Organ­i­cally rich, com­post is easy to make with things you cur­rently just throw in the garbage can. Photo by Kessler Photography

It might be too hot to do much in the gar­den besides the basics, but it’s a good time to start mak­ing com­post if you haven’t already.

Com­post is decayed organic mat­ter that has bro­ken down to a soil like con­sis­tency and it is an excel­lent amend­ment to your soil. Some folks use it for mulch around shrubs and trees. Com­post pro­vides much needed nutri­ents, aer­a­tion and organic mate­r­ial to your land­scape and gar­den. Com­post lets you do away with so many chem­i­cal fer­til­iz­ers and is nat­u­rally suited for the organic garden.

Besides the obvi­ous ben­e­fits of com­post to your own gar­den and land­scape, there is a larger ben­e­fit.  Com­post saves valu­able room in san­i­tary land­fills, and reduces the methane pro­duced by these land­fills.  Methane has been iden­ti­fied as a green­house gas.

By com­post­ing you are reduc­ing your car­bon foot­print, and mak­ing the envi­ron­ment a bet­ter place.  Pretty impres­sive results for just mov­ing where you send your  kitchen and land­scape left­overs.

Com­post is not that hard to make.   You need a layer of ‘green’ fol­lowed by a layer of ‘brown’.  It’s kind of like a Dag­wood sand­wich in that the amount and kinds of things you can com­post are var­ied and amazing.

For green mate­r­ial you can use yard waste such as leaves & flower clip­pings.  Don’t use wet grass or wet leaves.  They will mat down and will not decom­pose prop­erly.  You can also include food scraps in the green layer.  Fruit and veg­etable peel­ings, old bread, cof­fee grinds, egg shells, and other such scraps that do not con­tain any fats.

Some peo­ple swear they com­post chicken bones, dead squir­rels and who knows what, but the pre­vail­ing opin­ion of the coop­er­a­tive exten­sion ser­vice reports are that ani­mal prod­ucts and fats pro­duce harm­ful tox­ins in the com­post.  Who needs more tox­ins?  Bet­ter to leave fats and ani­mal prod­ucts for the trash.  Also, do not include any dis­eased plant mate­r­ial.  The pathogens may not be killed off if your com­post does not get hot enough.

Brown layer mate­ri­als can include dry grass, dry leaves, shred­ded branches, dry twigs, shred­ded paper, ripped up cor­ru­gated card­board (small pieces only because it’s slow to decom­pose), wood chips, saw­dust (in small amounts, mix in well), card­board egg car­tons, nut shells, hay, straw, and dry gar­den debris.

Use about 12″ of brown mate­r­ial (Car­bon) for every 4–6″ of green mate­r­ial (Nitrogen)

You will have com­post more quickly if you turn the pile.  You can use a pitch­fork, or a spe­cially designed com­post crank.  Turn­ing will give you com­post in two to four months.  Tum­blers will also give you a quick com­post boost with a few turns of the barrel.

Check out some of the great com­post bins and sup­plies at Gardener’s Sup­ply Com­pany I have found them to be one of the best, most reli­able com­pa­nies online for gar­den related products.

They have a com­plete line of com­post­ing prod­ucts from biobags to use in the kitchen col­lec­tion pail, to com­post bins in almost every configuration.

I could go on about this.  I just love com­post­ing, but I will let you check it out for your­self. To read more about com­post­ing, check out the arti­cle ‘All about Com­post­ing’ at Gardener’s Sup­ply Company’s website.

You will also appre­ci­ate their Blog, Gardener’s Jour­nal.

Let us know how your com­post­ing goes!  Share your sto­ries, or leave com­ments.  We look for­ward to hear­ing from you

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A Tum­bler makes mak­ing com­post easy.

I just bought this one and I couldn’t be hap­pier.

This com­post aer­a­tor makes it easy to turn the pile!

May!

Spring is in full bloom now and how won­der­ful it is to see the green land­scape again.

Photo Credit– tikibata1/photobicket

Maybe you want a lit­tle bit of flower power for your­self, but don’t have the space or desire to dig up a gar­den plot.  Con­sider con­tainer gar­den­ing.  They can’t be beat for urban gar­den­ing, acces­si­ble gar­den­ing or” no time to gar­den” gardening.

If con­tainer gar­den­ing brings thoughts of the ubiq­ui­tous hang­ing bas­kets at the gro­cery store or gar­den cen­ter, this is def­i­nitely not your only option.  Those pre­made arrange­ments are per­haps the eas­i­est way to go, but there are so many more options.

