Hi gardeners
Even though they were buried last week the crocus survived
and are back to blooming beautifully. Many daffodils are now in bloom and
corydalis, and some anemones (windflowers) and Glory of the snow are in bloom. Both
grape hyacinths and the larger hyacinths are starting to bloom. Tiny perky violas
are popping up in the lawn.
My roses and clematis are leafing out and I see some hostas
peeking out of the ground. There are big buds on the maples. Chickweed is
blooming. The lilacs are showing green. I didn’t see any dandelions in bloom
here, but saw them blooming in town, and if this warm weather continues, they’ll
be blooming soon here.
The grass is greening up and soon it will be time to mow.
There is a shortage of mower parts this year so get out those mowers and get
them running, in case you need something you’ll have a chance to get it before
the grass is too deep.
Get out those hummingbird and oriole feeders and put up any
new bird houses. The birds will soon be here if they aren’t already. Many birds
are already nesting.
Start your dahlia and canna bulbs inside now in zones 6 and
lower. You can plant them in the garden in zone 7 and above.
I am busy working on the veggie garden this week. I’ll have lettuce and spinach planted sometime
this week. But for you new gardeners- patience, patience, patience. In zones 6
and lower there is still a chance for frost. Be careful still on what you plant
outside.
The busy season has started. From now until late June I’ll
be outside and working very chance I can. (And a lot of time after that too.)
But I am looking forward to it.
April 1 at my house
April
almanac
The full moon in April is a super moon as it coincides with
the moon perigee, the closest point the month is to the earth each month. It
makes the moon look larger and increases the tides. This will occur on the 26th
and 27th this month. The moon apogee, farthest point from the earth,
is April 14th.
April’s full moon is known as the Pink moon, egg moon or
grass moon. It’s known as the pink moon because it is when the pink wild
creeping phlox usually blooms. The Lyrid Meteor shower peaks on April 22nd
but the moon will still be nearly full, and it may be hard to see them this
year. You will have a better chance to
view the May 5th, Eta Aquarids Meteor
Shower.
Holidays in April are Golfer’s day the 10th,
National Pecan Day 14th, National Garlic Day 19th, Christian
Easter 21st, Earth Day 22nd, Executive Administrative day
and Zucchini bread day the 23rd, Arbor day 25th, and International
Astronomy Day. Easter was April 4th
this year.
April is National Lawn and Garden Month as well as Keep
America Beautiful month. It’s also
National Humor month, National Pecan month and National Poetry month. April’s birthstone is the diamond, and the
birth flower is the sweet pea. In the
language of flowers, the sweet pea means either goodbye or blissful love,
depending on who’s translating, I guess.
Garden chores for April include seeding lawns, planting
trees and shrubs, getting seeds and bulbs started indoors in zones 5-6 and
maybe planting lettuce and peas outside and putting some pretty pansies in pots
for color. In warmer zones you may be
planting more crops outside like onions, carrots and even tomatoes and peppers
and planting those annual bedding plants and containers.
April is a good month to divide perennials and move plants
you want to relocate. And get those mowers tuned up and ready to go, most areas
of the country will mow at least once in April.
Get out those oriole and hummingbird feeders by mid-month in
zones 6 and lower and right now in zones 7 and higher. These birds have started
their migration north already.
Here’s a link to learn about growing sweet peas.
http://gardeninggrannysgardenpages.blogspot.com/p/sweet-peas.html
 |
| Sweet Peas |
Resetting the Table: Straight Talk About the Food We Grow and Eat - By Robert L. Paarlberg
A Book
Review
This is the book I have been waiting to read about modern
food production, from a person who has experience with modern agriculture and
who can give an informed opinion about the direction in which our food
production should head. Much that has been written lately is strongly pro-organic, pro
small farm, with an emotional, nostalgic appeal to people. But when you read
these “let’s go back to the way we used to be” books and you do know a little
about modern agriculture, you can see the bias quite clearly and you can also
see faulty reasoning and incorrect assumptions touted as facts.
Back on March 2, 2021 I wrote a review of Animal,
Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal by
Mark Bittman. Bittman is a food writer,
with no agricultural knowledge, whose book was interesting but deeply flawed in
spots because he refuses to see a place for the good parts of modern, large
agriculture and the progress being made to make modern ag more sustainable and
earth friendly.
The truth is as Paarlberg points out in his new book, while
organic ag and small family farms are great, we cannot feed the world with
them. And if we tried, we would do far more harm to the environment and global food
security than we would do good. Even though organic food and buying from small
farmers is popular with middle- and upper-income families in developed
countries, it still makes up less than 5% of the sales of food products in
those countries.
