Amazing camouflage!

Leaf or insect?

The photograph shows insect camouflage in the case of Zaretis ellops, or "The Seasonal Leafwing", a moth found in Costa Rica and Mexico.  The two little holes in the “leaf” don’t always occur with all members of the species, making each one quite unique. Check out the variations here. Amazing.

The rain continues here, with another 6 inches (15.24 cm) predicted for the next couple of days. Every now and then people wander into the garden shop picking up a few seeds, or seed starting equipment. Until the rain stops and we get some dry weather people seem hunkered down, waiting…

The Grow Room from Ikea

“All it takes to complete the 17-step, architect-designed DIY garden of your dreams is plywood, a visit to your local community workshop, rubber hammers, metal screws and some patience”.  This is billed as the way to feed communities in the future.

This from the designers, “local food represents a serious alternative to the global food model. It reduces food miles, our pressure on the environment, and educates our children of where food actually comes from. The result on the dining table is just as fascinating. We could produce food of the highest quality that tastes better, is much more nutritional, fresh, organic and healthy.

The challenge is that traditional farming take up a lot of space and space is a scarce resource in our urban environments. The Growroom is designed for cities and with it’s size 2,8 x 2,5 meter it has a small spatial footprint as you grow vertically. It is designed to support our everyday sense of well being in the cities by creating a small oasis or ‘pause’-architecture in our high paced societal scenery, and enables people to connect with nature as we smell and taste the abundance of herbs and plants.”

It’s an interesting design and could be a fun project, but feeding neighborhoods with this? I doubt it. What we need in cities is more open space and gardens growing out in the sun. Soon all our green spaces will be inside and the outside world will be metal and concrete. It’s not about just producing food, but creating a better neighborhood, and city.  We need outdoor places for people to be and soak up the sun, and food gardens would serve that function.

More here: Huffington Post

Another rainy friday

Another rainy day, with more to come. Now we hear that it may rain right through March, which doesn’t surprise this California native. Not so great for business, but in horticulture you have to roll with what Mother nature provides. Seen it rain right through May, and this would be the year it might happen again. This is now our rainiest winter, ever.

Here is a link to Ian Baldwins, “Reading the 2017 Tea Leaves”, concerning the up-coming year in garden retail. I found this quote most enlightening, “simply put, the biggest, most expensive end of the range of almost everything, sold out first. It didn’t matter whether it was wreaths for the front door, ‘everlasting’ Christmas trees or swag for the mantle, the most expensive selection sold out first. The $2000 everlasting tree sold before the $800 one, the new clever lighting set sold before the cheaper one designed five years ago and the biggest table-runners went first.” This has to be evidence from the most wealthy sections of our country? This is not what’s happening in central California outside the Bay Area, at least in my observations. I do wonder if we sometimes forget the part of the state that really hasn’t seen this kind of business. Do these various garden surveys tend to skew towards the more wealthy enclaves in the country?

Here is a video of a young horticulturist and her business in Britain. I like the enthusiasm and the pride of trade she exhibits. We need more young people to take up horticulture, and work in the garden.

Not much going on here at the garden center as it’s raining, and everyone around here is hunkered down waiting out the next storm, which the weather service named “Lucifer”. Sounds like trouble. I’ll let you know.

“Nearly one in four front gardens in the UK is completely paved

"Nearly one in four front gardens in the UK is completely paved over" according to The BBC. When did this happen? A country once filled with gardeners, and now ¼ of all front gardens are paved over? This despite evidence of the environmental, and health benefits, of gardens? The horticulture trade is partly responsible for this by feeding into the “instant gratification" desire.

When I started in the nursery business back in the early 80’s flowers were sold without blooms. We sold flats and flats of flowers with not one bloom, just a sign with a picture of what the flower would look like. People bought these, and patiently waited for the blooms, which came along quickly. Then the first flats of blooming flowers started showing up in the later 80’s. People naturally gravitated towards these flats of flowers as you could plant them, and voila, “instant” color. No more waiting for the blooms to come naturally, no planning ahead, just buy already blooming flowers. Problem? They don’t grow! They have been treated with PGR’s.

PGR’s, or “plant growth regulators” are used by growers to stunt the growth of the vegetative part of the plant, to promote earlier flowering. PGR's are applied as a spray, or dip. Growers have seen the results of selling these flats with already blooming flowers. Unknowing customers buy them up! Their lives seem so busy, and there is no time for patience, and they demand instant gratification. However, the plants don’t grow like they did in Grandma’s garden. The little flowers have blooms, but the alyssum doesn’t cascade over the wall like grandmas did. The marigolds never gain any height. The flowers bloom, but seem stunted. People figure they are doing something wrong, don’t have a “green thumb”, and give up.

Growth regulators are also used so the plants stay small enough to fit on the racks of the large semi-trucks that deliver the flowers. Uniformity of growth for transport overshadows growing healthy, various sized flowering plants. Again, this sells plants at the nursery, but doesn’t build a lifelong love affair with the garden. Hence, in our efforts to satisfy the ever demanding public, we have cut corners, and taken much of joy out of a once joyful hobby.

There is hope as some smaller growers do not use PGR's , and promote that. These healthier non-treated flowers will grow better, and flower longer. Most important the gardener will have success, and benefit from the patience that the garden use to teach those that listen. In the long run we may grow a whole new population of gardeners, who fall in love with the garden and continue that relationship far into the future, instead of paving that future over with asphalt.  

BBC article: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38772477

Asparagus and rhubarb roots

 

Change the world in the garden

"The climate is changing. Food and agriculture must too". This is the theme for the UN's "World Food Day", celebrated today. You might ask, what can I, one person do?