Bal­conies and patios every­where are sport­ing con­tainer gar­dens these days, and yours can, too, with a few easy steps. Flow­ers are a pop­u­lar con­tainer gar­den choice, but edi­ble plants, such as pep­pers, toma­toes, sum­mer squash, bush beans, herbs, let­tuces and even pota­toes grow well in containers.

As always when it comes to grow­ing things there are fac­tors which affect the suc­cess of your project.  Here are some impor­tant things to remem­ber when plan­ning a con­tainer garden.

Start out with soil. Choose a light weight pot­ting soil mix, not gar­den soil, which is too heavy.  You want to avoid com­pacted soil, and the pot­ting mix is already pre­pared with per­lite, peat and ver­mi­culite, which will keep the soil aer­ated and light.

Drainage is impor­tant. Use pot shards, small stones or gravel (not mar­ble chips) to keep the water from over­sat­u­rat­ing the soil.  Mold and rot are the results of poor drainage.

When choos­ing plants, either edi­ble or orna­men­tal, pick ones that are heat tol­er­ant.  Avoid those lovely hang­ing bas­kets that are filled with ten­der plants that crisp after one day with­out water.  You will do bet­ter to choose your own that you know will sur­vive with less water and heat.

Some com­mon flow­ers that will sur­vive hot, dry con­tainer gar­den con­di­tions are gera­ni­ums, petu­nias, marigolds and zin­nias.  Check with your local coop­er­a­tive exten­sion agent or cer­ti­fied gar­den cen­ter pro­fes­sional for more infor­ma­tion on suit­able plants.

Pick plants that require the same amount of water and sun­light.   You can tell if your plants are get­ting too much sun if they are too pale and the leaves get crisp around the edges.  Too lit­tle light makes plants weak and spindly.

If you are plant­ing an edi­ble gar­den con­tainer, at least eight hours of sun­light is best.  You can grow let­tuces and herbs with less, but not produce.

Test your con­tainer gar­den soil daily for mois­ture. Since they are in an arti­fi­cial envi­ron­ment, the plants can’t send roots out in search of ground moisture…they depend on you for sur­vival.  With­out enough water the plants will die. Remem­ber wind! Plants will dry out far more quickly in breezy weather.  Resin con­tain­ers will retain mois­ture bet­ter than clay con­tain­ers.  They are also eas­ier to move because they are lighter.

We love your com­ments.  Let us know how your con­tainer gar­den grows!

Check out these great con­tainer ideas. Styl­ish or util­i­tar­ian, they will be excel­lent for any con­tainer gar­den you choose. Happy gardening!

Yuliya Libkina on Flickr

Earth Day Homage #2

Yes, we are very, very glad to see the rain these days. It seems the drought here on the east coast may have ended,or abated some­what,  at least until sum­mer comes.

See­ing a rainy day is good when it means the lakes have a lit­tle water in them again. With all the cli­mate changes there is no guar­an­tee that it will stay this way, though.

Droughts have been just part of the new and seem­ingly ever chang­ing weather lately.  If not too dry, then too wet…flooding has been a prob­lem in many areas lately, too.

Since this month we are think­ing about Earth Day and what we are doing to impact the envi­ron­ment, today I want to talk specif­i­cally about the impact of how to han­dle the water falling in and on your landscape.

Stormwa­ter man­age­ment is a big issue in many juris­dic­tions these days. There are stormwa­ter util­i­ties being set up with the power to charge for stormwa­ter man­age­ment, just as you are charged for water and sewer ser­vices.  Why charge peo­ple for stormwa­ter man­age­ment?  Well, in places like my old stomp­ing grounds of Fair­fax County, VA, the bill for stream restora­tion caused by stormwa­ter dam­age is over $1 bil­lion.

Yes, that’s a big B…and that is a lot of money even for a rel­a­tively well-funded county such as Fair­fax. It bog­gles my mind that stormwa­ter could cause such enor­mous prob­lems, but it dri­ves home the seri­ous­ness of the issue.  I have seen homes whose back yards have all but been elim­i­nated by stormwa­ter choked creeks.  For a home­owner, you bet­ter believe watch­ing your lit­tle piece of heaven being washed away dur­ing a storm event is no laugh­ing mat­ter.

Peo­ple some­times ask how can they be held respon­si­ble for water falling on and then leav­ing  their prop­erty.   The short answer is you are only held respon­si­ble for how much imper­vi­ous sur­face you have on your prop­erty, not how much rain falls there.  If you have to pave over par­adise, you have to pay for the out­come.

Imper­vi­ous sur­faces such as roofs, patios, side­walks and dri­ve­ways con­tribute to the stormwa­ter prob­lems we face today.  Water has no chance to infil­trate the ground or recharge the ground water when it hur­ries off the prop­erty.  This runoff is has­tened by imper­vi­ous sur­faces, because there is noth­ing to stop or slow down the water as it leaves.