In your home garden, and for small market gardeners, organic
food production is both feasible and a healthy goal. But when it comes to
producing food for the majority of the world’s population modern, large scale,
precision type agriculture for plant-based foods is the best hope for
sustainable, environment sparing agriculture. (The production of meat is
another topic I’ll discuss later.)
Things you may learn from this book-
Did you know that pesticide use on commercial crops peaked
in the 80’s and has been going down ever since? The pesticides used on crops
today are actually safer for humans and the environment than those used even 30
years ago. And with precision
agriculture, those pesticides are applied only when and where they are needed,
meaning that millions of gallons of pesticides are no longer applied to crops
when they aren’t needed and no longer wash off into our surface water, and seep
into ground water.
You don’t hear about this though. Instead, you hear about
how bad certain pesticides are for pollinators, how pesticides are poisoning us
even though the food supply is safer and cleaner than it’s ever been, at least
in the last 100 years.
(One of the biggest users of pesticides today, and the
area where pesticides are far more likely to impact helpful insects and the
environment than in crop fields, is the “kill the invasive plants” movement.
But you don’t hear much about that. https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1365-2664.12711
)
GMO crops, while greatly vilified, are part of the reason we
use less pesticides. By now people should have realized that GMO modified crops
are harmless. We’ve been eating them for 20 years and there is no science-based
proof they are harmful. You may think you aren’t eating GMO foods, but unless
you grow all of your own food, including grains and oils, you are.
While organic agriculture uses different pesticides, those
pesticides can be just as harmful to pollinators and humans as modern “chemical”
pesticides. And in many cases, much more of them are used to combat pests,
since many are not as effective as modern pesticides and have to applied more
frequently. Pests develop resistance to organic pesticides just as frequently
as they do to modern pesticides.
Even most organic producers now agree that banning chemical
fertilizers in organic production was probably a mistake. As I have mentioned
many times plants don’t care how they get their nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Manure and other organic fertilizers are
awfully hard to manage so that plants get what they need without polluting the
environment with excess nutrients. And manure applied to fruits and vegetable
crops introduces the risk of food born disease like salmonella and listeria.
Modern agriculture actually saves land
One of the that the reasons farms have gotten larger is
because using modern technology is expensive. If you are going to buy a
precision pesticide applicator, one that identifies a weed, then applies a tiny
bit of pesticide directly to it, you need to produce a lot of crops to pay for
it. This technology is now available and will lessen pesticide use even
further.
When we boost production from each acre with modern
technology, we can retire marginal lands from production. Much of it goes into
conservation easements. Large farms are willing to allow pollinator strips or
edges, smaller farms feel compelled to plant from road to road. In the last 20
years technology has allowed us to grow more food on less land, and we now have
removed thousands of acres from food production.
Other modern farming practices include no till, which prevents
erosion and aids in keeping soil microbiomes healthy. Complex drip irrigation systems
conserve water. Drones and satellites evaluate fields to see where problems are
and water, fertilizers and pesticides are applied only where needed. Technology
is the future of agriculture and it shouldn’t be looked at in a negative
manner.
The world needs more modern agriculture
One reason many developing nations can’t produce enough food
is because farmers cannot afford modern fertilizers. They have access to manure
but since animals are often poorly fed in these countries the manure is often
not enough to substantially boost crop production. And animals are most often
on pasture- and their manure hard to gather.
There are other factors- like water availability and
politics that effect production but if many countries had access to affordable
modern fertilizer’s they could greatly improve food production and reduce
starvation and nutritional deficiencies. Poor countries also need access to
better seeds and modern technology like drip irrigation.
There’s a movement now to tell these poor farmers that farming
in the traditional way is good and they shouldn’t give up their traditions.
While there may be some truth in that, much of it is romantic bs. It’s not ok
for people in developed countries to continue to use all the modern technology
at their disposal and produce far more food than they need, while the poor
people of the world are told they should farm like their ancestors did and just
buy food from more advanced countries or live with food shortages and
malnutrition.
The healthy diet recommendations and human exploitation
The recommendation for a healthy diet in developed countries
calls for lots of fruit and vegetables. But many fruits and vegetables still need
a lot of hand labor and in the US and other developed countries, it isn’t the
citizens of the countries that do much of that hand labor. Instead, it’s poor
people from underdeveloped countries that come in to do the work, often
illegally. This leads to abuse and exploitation of these vulnerable people.
