Why not be an Eco-Gardener?

 Lee W. Miller

UC Master Gardener San Joaquin County

 

“Al Gore asks us to change the light bulbs because he probably can’t imagine us doing anything much more challenging, like, say, growing some portion of our own food.” Michael Pollan, Why Bother?  New York Times Magazine, Earth Day, Sunday, April 20, 2008. To read this article click here.

In fairness to a farmer’s son like Al Gore, I suspect he would like us to garden too, but he will have to speak to that himself. Michael Pollan is a well known writer on food having published a best seller, Omnivore’s Dilemma, and more recently, In Defense of Food, an Eater’s Manifesto. He also gardens. His point is well taken that bothering to garden is a good and timely endeavor. Rising costs of energy and food, plus concerns about the non-sustainable aspects of our civilization should help us all to focus on ways to lessen our ecological footprint on the planet. A major concern is global climate disruption which is occurring due to our burning of fossil fuels and increasing atmospheric green house gases like methane and CO2.  This may affect our water supply which is already finite while population is increasing.

I grew up on a farm in the 1940’s, a time when farms had gardens that fed the family and the rest of the farm provided the cash crops. During WWII, Victory Gardens in cities and towns were everywhere and helped to feed the nation in a stressful time. Our farm’s large kitchen garden provided the winter larder with potatoes, beans, tomatoes, corn, jellies, jams, peaches and apple sauce and much more. That is how many farm families and others survived The Great Depression without hunger. 

One aspect of today’s industrial food system is the use of fuels to grow and transport our food long distances. Whether deemed decadent or frivolous, grapes from Chile arrive in our California super markets in the winter, and strawberries are flown to London from New Zealand. The New York Times recently featured an article on the energetics of moving the planet’s groceries around. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/business/worldbusiness/26food.html?em&ex=1209441600&en=018b6220dd84c295&ei=5087%0A).

The calories of fuel used greatly exceed the calories in the food by ratios that vary from 5:1 to 50:1 depending on the food density and the energy required for growing, transporting and storing it. It is unthinkable, but our civilization as we have known it for this last century is not sustainable because of our overdependence on finite supplies of fossil energy for all aspects of our lives. Even organically grown produce, though not using fertilizer and pesticide inputs derived from fossil carbon, uses more calories of fuel for production, transport and storage than the food contains.

So what can we do? Few if any of us are in a position to grow all our own food or even grow some of it without fossil fuel use. After all, it takes energy to pump water and in California water for summer irrigation is critical to growing anything.  However, you can grow some of your food and learn gardening skills that may become crucial as time goes by. Growing your own food makes you feel less vulnerable, can give you a feeling of accomplishment, reduces your eco-footprint in terms of carbon and energy and will provide you with some really great tasting, nutritious food.

So, you are willing to try gardening, or maybe you already garden but would like to do it in a greener way, i.e., with less of an impact on the environment? You can grow food without using excessive amounts of water and energy and thus close the carbon cycle on your property and make your landscape’s vegetation productive and useful.

How do we do that? I am going to suggest some approaches that will help you become an eco-gardener. There is a lot to know about gardening; hence we can only cover a few things in this brief space.  Additional information on vegetable gardening is on San Joaquin County Master Gardener website and others references listed in this article will help you find sources of gardening information to assist you in becoming a greener gardener.

·        Conserve water:

o       By grouping landscape plantings by their water needs (hydrozoning) so that appropriate amounts can be applied to each grouping by the irrigation regime you establish.  

o        By using rain barrels or cisterns to collect roof runoff water in the winter rainy season and use it for watering in dry periods.  

o       Use drip irrigation for vegetables, grapes, fruit trees. Drip irrigation saves on water by putting it right where it is needed and minimizes weeding in other areas of the garden. Drip materials usually made from fossil carbon can be used for many years before failing. My tomatoes have been watered for about 30 years with the same plastic pipe and emitter setup.

o       Mulching your plants with compost or other mulches will also conserve water by reducing soil temperature and evaporation.

o       Go natural in your landscape. Try native plants as ornamental because after they are established they often have lower water needs than many of the exotic plants that are typically in the nursery trade. Many more natives are being propagated these days.

o       Monitor landscape water use to make sure you are not watering the driveway or sidewalks or applying more than necessary.

 

·        Change lawn use or management. We plant lawns, fertilize, sometimes dose them with fossil energy derived pesticides or herbicides, work at mowing them and often haul the grass to a land fill using fossil fuels. Nothing is eaten and the plant material becomes waste. This could almost qualify as insane behavior!

o       We can use less fertilizer by grass cycling. Lawn clippings are left on the lawn to reduce fertilizer needs and this doesn’t cause thatch problems.

o       Or, you can compost grass clippings along with leaves to make a fertilizing soil amendment or use it as mulch in your garden.

o       Convert some or all of your lawn to a kitchen garden and produce food. Why water a lawn when, with drip irrigation, you can use less water and grow fresh food organically? The following picture is a new kitchen garden carved from a lawn area.  Next year it will be enlarged.

