October 23 notes

I got over 2 inches of rain last night which was surprising as I didn’t hear any storms after a brief one about 6 pm.  The weather was beautiful Sunday after the fog lifted and it was beautiful Monday too.  This is what is known as Indian Summer, a nostalgic grace period from Mother Nature.  I understand we will have some more warm beautiful days later in the week.  Meanwhile the rain is most welcome, making me feel better about my plants making it through the winter.

 I have new rose buds forming on the landscape roses and even blooms on some of them.  The mums are still blooming and I found a little white daisy had popped up by my back door.  The petunias have remained unfazed by the freezing snaps we have as well as some dianthus. 

 My husband made one more mowing run yesterday, mulching up the leaves and trimming back any tall grass areas. On a trip to town yesterday I saw people mowing everywhere.  It’s a good idea not to let your lawn go into winter too long as it promotes fungal disease.  But I think some people just like to mow on those pretty days.

 There is still time to  plant those spring bulbs and the stores have reduced the price on them.  If you find perennials on sale at a good price don’t be afraid to plant them either.  Some may not make it planted this late but many will.

 I will sure be glad when the election is over.  Every day I take a detour from the mailbox to the garbage can to dump all the political flyers I get.  Those glossy things aren’t even suitable for compost.  What a shame all that paper and trees are wasted by printing those things which 99% of the people don’t even read.  But if I said I wasn’t voting for anyone who sent them I wouldn’t get to vote at all.

Extreme gardening challenge

 The Gardening World Cup was recently held in Nagasaki, Japan.  In this garden show 12 applicants are selected from well known garden designers around the world.  They are given 10 days and about 50,000 dollars plus a Japanese crew and interpreter and told to produce a garden based on a theme.  The Unitied States designer was Karen Stefonick, a well known garden designer from the northwestern US.

This years theme was Peace and Restoration, a very appropriate theme for the city that we once nuked and which has been wonderfully restored.   The event is held on the grounds of an estate called Huis Ten Bosch, which is modeled after a Dutch Royal Family estate complete with a castle.

 The competitors sourced local plants and products for their gardens.  Stefonick as well as several other contestants had her Japanese crew out in rice paddies digging up a local weed called Lycoris radiata which has shocking pink spiky flowers to use in her exhibit.  While the stark modern garden produced by Stefonick was nice, the winner was an islamic inspired garden by a Malaysian designer.  The soothing design had blue and white tiles and a star shaped pool.

 I found the garden designs interesting although many lacked plants if you ask me.  You can visit the gardening world cup website at the address below to see the gardens.  I have also attached a couple pictures from the site, the winning garden and the American one, from the site to this newsletter.

 http://www.gardeningworldcup.jp/en/

Ancient fabrics from plants

 The journal Science recently reported on an archeological find, shreds of fabric on a 2,800 year old burial shroud found in Denmark proved to be made from wild nettles.  They traced the origination of the nettles or the fabric to Central Europe, proving that the fabric or the nettles that made it were trade items. 

Around this time in Europe, flax and hemp were being cultivated for fabrics.  Sheep were also being raised for wool in the area.  But it is believed that nettles were still collected from the wild for use in fabrics.  With all the work it takes to get strands of fiber from plants for weaving it makes you wonder who the original inventors of the process were and how they came upon the idea that a weed could be turned into beautiful, durable clothing.

 Conventional, organic or something better

 A new study has shown that a long crop rotation, that is many years before a crop is grown in the same spot again, can reduce the use of pesticides and fertilizers by 88%, reduce groundwater contamination dramatically and not reduce the profit farm land can produce. 

The study was done by Iowa State University with the USDA Agricultural Research Service over many years on a place called Marsden Farm.  The crops were corn, soybeans, oats and alfalfa, with animals added at various times to graze and add manure.  So after corn was planted one year, it could not be planted in the same field until the 5th year. 

 Since the pests and weeds associated with each crop are somewhat different, and the nutrients pulled from the soil are different for each crop the populations of pests did not build up and less fertilizer was needed.  Fewer pesticides allowed natural predators to build up in the field to control pests.  A bonus was that the animals grazed on the plots provided healthy meat and spread their own manure, instead of having manure stockpiled and leaching into the ground and animals confined in small lots eating expensive grain.

This study proves that there is a sustainable and happy medium between conventional farming and organic farming.  It should be prominently featured and promoted to farmers and as of yet, we aren’t hearing much about it. Instead like our political leaders we would rather divide into ideological camps of organic and conventional agriculture.   This is probably because of all the money invested in agricultural pesticides, GMO crops and fertilizers. 

 While we should embrace some technological advances and not completely ban the use of pesticides and fertilizers we need to learn to work with and not against nature. Maybe by the next election cycle we should have a proposal similar to the energy proposal calling for sustainable agriculture practices such as long crop rotations to gradually replace conventional agriculture.