening, pile composting, plastic mulch, seatle tilth, the manic gardener, weekly gardening tip | Posted under The Manic Gardener |
The Manic Gardener – The Weed-Free Garden
A weed-free garden sounds too good to be true, and near the end of our interview, Lee Reich, author of Weedless Gardening, admits that it is: He does indeed weed—for about five or ten minutes a week.
Five minutes, though, is close enough to nothing as makes no difference. How does he manage this? (Without planting through a plastic mulch, that is.)
During this week’s show, Lee explains his four-part system and its many benefits, which range from healthier soil to way less work for the gardener. The system itself is pretty simple: don’t till or disturb the earth; lay out permanent areas to walk and plant; keep the soil covered at all times; and use drip irrigation where irrigation is needed.
But how to implement the system is not quite so clear. How do you fertilize, or add organic matter, without digging? And don’t plants need access to these things deep in the earth? As for keeping the soil covered, mulches are indeed great for conserving moisture, but how do living mulches(or cover crops) work in a garden? Aren’t they supposed to be dug in, come spring? (Which sort of negates the no-till part of the plan.)
All of these questions, and many more, get answered on this week’s show. It’s a fascinating hour with a funny, intrepid, knowledgeable guest who’s not afraid to buck the established wisdom of the day.
Lee Reich has a PhD in Horticulture from the University of Maryland and actually started his career as a researcher with the USDA and Cornell University, but he has been for years an independent writer, lecturer, and “farmdener.” He blogs at In Lee’s Garden.
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Tags: gardening, gardening advice, gardening tip, green gardening, kate gardener, lee reich, lee reich weedless gardening, organic fertilizer, organic gardening, plastic mulch, the manic gardener, weed-free garden, weedless gardening book, weedless gardening lee reich, weekly gardening tip | Posted under The Manic Gardener |
The Manic Gardener – More Space Than You Thought: gardening on balconies, porches, and terraces with Fern Richardson
Fern Richardson’s balcony measures four feet by ten. On it she grows a fig tree, an apricot, a kumquat, two apple trees, and an abutilon, an ornamental tree with bi-colored leaves and red, hibiscus-like flowers. Of course, she also herbs, succulents, and vegetables, including peppers and tomatoes. In other words, she grows more in her forty square feet than many people manage in a full-fledged, ground-level garden.
If this sounds so unlikely as to be impossible, trust me, it isn’t; all you have to do to believe this is to take a look at the lush photographs in her book, Small-Space Container Gardens: Transform Your Balcony, Porch, or Patio with Fruits, Flowers, Foliage & Herbs. As my guest this week, Fern describes the special problems that people gardening on roofs and balconies face (those falling pots, you know), but she then goes on to talk about the many (many) tools and techniques that these folks can use to make the most of their extremely confined spaces.
Once one puts one’s mind to it, hanging pots seem fairly obvious, but even trellises anchored in large pots are a stretch for most of us, simply because we don’t think of trellises as belonging on porches or balconies. As for the three or four ways that Fern has for anchoring pots to fences, or for straddling railings with various soft planters or molded pots—my bet is that most of these will be new. Beyond this, there are myriad green walls, including the one she describes in some depth during the interview: the pallet planter, in which an ordinary pallet is transformed into a lovely, vertical display of spring and summer flowers.
It seems there’s no end to Fern’s imagination, and her great gift is to liberate our own. She has ideas about how to deal with noisy neighbors (or nosy ones), how to cope with wind, with blazing sun, with incessant shade. The space that was far too small for a “real” garden may have possibilities you never realized.
Fern Richardson blogs at Life on the Balcony.com
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Tags: apartment gardening, balcony gardening, fern richardson, flower garden, fruit tree gardening, gardening, gardening on a balcony, gardening tip, green gardening, herb garden, how to grow apples, how to grow apricots, how to grow figs, how to grow fruit trees, how to grow hibiscus, how to grow kumquats, how to grow peppers, how to grow succulents, how to grow tomatoes, kate gardener, life on a balcony, organic gardening, pallet planter, small space container gardens, small space container gardens transform your balcony porch or patio with fruits flowers foliage and herbs, space container garden, space container gardening, the manic gardener, vegetable gardening, weekly gardening tip | Posted under The Manic Gardener |
The Manic Gardener – Turning the Tables, Again
When this show first ran under the title Turning the Tables: Organic Farmers Sue Monsanto, in December of 2011, 83 organic farmers, seed farmers, and organizations that had sued Monsanto were waiting to hear whether the judge would rule for the seed giant’s motion to dismiss the case, or would allow it to advance to oral arguments.
At stake in the suit is the question of whether Monsanto would be able to continue to sue individual farmers, both conventional and organic, whose crops were contaminated by pollen or seeds from fields growing Monsanto’s genetically modified crops. This group of organic farmers and organizations is suing to prevent Monsanto from suing them.