Ero­sion occurs and water qual­ity is impacted when this runoff car­ries with it soil,  tox­ins and chem­i­cals from your yard.  In the end, we all pay, but the munic­i­pal­i­ties are the ones pay­ing the biggest bills, so now they are begin­ning to charge for this pub­lic ser­vice.  You can how­ever, mit­i­gate your own stormwa­ter and elim­i­nate the need to assess your prop­erty

There are sev­eral things you can do to improve water qual­ity right in your own yard.

You do this by man­ag­ing your stormwa­ter. In the world of archi­tec­ture and con­struc­tion, this is called Low Impact Devel­op­ment, of which there are Best Man­age­ment Prac­tices (BMP) that you can implement.

One really great BMP is using per­me­able paving. Per­me­able paving lets the water per­co­late down into the ground instead of run­ning off your prop­erty.  There are all kinds of per­me­able paving mate­ri­als out there and there is a good solu­tion for every appli­ca­tion that costs lit­tle more than tra­di­tional paving methods.

Another BMP is a res­i­den­tial rain gar­den. A rain gar­den is a depres­sion where water tol­er­ant plants are planted.   This rain gar­den is designed to catch the “first flush” from the prop­erty, not con­tain all the stormwa­ter.  It col­lects and slows water leav­ing the prop­erty, fil­ter­ing out tox­ins and chem­i­cals before they reach the water sources.   A rain gar­den is a lot of fun to plan and plant.   It is a super sus­tain­able way to impact drink­ing water sup­plies, nat­ural resources and the local ecology.

A veg­e­tated swale is a very easy BMP to imple­ment. You basi­cally make a small trench and grow grass there.  Often in more rural areas veg­e­tated swales, i.e.  ditches, are used instead of  storm drains and pipes.  While some may think this less than attrac­tive, in fact it is an excel­lent way to slow down the rain water as it leaves your prop­erty and it gives the water a chance to per­co­late down.   Yours does not need to be 5 feet across.  A  6″ veg­e­tated swale located in the right place on slopes will do an amaz­ing job with stormwa­ter. You don’t have to limit your­self to tur­f­grasses for your veg­e­tated swale, either.  There are some fan­tas­tic native grasses, like switch grass or lit­tle bluestem,  that would add habi­tat as well as supe­rior storm water management.

Green roofs are another BMP, and have been used increas­ingly in com­mer­cial con­struc­tion.   As the tech­nol­ogy becomes more main­stream, as it is now, the cost for green roofs is com­ing down to a price that home­own­ers can afford.  It’s some­thing to con­sider if you are build­ing or replac­ing your roof.

One last item to exam­ine is water har­vest­ing. Sav­ing rain­wa­ter for use out­doors saves drink­ing water sup­plies that are often run­ning short.   After a small ini­tial invest­ment you have free water for your land­scape that will not be affected by any munic­i­pal water restric­tions, or wells run­ning low. Rain bar­rels have made a big come­back and with all the trendy designs you will be able to find one that meets your needs and your aesthetics.

A small word about col­lect­ing rain­wa­ter.  In the West­ern states, this is becom­ing a hotly con­tested issue.  For a taste of the con­tro­versy, check out the Water Law Blog.  Lots of inter­est­ing thoughts there.  I guess the rest of the coun­try isn’t going to war over water…yet.

Imple­ment­ing stormwa­ter man­age­ment, rain­wa­ter har­vest­ing,  and low impact devel­op­ment BMP’s will make a real dif­fer­ence in pro­tect­ing water resources.

It’s one easy thing you can do in your own back­yard this Earth Day that will  save you money, have an imme­di­ate impact in the envi­ron­ment, and make you feel like a bil­lion bucks.

For those of us in rain­wa­ter har­vest­ing per­mis­si­ble places, here are just a few of the rain bar­rel styles avail­able these days, cour­tesy of Plow and Hearth

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Con­toured Rain Barrels

North­land Water Tank

Earth Day is Com­ing!

Sed­i­ment pol­lu­tion in a muddy river _ USGS Photo

April 22nd, 2010 is Earth Day.

This has turned out to be a greater than one day event.  Earth Day has takenon  a global aware­ness month sta­tus with events and cam­paigns to high­light ser­vice to the environment.

As an homage to that I am going to be writ­ing a series of arti­cles high­light­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to give back to Mother Earth for this Earth Day Month of April.

My per­sonal vol­un­teer efforts will be in the area of water resources.  I’m join­ing a River Cleanup of the Neuse River, because water resources are near and dear to my heart.

