Urban Ecoist

I had originally planned on starting this thread in Early April, but a family thing had me effectively offline all month. So I’ll try to pick up the pieces of my failed planned to keep you all abreast of the developments in my garden and *ahem* plow ahead.

A little background on not only my garden, but also why I have decided to focus on the small garden plots in my yard. I begin with the latter. I do not in any way profess to be an expert gardener, in fact far from it. I am however an eager student and an effective researcher. I am also proving to be a cautionary example of what not to do.

For example, this is what I did to a Spanish lavender bush in my yard.

Yeah, don’t do this at home.

Gardening has become rather fashionable as of late, and in so much that maybe you are starting out in your own garden or starting to think about starting, maybe you can glean some value from reading about my own trials and tribulations in the ol’ victory garden.

Now the former…Perhaps overly ambitious, I began gardening with a bang. I was renting a farm house at the time, and hey, it’s a farm. That first garden became a beast, and ultimately led to a lot of mistakes on my part and on the part of bad luck. My next garden was an easy-to-manage raised bed of 24 square feet. If you take one piece of advice from all of this self-indulgence, start small.

Last year was my first season in Portland, Oregon. I live in a funky yard with a lot of different sun-shade patterns that I clearly did not know before planting. Not only that, but ravenous insects were also a major issue (especially cutworms). I definitely learned a lot from that first year. Also, I should mention that I rent my home (as do many urbanites) , so I am limited in what kind of garden improvements I can make.

That said, I did spend a good part of last season composting for this season. Success in that, and I bought a lot of compost last season and dug it in everywhere I could to try and break up all that effing clay that we have here in Oregon. I was a little underfunded last year, so I couldn’t go crazy with soil testing and the fancier soil amendments. I figured that compost was good as an all-around soil amendment, so I settled on composting as a cheap, effective action I could take for future use.

Also, last year I put in peas — lots of peas. I love peas, and they are seriously the easiest veggie to grow. Not only that, but pea plants fix nitrogen into the soil and if you dig the spent plants into the ground after your harvest, they break down into “green manure.” So, really, if you cannot do anything else this year, put in some peas.

My efforts last year included putting in some herbs. Fresh herbs are so super awesome to have around if you like to cook, or if you just want to impress people (if you are that gardener). I put in sage, chives, flat-leaf parsley, rosemary, and thyme.

Oh, yeah, and I put in twelve strawberry plants. A June-bearing variety (Mount Hood) and an ever-bearing. I read that you shouldn’t let your berry plants produce fruit the first year, which is so hard to do, but I trimmed off all flower heads to prevent fruiting. I am expecting some huge rewards for my herculean test of patience.

And somewhere I read that garlic should go into the ground in the fall, so I put in some garlic bulbs from my kitchen that were starting to grow little crowns. I try to only buy organic garlic, so I hope they were okay to stick in the ground. What’s the worse that can happen, right?

The baby on the right is Carlitos. You can read more about him and other children affected by pesticides here.

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The other day I wrote about the kitchen garden that First Lady Michelle Obama is putting in on the White House grounds, the first garden since the World War II victory garden tended by Eleanor Roosevelt. Mrs. Obama decided to garden after being gently encouraged by a group called Kitchen Gardeners International, and just when you’d think that the First Lady is going to get some respect for doing something like planting some lettuce and peas for White House dinners, another group has taken offense.

The Catch-22 Garden

Seems the organic garden of Mrs. Obama is ruffling some feathers among those that farm the “conventional” way. Ok, is it odd that the way of farming that has been around for thousands of years and lead to the dawn of civilization is not called “conventional”? No, conventional farming is the newfangled less-than-a-century-in-use chemical farming that everyone thought was the answer to all of our species troubles.

Anyway, the Mid America CropLife Association has sent Mrs. Obama a letter asking her to rethink her plans to go organic in her kitchen garden. The main gist of the argument is that chemical “conventional” agricultural practices are good enough for everyone else, so the Obamas don’t need to go starting something.

Here’s a brilliant passage from the letter, which I got from La Vida Locavore.

