“It sounds dumb, but sometimes I think that I garden just so that I can compost. It’s actually really interesting and fun to see a bunch of dead junk turn into pure black gold.”
—
If you watch 1 gardening video all year, make it this one!
A complete guide to soil microbiology.
“For nearly as long as they’ve been popular, lawns have served as a totem of middle-class vulgarity, conformity, and excess. In her landmark 1962 book Silent Spring, Rachel Carson denounced the wanton use of lawn pesticides. Carson’s contemporary, activist Lorrie Otto, condemned yards as ‘sterile’ and ‘flagrantly wasteful.’ Polemics as cutting as a mower’s blade have proliferated in the decades since, but lawns abide. Spivak and her team come not to bury them, but to adapt them to the insects vital to the entire ecosystem—and our food supply.”
— Tom Philpott,
“Your Perfect Green Lawn Is a Buzz Kill.”
Mother Jones, May 7, 2020
Continue reading “It’s time to change the standard for American lawns”
“If your plan is for one year, plant rice.
If your plan is for ten years, plant trees.
If your plan is for one hundred years, educate children.”
“Don’t decide to grow a garden. Decide to become a gardener. Just go ahead and sign up for the long haul. This is something that you’re going to do, year after year. You’re never going to arrive, you’re going to keep learning.”
Jessica Sowards, Roots and Refuge Farm
Imperfect gardens feed you too.
“You can only learn so much from a book and from a video. You have to get your hands dirty.”
–Stefan Sobkowiak
“THE KEY to YOUR Permaculture Orchard or Fruit Planting is… ‘JUST START’”
Continue reading “Education is good, but practical experience helps you learn more directly”
“And many times during that first year, I was discouraged and impatient. Yet each surviving plant, tree and shrub—every new blossom—was the gift of motivation.”
–Lori Silvia
The Challenges and Complexities of Ecological Gardens (2020) Continue reading “A quote I think many can identify with while on their path to learning.”
“In 1753, Linnaeus placed the tomato in the genus Solanum (alongside the potato) as Solanum lycopersicum. In 1768, Philip Miller moved it to its own genus, naming it Lycopersicon esculentum. This name came into wide use, but was technically in breach of the plant naming rules because Linnaeus’s species name lycopersicum still had priority. Although the name Lycopersicum lycopersicum was suggested by Karsten (1888), this is not used because it violates the International Code of Nomenclature barring the use of tautonyms in botanical nomenclature. The corrected name Lycopersicon lycopersicum (Nicolson 1974) was technically valid, since Miller’s genus name and Linnaeus’s species name differ in exact spelling, but since Lycopersicon esculentum has become so well known, it was officially listed as a nomen conservandum in 1983, and would be the correct name for the tomato in classifications which do not place the tomato in the genus Solanum.
Genetic evidence has now shown that Linnaeus was correct to put the tomato in the genus Solanum, making Solanum lycopersicum the correct name. Both names, however, will probably be found in the literature for some time. Two of the major reasons for considering the genera separate are the leaf structure (tomato leaves are markedly different from any other Solanum), and the biochemistry (many of the alkaloids common to other Solanum species are conspicuously absent in the tomato). On the other hand, hybrids of tomato and diploid potato can be created in the lab by somatic fusion, and are partially fertile, providing evidence of the close relationship between these species.”
—Classification section of the Tomato entry on Wikipedia
If flowers can
teach themselves
how to bloom after
winter passes,
so can you.
~ Noor Shirazie, Springtime Continue reading “Springtime”
“A bumblebee can only fly for about 40 minutes between feeding. But we’ve lost 97% of our wildflower meadows. So please plant at least one nectar-rich flower in your garden or community this year. Your one flower could be the pit stop that saves a bee”
~ Little Green Spaces Tweet Continue reading “Save a bee–plant a bee pit stop”