It’s now three and a half months later, and much has happened. The suit did advance to oral arguments, but at that point the judge ruled for Monsanto. The consortium of plaintiffs, under the leadership of OSGATO, the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association, has appealed the decision. So once again, everyone is awaiting the decision of the courts.
My guests here, as in the original show, are Jim Gerritsen, President of OSGATA, the lead plaintiff, and Daniel Ravicher, the lead lawyer in the case. Dan serves as both the Executive Director of the Public Patent Foundation, a non-profit organization devoted to representing the public’s interests against undeserved patents and unsound patent policy. PubPat is associated with Cardozo Law School, where Dan is also a professor.
This is a rerun of the original show, with some revisions. The interview themselves have not been touched, but both the introduction and the conclusion have been revised and updated.
Go to The Manic Gardener blog for more links and information.
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Tags: daniel ravicher, genetically modified crops, jim gerritsen, jim gerritsen OSGATA, kate gardener, manic gardener, monsanto, monsanto company, monsanto evil, monsanto genetically modified, monsanto gmo, monsanto lawsuit, monsanto sued, organic farmers sue monsanto, organic farming, organic seed growers and trade association, OSGATA, PUBPAT, puplic patent foundation | Posted under The Manic Gardener |
The Manic Gardener – Mixing It Up in the Veggie Garden
Here’s a riddle: how do you grow vegetables without a vegetable garden? Answer: polyculture. Which means that you either tuck the tomatoes and lettuce into with your existing flowerbeds, or you bring herbs and flowers into the vegetable patch.
Yes: not only does this method do away with rows, which segregate one vegetable from another; it does away with separate beds, which segregate flowers from herbs from vegetables.
My guests this week are David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth, who put polyculture at the heart of their latest book, What’s Wrong With My Vegetable Garden? 100% Organic Solutions for All Your Vegetables, from Artichoke to Zucchini.
On the show, David and Kathryn explain the principle of polyculture and its benefits, which range from thwarting both pests and disease, to creating lovely, creative plantings. They describe several uses of polyculture gardens: easy combinations such as the “salad bowls” Kathryn keeps just outside her door, plots focused around carrots, or tomatoes, or melons, and how to integrate various vegetables into an existing garden.
Then (we’re not done yet) we move on to organic solutions to pests and problems, a conversation that includes rather more about slugs than you might expect. It’s a fun, lively hour, full of practical tips nested in an easily grasped theory that can be applied to gardens everywhere.
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Tags: benefits of polyculture, david deardorff, gardening, gardening tip, green gardening, kate gardener, kathryn wadsworth, organic gardening, organic gardening solutions, polyculture, the manic gardener, vegetable garden, vegetable patch, vegetable rows, vegetable segregation, weekly gardening tip, what is polyculture, what's wrong with my vegetable garden | Posted under The Manic Gardener |
The Manic Gardener – Minding Your Manure
Some organic gardeners swear by manure. Others swear they’ll never touch it. To the first group, it’s the ultimate one-stop soil conditioner, complete with built-in fertilizers. To the second, conventional manure is contaminated with hormones and antibiotics, and even organic manures can contain human pathogens.
Both groups are right, and the only way to make an informed decision about whether or not to use manure is to become better informed about it. So just how wonderful a conditioner is manure? What problems can it cause? And how can they be managed or avoided?
My guest this week is uniquely qualified to answer these questions. He’s Frank Larney, a soil scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Foods Canada (roughly equivalent to the U.S. Department of Agriculture), where he specializes in soil conservation, including feedlot manure composting and soil restoration with manure.
With Frank’s help, we’ll take a quick tour of the various problems that manures can cause, from air and water pollution to soil degradation, before turning to some of Frank’s research. He has done studies on how many pathogens disappear during composting (99.9%) and how long this takes (one week), and on how composting affects pharmaceuticals (they drop to undetectable levels) and again, how long this takes (six to eight weeks).
He’s also been involved in long-term studies that measure for how long a single application of manure to degraded soil can improve crop yields. Want to know the answer? Twenty-two years. And counting.
In the end, each gardener will have to decide for herself (or himself) whether or not to use manures. This program doesn’t try to direct that decision. But it does provide some information that might help.
This week’s Gardening Tip draws on the interview to suggest how back-yard gardeners should and shouldn’t use manures.
The parallel post on the blog, The Manic Gardener, will include links to some of Frank Larney’s papers for the intelligent layperson.
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Tags: agri-foods canada, agriculture, drugs in compost, feedlot manure composting, frank larney, gardening, gardening tip, green gardening, how to use manure, kate gardener, manure answers, manure composting, manure definition, manure questions, organic gardening, pharmaceutical compost, pharmaceuticals in compost, soil conservation, soil degradation, soil restoration, soil scientist, the manic gardener, weekly gardening tip, what is manure, what is manure used for | Posted under The Manic Gardener |