Shortly after my 2^nd year at  UGA’s School of the Envi­ron­ment and Design, water resources loomed large on my hori­zon and every project I did some­how included ways to con­serve or pre­serve water resources.

Stormwa­ter, runoff, con­structed stormwa­ter wet­lands, con­structed waste­water wet­lands, soil and water con­ser­va­tion, low impact devel­op­ment, stream restora­tion, rain gar­dens, ero­sion con­trol, non-point source pollution.

You name it and I wanted to tackle it with all the zeal of an awak­ened neo­phyte in the world of envi­ron­men­tal design.  All it took to get me started was see­ing the dev­as­ta­tion that sub­ur­ban devel­op­ment was caus­ing in local water­sheds when I was trot­ting around doing site analysis.

Then, I had a cou­ple intern­ships and got an even closer look at what is going on to our drink­ing water sup­plies, and how the prob­lems might be effec­tively mit­i­gated.  After that, every­where I went, all I could see was bad land­scape design con­tribut­ing to water resource prob­lems.  It was enough to turn any sane per­son into a water activist, not say­ing I’m sane or anything.

No, sane is not defined by want­ing to stand up and yell at some­one for mak­ing such a mess and call­ing it design.

Water became my rai­son d’être.  All I wanted to do was to work in the field of water resources.  And I did, for a while, but all good things come to an end.  Now I get to write about water in the land­scape instead of design for it. Not a bad trade-off in my book.

So, I am going to kick off this great month of envi­ron­men­tal aware­ness with water resources as my first theme.

You may be ask­ing, “What does this have to do with my gar­den or land­scape?”  Every­thing, dear friends.  If you have a home, and water falls on that prop­erty, that water even­tu­ally ends up in the water sup­ply, no mat­ter what.

What this water takes with it on its jour­ney to the sea makes or breaks an ecosys­tem, and the safety and purity of your drink­ing water supply.

• Rain from your roof and dri­ve­way flushes toxic waste into stormwater.
• Water drain­ing from your yard car­ries any fer­til­izer, insec­ti­cides and her­bi­cides you have used directly to streams and wells.
• Stormwa­ter sends seeds and sprouts from inva­sive exotic plants float­ing away from your yard and deposits them in the stream and all along the way.  Just take a look at the pur­ple looses­trife infes­ta­tion for a lit­tle case study on this kind of pollution.
• New con­struc­tion sites and improp­erly graded land loses soil to ero­sion and the sed­i­ment is deposited into streams and rivers.  Yes, indeed, those “ero­sion con­trol” mea­sures are usu­ally half mea­sures that break down before the project is fin­ished… but,  “So what if the silt fence is down?  No one’s look­ing, right?”  Egad, what irresponsibility.
• Pet waste left in the yard, or park, or street gut­ter con­tributes bac­te­r­ial and nutri­ent waste to our water supplies.
• Trash that breaks loose dur­ing storm events fre­quently gets washed along and ends up in the stream or river.

I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

My chil­dren used to come home on Earth Day all pumped up about environmentalism…that is until I said,  “Okay, then you are in charge of recy­cling here at home.”  Well that was the end of their enthu­si­asm, but not the end of their con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion about doing, not talking.

Well after this dis­course, I have to ask, “Are you doing, or just talk­ing about going green this Earth Day?”    We don’t have to tackle the world’s prob­lems, just address a cou­ple in our backyard.

I want to chal­lenge you this Earth Day to do some­thing for you, your fam­ily, your com­mu­nity and your earth by join­ing a river cleanup this year.  Many water­shed pro­tec­tion orga­ni­za­tions are spon­sor­ing cleanups in lit­er­ally hun­dreds of areas around the country.

You can look on the web­site for Amer­i­can Rivers to see if there is already one orga­nized for your local water­shed.  If you don’t see one for your area, get a bunch of friends together this month and orga­nize one.  Amer­i­can Rivers has all the infor­ma­tion you need to suc­cess­fully stage a cleanup for your local needy water source.

If you have never taken part in some­thing like this, it will make a believer out of you.  You will never for­get how we affect our water sup­plies by what we do at home.

Every lit­tle bit helps, so just do some­thing.   It does not mat­ter what we intend to do, just what we actu­ally accom­plish. Yep, just do it.

Vol­un­teer your ser­vices to cel­e­brate Earth Day this month and  this year  for a more sus­tain­able and  greener tomorrow.

Please let us know about your green up, cleanup efforts.  You can send pic­tures, post events, tell your story.  You’ll make us smile.  We all want to know what’s hap­pen­ing on the green water resource scene.