Starting in the early 1900’s, technology advances have allowed farmers to continually produce more food on less land while using less human labor. Over time, Americans were able to leave the time-consuming demands of farming to pursue new interests and develop new abilities. Today, an average farmer produces enough food to feed 144 Americans who are living longer lives than many of their ancestors. Technology in agriculture has allowed for the development of much of what we know and use in our lives today. If Americans were still required to farm to support their family’s basic food and fiber needs, would the U.S. have been leaders in the advancement of science, communication, education, medicine, transportation and the arts?

We live in a very different world than that of our grandparents. Americans are juggling jobs with the needs of children and aging parents. The time needed to tend a garden is not there for the majority of our citizens, certainly not a garden of sufficient productivity to supply much of a family’s year-round food needs.

Much of the food considered not wholesome or tasty is the result of how it is stored or prepared rather than how it is grown. Fresh foods grown conventionally are wholesome and flavorful yet more economical. Local and conventional farming is not mutually exclusive. However, a Midwest mother whose child loves strawberries, a good source of Vitamin C, appreciates the ability to offer California strawberries in March a few months before the official Mid-west season.

So, chemicals pesticides and fertilizers are responsible for mankind’s advances in other “fields”…ok, sure, I’ll buy that a constant food supply does allow for surpluses, which would in turn lead to wealth that would be able to fund research and the arts. But a lot of studies are showing that there is very little real advantage to conventional farming methods, and that often the health of the soil is degraded over many seasons as the farmers are throwing chemical nutrients into the soil hoping that the plants will absorb them before they leach through the soils into the groundwater supply. If the nutrients are not staying the soil, then the soil turns to dust.

And I love the part at the end about a Midwestern mother be able to give her strawberry-loving child berries in March rather than waiting for the June strawberry season. Come on, that is a poor argument, especially as we start looking at the total carbon footprint of the agricultural industry and see that transporting produce in off-seasons can really add up in terms of carbon emissions. Not only that, but that California strawberry was picked while it was underripe, and underdeveloped nutritionally-speaking, so that it would be perfectly ripe by the time it made its cross-country trip to that Illinois grocery store.

That Midwestern mother would be better off teaching her kid about seasonality and how local produce is more often than not the produce at the peak of its nutritional load. Better yet, she could plant a strawberry patch with her child and then freeze extra berries for March, or make the berries into jam to have all year like my mom did.

Michelle Obama, organic gardening, White House, kitchen garden, agriculture, crops, farming, conventional farming, chemicals, fertilizers, pesticides, seasonality, local foods, Kitchen Gardeners International, carbon emissions

Within days of Michelle Obama breaking ground on the White House’s South Lawn, California’s First Lady Maria Shriver announced that she too will be putting in an “edible garden” in Sacramento’s Capitol Park.

Will the updated “victory garden” become the new black…or rather green?

According to the White House blog, First Lady Michelle Obama and a group of students from Bancroft Elementary School in Washington, DC got out the shovels and starting digging up the South Lawn. They are putting in a vegetable garden complete with herbs, both perennial and annual. You can click here to see a PDF of the somewhat ambitious garden plans. I love the idea to include edible flowers (nasturiums) and beneficial flowers (marigolds, zinnia) to attract or repel insects. So much better than nasty pesticides.

The official story is that it will be the kids working the “kitchen” garden, and I applaud the fact that the crops planned are the easy

“kid-friendly” peas, lettuces, spinach, and onions. There is some room for broccoli and fennel as well. I’m sure there will be a garden staff to help out in addition to the student labor.

The White House Kitchen Garden, as the blog refers to it, is the first such garden at the White House since World War II and Eleanor Roosevelt. The Clintons had a rooftop garden, but this is the first to go in the actual grounds of the White House in some 60 years.

It wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t mention that the WHKG was “suggested” to the Obamas by more than 100,000 petitioners.

More than 100,000 people have lobbied the president online to plant a garden on the White House lawn, according to Kitchen Gardeners International, a coalition of gardeners whose mission is to inspire and teach people to grow their own food. The group’s Eat the View campaign to plant “high-impact gardens in high-profile places” urged the first family to start an edible garden within the first 100 days of the Obama administration. –LA Times

Not to be outdone in green cred, the California First Lady is planning a vegetable garden to be a demonstration garden for the city of Sacramento. Shriver is working with Alice Waters, who is a big advocate for kitchen gardens and local foods and teaching kids to grow things, and her organization, Edible Schoolyard. The plan is to have the garden as a classroom for kids to learn about food and its production.

The White House kitchen garden will provide organic produce for the White House kitchen, appropriately enough. How cool is that? Dignitaries come into town and eat peas from the White House’s personal garden. Take that, Europe. We’re down with veggies here in the US and we even know how to grow them instead of driving our Hummer to the mega-huge-chain grocery store selling GM crops.

The WHKG will also donate to a local food bank, Miriam’s Kitchen. The California Capitol Edible Garden (CCEG) will “probably” be donating to a food bank.

Michelle Obama, kitchen garden, garden, White House, South Lawn, local food, victory garden, recession garden, first lady, California, Maria Shriver, organic, Alice Waters, Edible Schoolyard

Americans don’t seem all that keen on their fruits and veggies, or at least not as keen as they should be, unless we are talking potatoes. And especially when they eat out, Americans are more concerned about proteins and starches, relegating the veggies to mere side dishes, if included in the meal at all.

And then, add the seasonality of fresh fruits and veggies, and we can see that sometimes eating fresh produce is hard to do, especially if you are on a budget or if you don’t want to purchase imported produce that requires fuel and produced more carbon emissions to ship to your local grocery chain. Also, keep in mind that so-called fresh produce was most likely picked unripe (which means that it did not spend enough time “on the vine” to develop all its healthy nutrients) and has been traveling for a week or more before it even gets to your store.

What’s an urban ecoist to do?

Two options are canned or frozen vegetables and fruits. But which is better?

The canning process involves heating, which will kill any microorganisms that may be living on or in vegetables and fruit. It is very rare that a canned product will carry food-borne illness (which has become a problem with fresh produce lately). However, some nutrients withstand the canning process better than others. Vitamin C and folate are two such nutrients that can be lost during canning.

Frozen produce may be a better choice for most fruits and veggies. Produce undergoes freezing soon after it is picked, so there are less nutrients lost due to age, which may make frozen produce better than some imported “fresh” produce.

Of course, we wouldn’t be very responsible ecoists if we didn’t take some other things into consideration, such as packaging. Cans are highly recyclable and can be reprocessed almost infinitely, but more and more cans are lined with a plastic that contains Bisphenol-A (BPA), which more and more research is showing to leach into foods (especially acidic ones, like tomatoes). Scientists are finding evidence that BPA may cause developmental damage in humans. The EPA is working with some manufacturers to voluntarily reduce BPA use in cans, but I can forecast a day soon when you will be looking for a “no BPA” label on canned goods.

Frozen produce are usually packaged in plastic bags, and the plastic, usually HDPE (#2), used is not as easily recyclable and rarely included in curbside recycling programs. Unfortunately, even the cardboard packaging used with frozen produce is lined with plastic, which also makes it harder to recycle.

Another consideration is where those canned and frozen fruits and vegetables are coming from, and usually that’s a factory farm. Depending on where you live, that can of peas may have traveled thousands of miles to get to your grocery store shelves.

Geez, it’s not easy being green…but if you are serious about it, you may want to can or freeze your own veggies and fruits. When you are at your local farmers market or farm stand this summer, buy larger quantities of fresh produce and process them yourself for winter consumption. Start out freezing fruits like berries, which are easy, and as you become more comfortable and savvy, try your hand at tomatoes.

I remember the cellar at my great-grandfather’s house in Dearborn, Michigan and the shelves stocked with mason jars full of stuff like tomatoes and pickles. He grew everything in his own urban backyard. It’s too bad that as a society, we have become more and more reliant on grocery stores to bring us our produce, when really we could be providing our own — saving money and nutrients at the same time.

fruits, vegetables, healthy eating, nutrition, frozen, canned, produce, carbon emissions, seasonality, BPA, Bisphenol-A, plastics, HDPE, recycling, home canning, factory farm, farmers market, fresh produce, imported produce, EPA, vitamin C, folate

If you cannot tell what is on my mind lately by reading a recent post, then you should know that there is something about winter that brings out the dreamer in me in terms of what I will be doing in my small urban garden this next season. As a city dweller, I am a renter and as such, my dreams for my little garden will most likely never be realized as who knows how long I will live in this house, and hi, it’s not my house, so I don’t get to call the shots on major garden design and projects.