You can change your world by immersing yourself in green. Feed yourself, as well as your community by growing a garden. This simple act changes your surroundings, and your feelings. People who garden naturally feel better than those who do not. When you eat from your own garden you know exactly how the plants were grown. The energy put into growing those plants is given back to you in the form of nutritious food. Weeding, watering, and tending the garden all require a nimbler body and mind, and the plants know this! This is the symbiotic relationship you will enter into with the plants when you garden.

The picture shows a section of our food garden. We use natural methods and avoid any synthetic pesticides, or fertilizers. We improve our soil by adding a layer of compost right on top. We no longer till it in. The "no-till" method it's called. Saves our backs as well. It interesting that the less "hard" we work, the better the results. I think for the longest time people have been under the impression that the garden was "hard work". If it is, you doing it wrong.

Here are some ideas for growing your own organic food garden.

1. Size of the garden is not important, intent is. Be it a small container garden on an apartment balcony, or a five acre truck farm, doing is most important.

2. Visit your garden daily. Besides being a moving meditation, it allows you to see the gardens progress, and nip in the bud any potential problems before they get out of hand.

3. Feed your garden organic nutrients on a regular basis. This is especially important in raised beds, or containers. Usually every couple of weeks we apply a dry fertilizer to our plants. Unlike synthetic nutrients that bypass the soil and feed plants directly, we want to feed the soil, thus feed the plants. Organic nutrients can be made at home from compost, or purchased from a local garden shop.

4. Remove the negatives from the garden. We are not engaged in a "war on weeds", or "battling pests". To receive the healthy benefits of gardening we work with the weeds and pests to keep them at a healthy minimum. Besides, some plants considered weeds are actually tasty vegetables. The often maligned dandelion is a great green to eat. The garden snail? Escargot!

5. Be different! Grow strange and unusual vegetables from all over the world. Just 15 years ago most people only knew of a few tomato varieties. Now we have access to 100's of varieties of heirloom types with flavors unique! Learn to grow exotic mushrooms! We are experimenting with growing our first shiitake mushrooms on tree stumps. "Find the others", means find like minded people who share your interest in gardening. The Internet is very useful in that regard. You'll soon find that their are others working in their gardens, just like you.

#WorldFoodDay
#garden
#gardening

Don't panic, stay calm, and garden!

Working at the nursery the other day I had a chance encounter with a group of young people who work for a state run organization. They are learning about the garden and how to grow food. They have started seeds, and came by to learn about the compost tea we make. Afterward I was told that just the other day the powers to be told them they cannot have a garden this year, due to the drought. I guess they will just have to buy their food from the local grocery store. What kinds of lessons are these young people learning when they are told they can’t grow healthy, organic food to eat? I guess the thinking is, “conserve water buy relinquishing your ability to monitor it and use it wisely.” Instead we are supposed to go to the grocery store during a drought, and buy food that was grown by “professional” farmers who know how to use the very same water better?

 A friend and fellow nursery person Annie Hayes, of Annie’s Annuals in Richmond, penned a wonderful post titled, “Home Gardeners are NOT the problem.. Read it to learn why the garden is getting an unfair reputation for water waste during the drought. The garden, be it ornamental or edible, adds immensely to our lives. Our gardens can still produce and thrive during a drought. We just need to be more mindful this year about how the water is used. Gardens and gardeners are easy marks for scorn during our annual low water cycles. It’s so easy to point one's finger and say, “that garden should be allowed to die, or not even be planted this year”.

 Annie summed it up well with this, “If you don’t have a large lawn in a hot Summer area, YOU ARE NOT THE PROBLEM. If you’re growing a sensible mix of low and average water use plants YOU ARE NOT THE PROBLEM. Home gardeners who are growing healthful fruits and vegetables or flowers for joy, beauty, and to support and enjoy our birds, butterflies and bees ARE NOT THE PROBLEM. You don’t have to stop watering your beautiful plantings – just be smart about it.”

I offered to help the young people and the organization they work for learn how to still have that garden, while learning how to be good stewards of the water we are allotted.  Don’t let all those wonderful seedling plants die just because the bureaucracy in charge can’t see beyond “NO GARDEN”. Don’t send the message to these young people and others that we can’t be responsible enough to know how to handle our own health, and the ability to grow what we need to live.  Let's "teach our children well" during this drought. Panic and giving up are not an option.  At this time in our history, and at this place, we need to "get ourselves back to the garden"  more than ever. 

“I have come here to lose the smog

And I feel to be a cog in something turning

Well maybe it is just the time of year

Or maybe it's the time of man

I don't know who l am

But you know life is for learning

We are stardust

We are golden

And we've got to get ourselves

Back to the garden."

Woodstock

by Joni Mitchell, Woodstock

Use the garden as a refuge from the digital world

At  MindBodyGreen, 9 reasons Gardening is the Ultimate Mind Body Workout. "According to the Centers for Disease Control, gardening is compared to “moderate cardiovascular exercise.” Gardening 30 to 45 minutes a day can burn 150 to 300 calories. This isn't just standing there watering the flowers, but weeding, digging, hoeing, raking and planting. And there's nothing like being at one with nature to help create a calming, relaxed state of mind while you let go of the pressures and anxiety of everyday life."

The calories burned is a nice benefit, but for myself the real pleasure of gardening is in the mind and soul. We are all so connected and digitized these days that is becoming harder and harder to become "mindful". By "mindful" I mean living in the moment, and taking notice or the world your in. Not worrying about the future or past, but just being. The garden should be a refuge from all the buzz, a place where you can reconnect with nature.

Leave the phone in the house and use the garden entrance as a doorway to another world. A world where you can focus on the moment, and let your mind take a break. Plus, you will reap the rewards of fresh, delicious, healthy food.