Photo Credit: Ste­vie B. / Wikipedia

I don’t know about you, but I really, really don’t like rodents run­ning loose, either in my house or on my property.

Pets aside, rodents are not much fun.  Car­ry­ing dis­eases, dig­ging up the land­scape, eat­ing elec­tri­cal wires, bit­ing chil­dren, destroy­ing plant­i­ngs and crops, and drop­ping mouse dirt all over the house are only a few of the nasty habits of these wildlife pests.

Unless there is a san­i­ta­tion prob­lem in your vicin­ity, an abun­dance of rodents is indica­tive of an imbal­ance in the local ecol­ogy.   There has been plenty of press about the lifestyle that destroys the nat­ural envi­ron­ment.  What we want to talk about today is restor­ing a lit­tle bit of balance.

Enter the back­yard habi­tat at your own home.   By invit­ing help­ful birds and insects, you can keep the pest pop­u­la­tion, includ­ing rodents to a min­i­mum.  It’s one of the basics of bioin­ten­sive IPM (inte­grated pest management).

When it comes to rodents, few nat­ural preda­tors beat Barn Owls (Tyto alba).

Barn Owls are indige­nous to every con­ti­nent aside from Antarc­tica.  They are a rodent inte­grated pest manager’s dream, eat­ing 2–3 rodents a night.   As a mat­ter of fact, a nest­ing barn owl fam­ily can eat more than 1,000 rodents a year.

Barn owls have also been known to eat swarm­ing ter­mites, katy­dids and crick­ets.   Raise your hand if you could stand a few less of them around.

Instead of the famil­iar owl hoot barn owls make a sound sim­i­lar to shrreee, and it’s more like an ear-splitting scream at close range than any­thing else.

Unfor­tu­nately the barn owl pop­u­la­tion has been dwin­dling.    As more land is devel­oped and more trees are removed from the land­scape, the avail­able nest­ing spots have also declined.  In some states the barn owl is listed as an endan­gered species.   Your state or province will have infor­ma­tion avail­able from the Depart­ment of Nat­ural Resources.

So how do you do the IPM fix for this prob­lem?   All you have to do is attract a barn owl family.

Attract­ing barn owls

You can make your yard a haven for an owl fam­ily by pro­vid­ing a safe, secluded nest­ing box.   There are com­mer­cially avail­able nest­ing boxes, but build­ing you own is not dif­fi­cult.  There are many plans on the inter­net.  I’ve included a cou­ple free resources at the end.

The pre­ferred habi­tat of a barn owl is large expanses of open grass­land.  Does this sound like most of sub­ur­bia to you?  I thought so.

Since barn owls are cav­ity dwellers they pre­fer holes in trees.  Where trees are preva­lent, most barn owls will choose nat­ural habi­tat over a nest­ing box, so don’t be insulted, and don’t spend a lot of energy on this kind of bird house if you are near forested land.  Focus your habi­tat build­ing in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion, say, song­birds or ladybugs.

Barn owls will nat­u­rally nest about one half acre apart.  Depend­ing on your neigh­bor­hood, the owls you attract will eat enough pests for you and sev­eral neigh­bors to see a sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion of rodents.  Oh, yes, bur­row­ers beware!

Global Barn Owl Dis­tri­b­u­tion, Map by: Achim Raschka / Wikipedia

Get an Out­door Nature Cam­eras: Audubon Bird­Cam, to watch your owls, or other birds nest and grow.

Please share your thoughts & com­ments.  Spread that back­yard habi­tat love around the world!

Resources:

Dif­fer­ent Barn Owl Box Plans

Scott Spear’s  PVC Pipe & Alu­minum Sheet Metal Design

http://kaweahoaks.com/html/barn_owl_house.html

Uni­ver­sity of Mary­land Exten­sion: Barn Owl, Friend of Agri­cul­ture and Communities

http://extension.umd.edu/publications/pdfs/FS795.pdf

A cool book about Barn Owls, their habits ad conservation.

William Blake knew it all along. Some things never change. Photo Credit: Wikipedia

OK, I did get in a plug for Valentine’s Day ear­lier this week, but really now, can too many hints be dropped, Dear Valen­tine?  I thought not.

Gift giv­ing on Valentine’s Day can be dan­ger­ous busi­ness when it comes to romance and roses, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

First a few thoughts on Valentine’s Day Gift Giv­ing.  It’s a well-known fact that most men give the  gifts they would like to receive on this aus­pi­cious occasion…and who can blame them.  Gos­samer clad pas­sion­ate dreams hover in the mind like sug­arplum fairies wait­ing to dance.