Even though agricultural wages have risen, the work is still
hard and often dangerous. Farmers will tell you they can’t find enough US
citizens willing to do the work. It’s harder to mechanize this part of
agriculture. So as long as US citizens expect to have fresh fruits and
vegetables available all year at reasonable prices people are going to suffer
to make that happen. It may happen in their own countries, where they are
producing food for US citizens at the expense of a good diet for their own
citizens. Or it may happen here where farmers happily take advantage of illegal
workers.
We need to rethink how we obtain those “healthy” fruits and
vegetables, where we grow them, how we transport them, who has access to them. Are
we really healthier if we have fresh strawberries or lettuce in January? Or
could we be just as healthy with berries frozen last June and cabbage kept in
cold storage?
Fruits and vegetables are the foods most often wasted in
modern countries. They are the foods transported long distances and utilizing
lots of resources to clean and store. Should
we continue to support the production of foods that exploit poor people and
cause environmental harm for the benefit of the middle and upper class?
Animals in Agriculture
Most people recognize that the way we produce meat, eggs and
milk is not always humane and that changes need to be made in that sector of
agriculture. But just like crop production, the way we raise animals cannot go
back to the past if we intend to feed the most humans at the least cost to the
environment.
Saying that people need to eat a plant-based diet and give
up meat is one thing, getting people to do that is another. Vegans and
vegetarians comprise less than 5 % of the population and are unlikely to ever
become more than 10% unless meat just isn’t available.
Confined production of animals is here to stay and in some
ways it’s probably better for animals like chickens than free range. But we
must do it more humanely. Many countries have set standards for confined
production and a few US States have also legislated better standards, but more
is needed.
The majority of eggs produced in this country are now
produced cage free, but hens are still too crowded in production buildings. We
need to give hens more floor space, good ventilation and climate control,
natural lighting and things like litter to scratch in. Turning them loose to
free range exposes birds to disease and predators and takes more birds to
produce the same amount of eggs. It’s not the answer. Free range is for birds
you raise at home, and even then, a lot of chicken owners will tell you those
birds face a lot of risks.
In the Netherlands standards for confined hog production
require natural lighting, lots of room, climate control and cleanliness, good ventilation,
bedding to root in and even what is called enhanced environments- which means
things like toys to occupy the pigs. Farrowing crates are banned. They produce a lot of pork at only a slightly
higher cost than we do here.
An experiment with dairy cattle found that when cows were
offered pasture or a choice of a clean, climate-controlled building with a deep
straw bedding for comfort, most choose the building. Most US farmers shun
bedding because it takes more work to keep things clean, but it could be
mandated.
Confined but happy animals are healthier and require less
medication for disease or to promote growth. Bio-security is easier in buildings
and keeping animal diseases from becoming human diseases is important. But we
must find ways to use less antibiotics and growth hormones in the animals we
raise.
Raising an animal in comfortable conditions and treating
them kindly and then killing them quickly and humanely is not evil. Most people
say they are willing to pay more for meat raised in this way. It’s the way we
must treat animals until we transfer to real meat grown in labs at a reasonable
cost, which is still a long way off.
The artificial meats we now have are highly processed foods,
requiring just as much water and land to produce the ingredients as traditional
meat. We don’t even know how safe these foods are and many of the products
contain more fat and salt than we should be consuming. They will never become
popular unless the price can be lowered much more than real meat. They aren’t the answer to feeding the planet.
We should encourage eating less meat. We should encourage buying
locally and seasonally raised produce when it’s possible. We should grow some
of our own food, but also recognize that some people just can’t do that. Using
less pesticides and less land to produce crops should be the goal, and we
should embrace technology to help us do that.
We should help all countries to embrace modern agriculture
and become more food secure, rather than expecting them to continue to use old farming
methods because some well-fed people in the modern world think that’s what
would be ideal for them. The green revolution worked for first world countries,
and it will work for poor countries if we just let it.
Agriculture has changed -improved- dramatically in the
centuries people have practiced it. Despite doomsayers in every era, we
continue to produce enough food in this world to feed every person on the
planet- even though that food is often not distributed equally, and people
still starve.
We are able to do this because agriculture keeps improving.
Now is not the time to regress and move backwards in some romantic notion of
how things were better in an earlier time. Technology is what will keep us fed
in the future.
And we should realize that it isn’t farmers, no matter how
big or small, that are making us fat or ruining our health with their crops. It’s
the middlemen between farmers and eaters that do that, turning perfectly
healthy food into products full of sugar, salt and fat that make us all less
healthy. Don’t blame farmers for your health problems, and don’t blame them for
our environmental problems.
Read the book – no matter how biased you are towards organic
agriculture and the old-fashioned way of farming. You may gain a different
perspective.