So, maybe someone out there can glean something from my grandiose plans for the grandiose problems that I have in “my” yard. I always believe in leaving a yard in better shape than that in which I found it, so my planning tends to go below the surface in many aspects of garden design. And if I were to undertake a major project this next spring, it would be to build and plant a raised bed garden along the roadside of my front yard. It would reduce noise from the street, increase privacy and add more plants that could be attractive to both wildlife and insects.

The first thing you should consider when building a roadside urban garden is that these plants are on the front lines of pollution from cars. I live on a quiet street that doesn’t not see much traffic, but many urbanites live on busy thoroughfares and should take pollution generated from traffic into consideration when choosing the plants you will use in your roadside garden.

And like the “garden” above, there is no reason that you cannot have a little roadside garden. It may have to be a container (or many, many containers), but hey, it’s still a garden.

urban garden, gardening, pollution, roadside garden, plants, design, planning

I ran across this over the weekend, and though it so brilliant that I had to share it.

Prisons across the United States are going green, and by that I mean that inmates are growing organic produce, composting the food waste from the prison kitchens, and even recycling shoes into that rubber turf that is being installed around playgrounds.

Above: Ironwood State Prison in California operates its own solar power plant.

An Oregon prison is raising honeybees, an Indiana prison built a wind turbine to reduce its energy costs, a California prison has solar panels, and a North Carolina correctional facility has built a cistern system to capture rain water.

Can we really learn a better way from those who have strayed? Seems we can. The programs at the prisons are not only a great way to reduce costs, help the environment, and divert refuse from landfills, but also the pro-green programs are teaching the inmates valuable skills and giving them responsibilities to encourage self-confidence and a feeling of community.

From the Associated Press:

LITTLEROCK, Wash. – Of all the things convicted murderer Robert Knowles has been called during his 13 years behind bars, recycler hasn’t been one of them.

But there he was one morning, pitchfork in hand, composting food scraps from the main chow line and coffee grounds from prison headquarters — doing his part to “green” the prison.

“It’s nice to be out in the elements,” said Knowles, 42, stirring dark, rich compost that will amend the soil at the small farm where he and fellow inmates of the Cedar Creek Corrections Center grew 8,000 pounds of organic vegetables this year.

Inmates of the minimum-security facility, 25 miles from Olympia, the state capital, raise bees, grow organic tomatoes and lettuce, compost 100 percent of food waste and even recycle shoe scraps that are made into playground turf.

“It reduces cost, reduces our damaging impact on the environment, engages inmates as students,” said Eldon Vail, secretary of the Washington Department of Corrections, which oversees 15 prisons and 18,000 offenders. “It’s good security.”

As around-the-clock operations, prisons are voracious resource hogs, and administrators are under increasing pressure to reduce waste and conserve energy and water.

In 2007, states spent more than $49 billion to feed, house, clothe, treat and supervise 2.3 million offenders, the Pew Center on the States reported this year.

As the prison population has grown this decade, up 76 percent from 1.3 million in 2000, the number of prisons and jails has risen with it. The latest U.S. Bureau of Justice data show 1,821 facilities in 2005, up from 1,668 in 2000.

To keep costs down, the Indiana Department of Corrections installed water boilers that run on waste wood chips, and built a wind turbine at one prison that generates about 10 kilowatts an hour and saves $2,280 a year.

At Ironwood State Prison in Blythe, Calif., 6,200 solar panels send energy back to the grid, enough to power 4,100 homes a year. The prison was trying to meet an executive order requiring state agencies to reduce energy use by 20 percent by 2015, said a spokeswoman, Lt. Sue Smith.

North Carolina’s Department of Corrections switched to chemical-free cleaners and vegetable-based inks. This summer, because of a water shortage, inmates converted 50-gallon pickle barrels into small cisterns that capture rainwater.

Under a state mandate to reduce energy use, the Oregon Department of Corrections replaced old appliances with energy-efficient ones, installed solar water heaters and used a geothermal well to heat water. It also modified washing machines so they could reuse rinse-water to wash about a million pounds of clothes a month.

At Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution in Pendleton, Ore., inmates recycle scraps from old prison blues to make diaper bags for women’s shelters and dog beds for animal shelters.

“We try to model prosocial behavior,” said Vern Rowan, business manager for the Oregon Department of Corrections. Being sustainable “is something that everybody should be doing, regardless of where they’re at.”

Cedar Creek, in the heart of a forest, feels more like an outdoor retreat than institutional lockup.

Most of the 400 inmates are in a work program, and put in between six and eight hours a day.

The responsibility of caring for the prison’s three hives of Italian honey bees falls mostly to Daniel Travatte, 36, a soft-spoken former drug addict who is serving 10 years for attempted armed robbery.

Under the supervision of prison counselor Vicki Briggs, Travatte has learned to harvest honey — which inmates occasionally eat with breakfast biscuits — and use beeswax to make lotions. He’s become an expert on their habits.

“I’m trying to change myself,” said Travatte. “A lot of people go through prison with no intention of changing. I love working with the bees. It keeps me busy. I have a lot of responsibility to take care of.”

While there isn’t scientific evidence that such activities are helping inmates, Nalini Nadkarni, an environmental studies professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., notes anecdotal evidence that it’s working.

“They were stimulating their minds and having conversations that were different than ‘How much more time we have left’?” said Nadkarni.

One inmate went beyond conversations, enrolling in a doctoral program when he got out and co-authoring a research paper with Nadkarni on a moss-growing project she started to help reduce the impact of wild moss harvesting on forests.

While Cedar Creek went green out of economic necessity — it had to conserve because it didn’t have the wastewater capacity to expand four years ago — it is now embracing other benefits, said Dan Pacholke, a state prison administrator who helped implement many of the practices.

Cedar Creek uses 250,000 fewer gallons of water a year, saves $6,000 to $8,400 annually on garbage bills and avoided a $1.4 million sewage treatment plant upgrade.

A large “Con-Post” marks the prison’s composting station, made of recycled concrete blocks and reclaimed wood, where Knowles spends about six hours a day, making sure the compost gets enough heat, moisture and air to break down food scraps.

“They trust me to do all this with no supervision,” said Knowles, who is serving time for the hit-and-run death of an off-duty police officer.

“I like growing the vegetables,” Knowles said. “My mom had a garden. I can see having my own garden.”

Sorry, I rarely like including an entire article in a post, but I really had a hard time deciding what paragraphs to include. I find this inspirational and I hope that the positive reaction to the established programs will encourage other correctional facilities to follow suit and develop their own gardens, composting programs, and develop ways to convert old systems to renewable and sustainable ones.

And what can we on the “outside” learn from these prisoners? Composting is easy, and organic gardening is also pretty easy. Not only are you providing your family with fresh, healthy produce, but if you include your whole family in the garden, you are giving kids responsibilities which will in turn give them self-confidence. Not only that, but getting kids out in the garden is a great way to teach them about how consumption and our part in the larger cycles of the Earth and its ecosystems.

I think schools should also take a note from the prisons of America. Have students spend an hour in a school garden or turning compost. Have a school wind turbine, and teach kids how it works. Have students organize a scrap drive, like back in World World II, and encourage them to lead the green revolution.

Viva la Revolution!!

And it took prisoners to lead the way? Maybe not, but going green is a great component to an inmate’s rehabilitation.

prisons, correctional facility, gardening, green, ecosystems, organic, composting, solar, water cisterns, California, Oregon, Indiana, North Carolina, honeybees, landfills, environment, children, schools, gardens, scrap metal, World War II, green revolution

I live in Portland, Oregon, and yes, it’s true that it is an all-around super cool city, and one of those crazy things that make it cool is that chickens are allowed. Yes, that’s right, right in the city, you can have your own little urban farmyard.

Does your city allow chickens? I found a pretty decent listing of local chicken laws across the United States as compiled by The City Chicken. You will notice that most cities have limits on the number of chickens you may have, as well as the gender. Hens do not necessarily need a rooster around the lay eggs, but hens have the tendency to pretend to be the rooster if one is not a part of your flock…wait, brood, wait, wait, clutch. Oh, forget it. I’m calling it a flocken.