Yeah, that’s a lit­tle flow­ery, but this is a fam­ily friendly venue.  You get the gist.  Day­dream­ing of love is is no crime, though.  It seems like just the right fit  for most any­one, depend­ing on how it comes down.  Some­times Mars Men do it dif­fer­ently than we would on Venus, though.

Now don’t get me wrong, there noth­ing inher­ently defi­cient  in “Howdy, honey.  Here’s some scanty lin­gerie. Gonna try it on now?”  This is made all the more appeal­ing when  accom­pa­nied by a good swift, mas­cu­line kick to the bed­room door.

Now, you know I’m just jok­ing with you, guys.  Still, hur­ried romance does not hold a can­dle to the lin­ger­ing way of love.

I’m speak­ing of savor­ing a dozen (or more) classic long stem roses, fine choco­late and a din­ner for two.  Then come the kisses and cud­dles.  Pas­sion has been known to fully blos­som, as it were, in such august presence–or should I say, presents?  That is, of course, this female’s perspective.

Nat­u­rally, we ladies tend to give our men what we would want, too, like jew­elry for exam­ple. (another lit­tle hint)  More than one lady has given her Valen­tine a box of choco­lates.  Sorry ‘bout that.  Some men have even got­ten roses.  Poor dar­lings, ha!  Ah, but that’s what we love…roses!

Roses are so beau­ti­ful.  In fact, roses are the favorite flower in the United States of Amer­ica.  Yes, you are right.  The Amer­i­can Beauty Rose is the national flower.  Such is our love affair.

Roses have been around for­ever, but they have only recently come to such uni­form visual qual­ity.  Per­fectly formed petals, fan­tas­tic col­or­ing, tight buds and sturdy stems are the high­lights of hor­ti­cul­tural efforts for the past hun­dred years.  The fra­grance is mostly gone now in these arti­fi­cially per­fect spec­i­mens, and the buds often bend their heads in sor­row long before they bloom, but these prize beau­ties are still won­drous to behold when fresh and new.

Com­mer­cial rose grow­ing has now become a huge inter­na­tional indus­try sup­ported by vig­or­ous toxic chem­i­cal inter­ven­tion to keep up the nec­es­sary pro­duc­tiv­ity.  The ever increas­ing demand for roses has inspired grow­ers to seek new places to (pol­lute and) cul­ti­vate roses to pla­cate our rose pas­sions.  Now, roses are plen­ti­ful and inex­pen­sive, even in win­ter­time, because they are grown in South Amer­ica.  As you know, it’s sum­mer down there at the moment.

Beauty sure has its price. Because they are so prone to dis­ease, com­mer­cial and home grown roses are usu­ally sprayed, dusted and doused with fungi­cide and insec­ti­cide cock­tails to fight off the foul destroy­ers.  Good for roses, bad for us.  Added to that,  the syn­thetic fer­til­iz­ers most rose grow­ers use, in the home or in the green­house, con­tribute to pol­lut­ing the streams and caus­ing eutroph­i­ca­tion. The con­t­a­m­i­na­tion con­tin­ues by osmo­sis.  What­ever leaches into  vase water, we dump down the sink and right into our drink­ing water supply.

I used to just love press­ing roses to my face,  in hopes of a slight hint of old fash­ioned rose fra­grance.  Alas, no more.  It’s down­right dan­ger­ous.  I pre­fer not to try to kill myself with flower power.  Our poor liv­ers are already over­loaded with envi­ron­men­tal tox­ins every day.  It’s a cry­ing shame to add roses to the list of ‘don’t touch me,’ because I LOVE ROSES!

I really hate being the party pooper with all this poi­son talk.  But don’t blame me, William Blake started the whole thing with his talk of  roses, worms and the con­se­quences. Some things never change.  Let’s just say from an envi­ron­men­tal stand­point, we can do bet­ter than to buy that inex­pen­sive rose bou­quet at the gro­cery store, florist, or street ven­dor for our loved ones, and we can be more respon­si­ble in grow­ing roses for our home gardens.

Yes, there are some bright spots grow­ing ever more vis­i­ble on the hori­zon for the rose grower and the rose receiver, and not a moment too soon.  Organic roses and sus­tain­ably grown roses are now com­mer­cially avail­able in plants for the gar­den and bou­quets for the beloved.  You can indulge in healthy rose pas­sion respon­si­bly.

