|
|
By Hilda, on January 2nd, 2011
This week, the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial by George Ball, chairman of the W. Atlee Burpee company — those folks that send out the very colorful Burpee seed catalog every year about this time. Although the timing of this piece makes me suspect there were promotional motives involved, Ball proposes a horticultural strategy to employ in the war against childhood obesity:
As an agriculturist and horticulturist, I believe that the answer is simple. As parents, educators, nutritionists and marketers, we have to imbue our children with the love of—and consumption of—the most beneficial food for growing bodies. This means fresh vegetables and fruits, whether store-bought or home-grown.
In our research at Atlee Burpee, we have found that kids who grow vegetables alongside their parents eat them regularly and with gusto. Peas, green beans and raw carrots—the very vegetables that kids are told to eat, their parents’ admonishing fingers wagging—are particular favorites.
I’ve read of other research that suggests the same thing — that when kids are involved in growing vegetables, they’re much more likely to want to eat them. (It’s hard to argue with this conclusion, isn’t it?) Mr. Ball is urging all parents to do some vegetable gardening, even if it’s on a limited scale, like growing cherry tomatoes in a container. He’s also put out the call for churches, schools, community centers and other organizations to sponsor community gardens and children’s gardening programs.
And of course, this being 2011, there has to be a political slant to this issue:
While the first lady deserves the credit for focusing the nation on childhood obesity, it is an issue that both political parties can endorse. Vegetables are deliciously nonpartisan.
The photo above comes from the Flickr photo stream of Downing Street. It’s being used in accordance with a Creative Commons license. You can find the original photo here.
By Hilda, on August 23rd, 2010
 image source: stock.xchng
I personally hate the roar of power mowers so much that I’ve been known to daydream about adopting an adorable miniature goat to keep my front lawn neatly trimmed. (It’s not legal, unfortunately, to keep livestock where I live.) A few years ago I even published a short article in Audubon magazine describing how the city of Chattanooga was using goats to control the kudzu on steep slopes where it wasn’t safe to operate heavy machinery.
So I was interested to find this Wall Street Journal article, called Free-Range Landscaping, about using goats to clear large, overgrown areas. It’s a good read, and the website includes an amusing video of goats at work on the grounds of the Vanderbilt Mansion. Here’s an excerpt from the article:
Recently, the patch of weeds behind Steve Holdaway’s Chapel Hill, N.C., home grew so unkempt that he hired outside help. For six hours, the crew’s members tackled tall grass and thorny blackberry plants and toiled without a break—other than to chew their cud, that is.
His workers: seven hungry—and carbon-emission-free—goats.
As more homeowners, businesses and towns seek to maintain land with fewer chemicals or fossil-fuel-powered machinery, a growing number are trying goats to get rid of unwanted vegetation.
Generally, companies truck goats to work sites (some gas required) where the animals munch inside portable fencing or electric netting, often powered by solar panels. Prices can range from $200 a day for a dozen goats to upward of $1,000 for larger herds of 100 or more. On bigger projects, animals may stay overnight supervised by the business owners or specially trained guardian dogs.
The article also made me think of an interesting property I saw on a garden tour earlier this summer. The homeowners had kept a neat swath of lawn around their home and planting beds, while turning the rear of the property into a natural wildflower meadow (photo below), foregoing the need for either goats or heavy machinery.
The meadow is separated from the manicured section of yard by a stone edging and an “arch” made of tree limbs. The person you see walking in the meadow is actually on a path — a narrow strip of mowed grass that bisects the meadow, allowing you to wander through it and enjoy the wildflowers and the steady hum of insects.
I’m sure a herd of goats could tame this meadow and turn it into a flat pasture in no time, but I really love the way it looks here, all wild and beautiful with the tall, swaying grasses and bright spots of color from wildflowers. Though I have to admit, I didn’t venture very far down the path at all — this city girl is far too scared of ticks to be completely seduced by the romance of a wildflower meadow.
By Hilda, on June 26th, 2010
This might just be the best horticultural news I’ve heard so far this year — the USDA is sponsoring research that shows fighting back against Japanese beetles may be as easy as adding a companion planting of geraniums to your vegetable patch or rose garden.
Standard, garden center geraniums apparently contain some sort of neuro-toxin that affects the beetles. A recent article in Agricultural Research magazine reports the following:
Within 30 minutes of consuming the petals, the beetle rolls over on its back, its legs and antennae slowly twitch, and it remains paralyzed for several hours. When paralyzed under laboratory conditions, the beetles typically recover within 24 hours, but they often die under field conditions because predators spot and devour them.
The poisoning effect of geranium flowers on beetles is not a new discovery; it has been reported in scientific papers dating back to the 1920s. But the phenomenon has not been studied in depth—how or why it happens—until recently, when Agricultural Research Service scientists in Ohio picked up where scientists left off more than half a century ago.
Scientists are now trying to isolate the compounds that paralyze the hapless beetles, so they can develop a natural pest control product. But really, doesn’t it seem easy enough to go with companion planting, if it turns out to work well? Geraniums are inexpensive and easy enough to grow in most places, and any sort of spray-on product that’s developed is likely to end up as one more contaminant in the water supply.
If you try this, please report on the results!
By Hilda, on June 10th, 2010
The movement toward safer, more sustainable lawns got a boost from the media this month, as three popular magazines featured articles about lawn chemicals in their June issues. They include Prevention, Readers Digest, and Men’s Health.
The article in Men’s Health is especially eye-opening. Paul Tukey, in his Safe Lawns blog, called it “quite possibly the most extraordinary article ever published by a major U.S. magazine about the state of the lawn chemical debate in the U.S.”
For starters, the article is titled Your Lethal Lawn. And the tagline that follows that unexpected headline reads:
In springtime, a man’s dreams turn to an expanse of weedless, bug-free, manicured grass surrounding his suburban castle.
A multibillion-dollar industry caters to this dream, offering a calibrated poisoning that keeps his world lush yet silently threatens his family, his pets … And him. Is it worth the risk?”
Author Bryan Smith does a good job of voicing the concerns of homeowners, physicians, and scientists, and of backing up these concerns with compelling research.
While I’m not an extreme environmentalist, I do believe that too many of us have bought into exactly what the lawn care industry wants us to believe — that the “perfect” lawn must be a monoculture of only grass, unsullied by clover and violets; and that we must regularly perform a chemical assault upon it to keep it “perfect.” I rejected these ideas a long time ago. What about you?
You can read Your Lethal Lawn online, courtesy of the Men’s Health website. Then let us know what you think, by leaving a comment.
♣
|
About
The Author
Hilda Brucker
 Hilda combines her
love of gardening
and passion for writing
in her blog entries.
|