 

·        Change our landscape design and expectations. Rosalind Creasy’s book on edible landscaping,published in 1982, and other publications can show you how to grow food that is nutritious, looks beautiful in your landscape and tastes great. Some of Rosalind’s ideas can be found here.

(http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE5DD153CF933A05756C0A966958260). 

Here are some ideas you might consider.

o    If you need to screen an area, instead of using an ornamental plant why not use some citrus trees that will provide attractive and edible fruit in addition to a screen?

o    Or, how about growing pole beans, table grapes or berries on that fence that you want to hide or an espaliered apple or pear tree instead of an ornamental?

o    Tomatoes, eggplant and peppers love a sunny spot, so find a warm southern exposure and enjoy the special treat of a vine-ripened tomato that is tasty, sweet and juicy instead of the hard red balls that have been genetically selected for shelf-life and shipping qualities.

o    Tomatoes, peas, cucumbers and pole beans can be grown vertically by using cages, stakes or trellising and thus take up less room.

o    Need shade or an ornamental tree? Pick your favorite fruit and plant it if it can fill the bill. However, fruit trees, unless well tended, can be messy so figure out how much time you are able to commit to this effort. There are dwarf fruit trees, such a nectarines, peaches and apples that can work well for small backyards.

 

·        Use containers or raised beds to grow fresh herbs, lettuce or strawberries. There are some wonderful lettuces that can be grown which beat anything you will find in most markets. One that I really like is, Mervielle des Quatre Saisons, a beauty that is tasty and easy to grow. There are many others that make for exciting and nutritious salads which you can grow organically without paying a premium price. Lettuce is best grown in spring and fall.

 

·        Manage your household with the garden in mind. For about 40 years I have been using a compost container in my home to collect kitchen wastes for the compost pile. I live in the country and have no garbage disposal, but city dwellers can collect and compost their kitchen scraps too, thereby increasing the fertility of their property rather than burden the local sewage treatment facility. Newspapers can be recycled as mulch or used along with other paper wastes such as towels, tissues and cardboard for composting too. For more information on composting click here.   http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/Organics/HomeCompost/.

 

·        Use good quality hand tools in your gardening efforts so they will last a long time. It will pay in the long run both in terms of money and energy. Another benefit of using hand tools as opposed to power tools in a garden, beside the obvious lowered carbon footprint, is the exercise that will keep you in shape digging and weeding. There are also gardening modalities that use mulching and minimize digging and cultivating that might be easier for those who not up to hard physical labor. 

 

·        Sow seeds for species that will attract beneficial insects. These will help control pests in your garden and eliminate pesticide use. You can find beneficial insects and plants that support them listed click here.

http://www.farmerfred.com/plants_that_attract_benefi.html.

 

·        Manage your landscape to provide some sunny areas for growing vegetables. A landscape dominated totally by shade trees will not be amenable to growing most vegetables. However, shade is important to reduce your energy use by cooling your house in summer. Hence, it is good to strike a balance, if possible, for shade vs. sunshine needs.

 

·        If you have no land to garden on, look at possibilities for participating in community gardens near you or look for plots of land which might be available to use in your neighborhood.

In summary, I urge you to consider new ways to look at your landscape which includes the practical use of soil and water to provide food, i.e., kitchen gardens, as well as shade and aesthetics. A new era is coming where energy and food resources are becoming more expensive. While we are unlikely to grow all of our food, the skills and knowledge developed and efforts made toward self-sufficiency and lessening our global footprint are positive things we can do for ourselves and children. 

This is a challenging undertaking. It is not always easy to master the various aspects of organic pest control, e.g., knowing the beneficial insects vs. the pests; trapping gophers or voles, pulling weeds, watering at the right times and in the right amounts, mastering composting, knowing which cultivars will work where. Gardening is a multi-faceted management task that requires lots of knowledge and effort, but success can be a joyful accomplishment. I hope you will give it a try and join the company of green gardeners who can make a difference. The rewards are such we have to ask, Why not bother?

References

Cedric Crocker, Editor and Scott Millard, Writer. 1989. Gardening in Dry Climates. Ortho Books. 112 p.

Eric A. Johnson and Scott Millard . 1993. The Low Water Flower Gardener, Guide to Growing 270 Colorful Unthirsty Plants. Ironwood Press, Tucson, AZ. 144 p.

Creasy, Rosalind. 1986. The Gardener’s Handbook of Edible Plants. Sierra Club Books, San Francisco. 420 p.

Kouric, Robert and Rosalind Creasy, (foreword). 2005. Designing and Maintaining your Edible Landscape Naturally.  382 p.

Hagy, Fred. 2001. Landscaping with Fruits and Vegetables. The Overlook Press, Woodstock, New York. 280 p.

Flores, Heather Coburn. 2007. Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden And Your Neighborhood into a Community. Chelsea Green Publisher. 344p.