You can buy  and grow gar­den roses that do not need chem­i­cals to thrive.  These hardy beau­ties come in a range of col­ors and vari­eties.  There are China roses, tea roses, flori­bun­das and more. Dif­fer­ent vari­eties need dif­fer­ent cli­mates, but there are roses for Zone 4 to Zone 10 that are low main­te­nance, easy to grow and sus­tain­able.  Earth Kind® roses and Buck Roses iden­ti­fied by  Texas A & M Uni­ver­sity and Iowa State Uni­ver­sity respec­tively, are avail­able at fine gar­den cen­ters and online. If you don’t mind a lit­tle kudo, I want to send a shout out to Cham­blee Rose Nurs­ery and the Antique Rose Empo­rium . These two are  nurs­eries that  have been pio­neers grow­ing in the sus­tain­able rose.  You won’t find bet­ter roses for sus­tain­abil­ity than with these two fine com­pa­nies     For more infor­ma­tion check out our arti­cles on Earth Kind® Roses and Sus­tain­able Roses.

For those spe­cial occa­sions you can now buy an Organic Bou­quet which car­ries not one hint of dan­ger, except per­haps from a thorn.

An Organic Bou­quethas all the beauty and none of the chem­i­cals of tra­di­tional com­mer­cially grown roses.  Since rose grow­ing is so expen­sive any­way, and organic rose grow­ing is not more costly, you can buy bou­quets of organic roses for about the same as you would pay in any decent flower shop.  When it comes to shop­ping for cut roses, this one is a no brainer!

As Albert Ein­stein quipped, “A lit­tle knowl­edge is a dan­ger­ous thing.  So is a lot.”  (I won­der if he thought that up right after dis­cov­er­ing the laws of rel­a­tiv­ity.)  At any rate, whether you knew a lit­tle or a lot about roses before, you can now claim to have added to your infor­ma­tion base some rose his­tory, rose poetry, knowl­edge of the long term effects of all these roman­tic rose remem­brances, and the avail­able alternatives.

Oh, I didn’t for­get about Blake.   For our poetry lovers,  here is what William Blake shared in his Songs of Expe­ri­ence as the 39th plate.

The Sick Rose

O Rose thou art sick.
The invis­i­ble worm,
That flies in the night
In the howl­ing storm:

Has found out thy bed

Of crim­son joy:

And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

Related Arti­cles You May Enjoy

Roses and Sustainability

Earth-Kind® Roses – The Sus­tain­able Choice for your Land­scape & Garden

Whew, is there any end to the infor­ma­tion about fire ants?

I have writ­ten 5 arti­cles about fire ants now and I haven’t even begun to tell every­thing there is to know. I give up for a while.  It’s time to think about Valentine’s Day.

For the guys, I’ll just say this is the most impor­tant hol­i­day, equal only to “The Birth­day” in the life of a romance.  It’s love’s per­fect time for posies, presents, pro­pos­als… and get­aways. I had to reflect back on one of my own Valentine’s get­aways when I was doing all this research, because that was my first intro­duc­tion to just what a dis­as­ter it can be to encounter the fero­cious red imported fire ant.

Now how, exactly, do romance and fire ants even get put in the same sen­tence?  Being from the DC area, we had never heard of fire ants, much less asso­ciate them with the child-free roman­tic retreat we had planned.  I cer­tainly would never have thought to include them in any of my rever­ies.  What a mis­take.   Our ideal vaca­tion was ruined.  Fire ants entered unbid­den and spoiled a long awaited and per­fectly planned (or so we thought) roman­tic getaway.

Any­one who has vis­ited Sani­bel Island in Florida would attest that it is a per­fect set­ting for a roman­tic ren­dezvous.  The resort was fan­tas­tic, the pris­tine, shell strewn beaches were almost deserted and the long week­end stretched out before us like a gauzy dream wait­ing to happen.

Oh, it hap­pened all right, but it turned out to be the night­mare vaca­tion from hell.

Things started off well enough. We were lav­ishly wel­comed at our accom­mo­da­tions. We had a lovely din­ner by can­dle­light over­look­ing the ocean. We took the de riguer walk on the beach after­ward. That night we were ser­e­naded by the waves and woke up ready for adventure.

It was a bright morn­ing with not a cloud in the sky. Bike rid­ing around the island to get our sight­see­ing in was on the agenda. So, there we were tool­ing around and hav­ing a great look-see.  It was shap­ing up to be such lovely day!  Hot but totally lovely.

Luck­ily for me, I like hot weather rather than cold, but around mid­day my (ex)husband’s inter­nal tem­per­a­ture was ris­ing and he had a pretty good case of sun­burn. His face was tomato red, so we stopped for some cool water and a rest.

Spy­ing a pris­tine bed of pine straw mulch around a shady palm tree, the man decides to sit there and catch the breezes while I look at kitch for kids. Well, like I said we were totally unaware of the South’s fire ant prob­lems. He no sooner gets set­tled under that tree before he is swarmed with red imported fire ants.  I heard a howl then saw him swat­ting away, while he was try­ing to strip off his shirt.

