Loving the Texas climate
Aaron and I brought in our Fall harvest a couple of weeks ago. Our eyes bugged out as we took in the tomatoes, peppers, green beans and butternut squash. The Texas climate can be annoying at times. Just this weekend, it got up to 80 on Saturday and then dropped to the 40s on Sunday. It’s difficult to dress for that type of weather. But thanks to the Texas climate, our season for tomatoes and peppers is much longer than in other places in the country. Recently, our first overnight freeze changed things and reminded us it’s actually beginning to creep into winter. Aaron took down the green bean and tomato plants…Now they live in the compost pile. We still have a lot of lettuces, greens, celery, carrots and some other stuff to look forward to.
Our next task is to learn how to pickle our peppers and can our tomatoes. We have way more than we can use before they go bad.
Haitians want to rebuild with food sovereignty
Farmers in Haiti, 1977. Photo by Grand Venice on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/grandvenice/)
Yes! Magazine has an article today about a Hatian group that is pushing for the country to rebuild from the earthquake with a system of food sovereignty instead of relying on other countries for imported food.
We were almost self-sufficient until the 1980s. We have to fight and pressure the state so that it prioritizes agriculture. Otherwise, we’ll always have to depend on multinationals and non-governmental organizations for our food. The government has to take responsibility for that.
We’re not in favor just of food security, which is a neoliberal idea. With food security, as long as you eat, it’s good. But we only produce 43 percent of our food. 57 percent is imported. We need food sovereignty, which means that for everyone to eat, we produce it here at home. We could produce here at least 80 percent of what we eat.
They want families to own local farms and produce organic food for the country. They want local, natural, non-genetically-modified seeds. They want to prioritize land use for food production instead of the farming of biodiesel crops. Haitians want their government to create support programs that help local, native small farmers.
Time to start composting for your fall garden
Photo by wisemandarine on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/wisemandarine/)
For anyone in the Austin area, this event on Saturday sounds like a good way to learn about composting in time to start your fall garden. “Gardening and permaculture teacher Dick Pierce shows how to turn home waste into compost to nourish fresh veggies,” according to the event listing. The talk starts at 2 p.m. on June 19 at the Austin Museum of Art, 823 Congress Avenue.
Aaron and I recently constructed our own composter from reclaimed wood and nails. I’m going to write a separate post about that later.
Approval of new pesticide went against scientist recommendations
Writing for California Watch, an awesome new nonprofit journalism startup, Amy Standen catalogs an ongoing controversy between state regulators and scientists about a new chemical pesticide. The pesticide will be used on strawberries. Scientists fear it could cause brain damage and field workers are exposed at certain levels; they also fear that children who attend schools near strawberry fields could suffer neurological effects.
Photo by Greencolander on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/greencolander/)
The Department of Pesticide Regulation has set acceptable exposure levels for methyl iodide that are 120 times higher than recommended by its own scientists and an eight-person panel the department commissioned to peer-review its work.
The decision to increase exposure levels has caused a rift within the DPR, a little-known but powerful agency that oversees a major segment of the state’s multibillion-dollar farming industry. In interviews, all eight peer-review scientists said their warnings and scientific analysis of the health risks of methyl iodide appear to have been disregarded.
Our backyard garden
Aaron and I have been growing a backyard garden this year for the first time. It’s really Aaron’s project: He does all the work, but he shares the food with me. He’s a sweet guy like that. We’re mostly growing tomatoes and peppers at this point, although we still have some lettuce, swiss chard and sugar snap peas hanging in there. We have a good selection of herbs, like basil, thyme, rosemary, savory, and more. Here are a few shots.
Almost ready!
Garden layout
Serano peppers
Square foot gardening
Tomatoes
Butts that bloom into plants?
I don’t think I’ll believe this one until I see it with my own eyes. Greenbutts is a company that produces cigarette filters that bloom into plants when they’re thrown on the ground.
Greenbutts are all-natural, 100% biodegradable cigarette filters with a unique feature. When placed under a thin layer of soil, they sprout into green grass shoots or even blooming flowers.
Our mission is to curb the blight of pollution caused by discarded cigarette butts into the environment while providing a high quality smoking experience.
…
Simply collect your greenbutts in a planter instead of an ashtray and watch them grow. Our filters are made with an all-natural hemp and cotton blend that can be combined with a variety of seeds including grass, flower, fruit, herb, or even trees.
Photo by ronnieb on morgueFile (http://morguefile.com/creative/ronnieb)
It seems pretty amazing to me, but folks over at Planetsave have raised some logical concerns with the product. Smoking is bad for a person’s health, and can harm others nearby.
Can it not be said that by making smoking an even more positive experience, it’s encouraging people to continue to smoke? They might help reduce the toll to the environment while risking the health of the population, in turn putting the environmental health before that of the human race.
There are some good comments from readers: Go check it out.
Reducing water use by properly caring for soil
I recently subscribed to Yes! Magazine, and I’m anxiously awaiting my first edition in the mail. The most recent edition focused entirely on water use — Editors wrote that in the future they think we’ll have a water crisis similar to the energy crisis we’re currently facing. Here’s an article that puts a new spin on the subject of water use and conservation. Author Frederick Kirschenmann writes, “One of the reasons that we are using such large quantities of water for irrigation is that we have not paid attention to the biological health of our soils.”
Organic veggie gardens at the SunRun Centre, northeast of Toronto, now under new ownership as Russet House Farm. Photo by Peter Blanchard from Flickr.
He says to conserve water, farmers must respect the soil and cultivate it so plants won’t need as much water as in “industrial” farming methods that Kirschenmann says treat soil as “nothing more than a material to hold plants in place while we insert the synthetic nutrients plants require.” The author managed his family farm since 1976, and explains his experience with cultivating soil properly so plants don’t need as much water. He had to turn it around from a monoculture farm with “significantly impaired” soil.
Being on the farm with full management responsibilities for the first time gave me the opportunity to explore theoretical questions I had: Were there ways to manage soil so it would absorb and retain more moisture to sustain crops during drought periods? Could I design a farming system with sufficient diversity to increase its resilience? Or one that was less energy intensive? Was it possible to create a farming system that was more self-renewing and self-regulating?
Growing potatoes in a trash can
This gardening project sounds pretty easy — Even I could do it! But it never said how long the potatoes take to grow. Does anyone know that?
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