Chickens? Really? Chickens…Yeah, yeah, I know, but seriously, chickens are great. If you have the space and the gumption, you really should think about housing some chicks around your yard. Chickens not only reward you with eggs, but also insect-control and a good foundation for really nutritious compost. And they also like to eat weeds around the yard, so think of chickens as nature’s little composting gardener.

And you could… eat them.

Chickens will be happy living in anything that provides a little bit of shelter. If you want the eggs, you will need to establish a nesting site, otherwise the hens will lay them in secret spots and try to hide them. Even a small yard will be plenty of room for a few hens.

With emphasis on living lightly and producing more of our own food locally, why not think about chickens? And how about adding a duck or two to really make it a farm.

Portland, Oregon, urban farm, urban, yard, backyard, chickens, flock, compost, insect control, gardener, hens, rooster, eggs, nesting

If you are a good little Urban Ecoist, you should be starting to harvest some pretty nice tomatoes right about now. Remember, even if you don’t have a yard in your urban environment, tomatoes are easy to grow in pots outside your door, on a balcony, or you can find a community garden to rent a plot. So you have no excuse to not grow your own tomatoes. And of course, I know you are growing them organically, because you are a smart, attractive, sexy gardener that eschews chemicals.

When I chose the tomatoes I am growing, I experimented with a few different hybrids. One is an “ultra early,” one is a extra-early, and then I tried a “determinate” and an “indeterminate.” What does all that mean? The “earlies” refer to when the tomatoes will be ready for picking, and the determinate versus indeterminate refers to how the tomatoes will come in, all at once or little by little. If you plant a good variety, as well as some fun heirlooms, you will have yourself a nice little harvest for the end of July and into September.

Of course, there is always that week or two when you feel like you are literally swimming in tomatoes, but if you don’t mind doing a little prep work, you can convert all of that lycopene-y goodness to salsas, marinara sauces, or you can “can” those puppies for those long winter months. Personally, I give tomatoes away to my neighbours, but as I now live in Portland, Oregon, where everybody seems to have a vegetable garden, I will try my hand at canning for the first time this year. If anyone has any advice, by all means, please let me know, and I will pass it on to my awesome, kickass readers!

Anyhoo, I did have another idea for all my little urban ecoists. Use your tomatoes to clean your face. Click on that last sentence to see how to do it. It’s simple. Tomatoes have really good acidic qualities, and can act as a toner for your skin. They are also great at clearing up blackheads. I have great skin (thanks to some good genetics that run through the Mcgrew and Neile Families), but heck, even I get blackheads on my nose. I tried those stupid Biore strips, I tried all kinds of mud and peel-off masks, and frankly, I have never had better results than from tomatoes. Crazy, I know, but effective.

garden, gardening, urban, community garden, tomatoes, salsas, Portland, Oregon, toner, skin care, DIY, blackheads

I live in Portland, Oregon, and it is a lovely city. Very lush, with verdant landscapes and plenty of slugs to eat their way through it.

I can honestly say that I have never seen so many slugs before, in such abundance and especially size. One night, under the light of my headlamp, I swear I saw a five inch long slug. It was disgusting, but as I cannot kill the little guys, I had no idea what to do, or if I had to do anything at all.

Well, come to find out I did indeed have to do something. The slugs, my friendly, slimy neighbors, were going to town on some foxglove in my garden. I moved the foxglove, and mulched with stones. Too extreme, but effective. I have plenty of Foxglove around the backyard, and the slug issue is not yard-wide. However, I started noticing the same tell-tale slugs bite marks on my strawberries. It was a new patch that I had planted this past spring, and as the problem was earlier this season, I had to take some action. Ain’t no slug gettin’ my berries before they are even berries!

So, I consulted an organic gardening book. And slugs hate caffeine in the form of coffee grounds. I collected a weeks worth (maybe two) of grounds, and I set to work. I used a big spoon and laid out a two to three inch wide band of coffee grounds around the perimeter of my strawberry patch.

The effects were immediately noticeable. It took about two weeks before I would say the slugs skipped dining on my berries (and peas, as I tried as well).

America!

slugs, Portland, Oregon, garden, urban, coffee grounds, organic gardening, strawberries, peas