Big mis­take. He now had a weapon to beat fire ants off his legs, but they migrated under his shorts and to his chest and neck.  I don’t know how long that attack lasted, but it felt like an eter­nity, and I was only an onlooker.  Ouch.  Although it was years later that I expe­ri­enced my own encounter with fire ants, just watch­ing him suf­fer was awful.

It was hor­ri­ble. He sus­tained so many bites that he was in total agony. Between the fire ant venom and the sun­burn there was no com­fort or rest. That was the end of the fun and the begin­ning of week­end mis­ery I will never forget.

No kisses. No hugs. No laugh­ter. For the dura­tion it was just cold baths, grumpy fights and first aid. Such a waste of a hol­i­day vaca­tion.  Had we only known about fire ants, we could have avoided the whole thing.

Fire ants are found in more places all the time and many of them are fab­u­lous vaca­tion spots. We think about get­ting shots when trav­el­ing abroad, but who thinks about out­door ene­mies in our own coun­try?  Many North­ern clime dwellers are unaware of the dan­gers of fire ants when trav­el­ing to the South.  Fire ants are never dis­cussed in the travel brochures.  The state travel bureaus don’t even warn about fire ants.  How are we sup­posed to know?

Unfor­tu­nately, igno­rance is no excuse– in the law and in fire ant behav­ior.  Fire ants are mean, have no nat­ural ene­mies here and they hide in places you might never think to look.  Despite the best efforts of land­scape pro­fes­sion­als and sci­en­tists, fire ants still find ways to worm their way into paradise.

Don’t let this hap­pen to you. You spent all that time plan­ning the per­fect trip. Now, spend a few moments and check out our arti­cles on red imported fire ants to save your­self a nasty sur­prise. Famil­iar­ize your­self with where fire ants are found and what to look for. Be fore­warned and be fore­armed. You will be glad you did.

I hope you have a truly roman­tic Valentine’s Day. May it be full of love–and free of fire ants!

Related  Fire Ant Arti­cles You May Enjoy—

Fero­cious Fire Ants— Dan­ger in the Grass

Red Imported Fire Ants—Your Landscape’s Hid­den Elec­tric Personality

Elim­i­nate Red Imported Fire Ants?

Get­ting Rid of Fire Ants—What Really Works?

How to Sus­tain­ably Con­trol Red Imported Fire Ants

What is Bioin­ten­sive Inte­grated Pest Management?

Get­ting Started with Bioin­ten­sive Inte­grated Pest Management

We are work­ing hard to pre­pare for an “offi­cial” launch of Land­scape & Gar­den Today.  Need­less to say, there seems to be more work than time, but it’s fun to see LGT take shape.  Here’s cross­ing fin­gers it will be pic­ture per­fect in the next few weeks, but Christ­mas is always com­ing, or so mother used to say.  Check back fre­quently to see how we are com­ing along.  We def­i­nitely would love com­ments, feed­back, or any other shar­ing.   As our com­mu­nity grows, you will have an oppor­tu­nity to com­mu­ni­cate with like minded folk who are com­mit­ted to going green from around the world.

Gar­den Cen­ters have great deals this time of year.

In the mean­time Fall has been hap­pen­ing all around.  It hap­pens to be my per­sonal favorite sea­son, fol­lowed closely by spring.  The leaves are near peak here and that means soon they will be on the ground.   Instead of send­ing them to the land­fill, or burn­ing them (oh, no!) a great way to fer­til­ize your lawn is to run over the leaves with a lawn mower.  They will nat­u­rally com­post, pro­vid­ing nutri­ents all win­ter long, and you don’t have to rake as many.  Depend­ing on the num­ber of trees, you still may have to rake up leaves.  Lucky you…save those leaves.   If you wait until the leaves are almost dry, you can either shred them or just put the pile near the com­post area to add as “brown mat­ter” to sand­wich between green mate­r­ial such as yard scraps and veg­etable peel­ings.   Your com­post pile will love you.  You will be amply rewarded when rich brown com­post greets you at the bot­tom of the bin.

It’s also a great time to check your local nurs­ery cen­ter for some great buys.  Bulbs, shrubs and trees are all great fall plant­i­ngs, and by now many are on sale.  Look for native vari­eties to go green!  Also, remem­ber to keep them watered through the win­ter if it’s dry to pre­vent wind burn.

We look for­ward to blog­ging with you again soon.  Enjoy your Autumn.

Related Arti­cles You May Enjoy

Fer­til­iz­ing Your Lawn? Seven Sus­tain­able Tips

Fall Leaf Fertilizer