Planting
Pansies
Picking some pretty pansies this spring should be on every gardeners to do list. Who doesn’t like pansies? When you just want to see pretty flowers but know it’s too cold to plant most annuals, think of pansies. They make cool weather colorful and give gardeners an easy to grow option when they just need to plant something. Pansies are heavily promoted to keep gardeners buying plants in the cooler months. They are so pretty it’s hard to resist them, and if you venture into garden stores when it’s cool, you are almost certain to return home with pansies.
In garden stores you may also find violas for sale in early
spring. Botanically there is no difference between pansies and violas, although
some species of viola are short-lived perennials in the garden, as are most
violets, another relative. Modern hybrid pansies usually have larger flowers
than violas and they are less likely to retain any fragrance. You can use violas
just like pansies. Violas are more likely to reseed themselves in the garden
and pop up in unexpected places.
In the garden pansies can be used hide the dying foliage of
early spring blooming bulbs. Pansies are excellent in containers to add a bit
of color to porches or decks in cool weather. Children love the “faces” on
pansies, so they are excellent choices for a child’s garden. Pansies are edible
and can be used to decorate cakes or added to salads. Pansies make good cut
flowers and they are charming when dried and used in crafts. And the bees will
love you for providing them flowers to feed on when there is little else in
bloom.
Pansy growing tips
Pansies are planted in early spring or late fall. Pansies do
not like heat, some varieties are more heat tolerant than others are, but few
pansies will bloom in hot weather. There are some varieties of pansies that
will put on a show in the fall until covered with snow, and then when the snow
melts in spring they resume blooming as if nothing has happened.
Pansies are generally removed and replaced with warm weather
annuals after the last frost in the spring.
A good idea is to plant your pansies in something that will fit inside
patio containers or window boxes and then zip the pots of pansies away to a
cooler spot when it’s time to plant the petunias or other warm weather plants
in that location. Find a shady spot for
the pansies to rest in. Cut them back to a few inches and keep them well
watered. If you are lucky, they will survive the hot weather and be ready to
bring back into the sun in cooler fall weather to resume blooming.
If the pansies are planted in the ground, you can dig them
out and pot them and remove them to a shady resting place as above or you can
cut them back and hope to see them in the fall. And since pansies are
inexpensive you may just want to remove them to the compost pile when the heat
comes and they stop blooming.
Pansies like full sun in the spring and fall although they
may tolerate some light shade. They need to be kept moist, but make sure they
never sit in waterlogged soil. A slow-release fertilizer mixed into the soil at
planting will aid flowering, especially in areas where pansies will be blooming
for many months.
Pansies are annuals; they live for about a year. Some fall
planted pansies will return in spring. Keep the dead flowers picked off so they
don’t go to seed to prolong bloom. If you do let a few go to seed in the garden
they may pop up on their own next year.
Pansies can also be started from seed indoors. Pansy seed germinates well, and plants are fairly easy to grow. They like to be started in a cool area, with daytime temperatures in the 60’s and nighttime temperatures in low 50’s - high 40’s. Pansies need a sunny area or good supplemental lighting to develop into sturdy plants. They will need to be started about 10 weeks before you want to plant them outside.
Some pansy varieties
There are hundreds of pansy varieties on the market. There
are large flowered varieties and small flowered pansies. There is every color
pansy in the rainbow, some solid colored, some with the traditional “cat’s
face”. There are ruffled and frilled
varieties. Medium and small flowered pansies hold up better in rain and snow
than the larger flowered pansies.
Tags on pansies sold in stores may just say “pansy hybrid,
mixed colors. That’s because most people choose pansies by the color and
markings that appeal to them. Here are a few named varieties. “Crystal Bowl
Supreme” series features 12 solid colored, small flowered pansies. “ Majestic
Giants” is an old series with large flowers, many colors and markings. “Bolero”
hybrids have large, ruffled double blooms in a wide range of colors. “Pink
Panther” series features medium sized flowers in shades of pink, wine and
lilac.
A flower blossoms for its own joy.”
– Oscar Wilde
Kim Willis
All parts of this blog are
copyrighted and may not be used without permission.
And So On….
Find
Michigan garden events/classes here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/118847598146598/
(This is the Lapeer County Gardeners
facebook page)
Newsletter/blog
information
If you have a comment or
opinion you’d like to share, send it to me or you can comment directly on the
blog. Please state that you want to have the item published in my weekly blog
if you email me. You must give your full name and what you say must be polite
and not attack any individual. I am very open to ideas and opinions that don’t
match mine, but I do reserve the right to publish what I want. Contact me at KimWillis151@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment