Food for Thought from Your Garden

 

 

We live in an age of information overload goes without saying. If there is still any doubt just look at your smart phone and what it can do. Or at least what it is supposed to do. There are literally thousands of "apps" for most phones. A quick look at them however reveals that most are duplications of gadgets or processes that are already on our phones or in our dashboards. For instance at least twice a week I sync my Blackberry with Outlook so all me appointments and deadlines are together. Yet several rocket scientists decided to create appointment calendars for Blackberries. Yet they are not compatible with Outlook. There are GPS apps for phones that already have GPS capabilities built in.

There are even apps now for gardening. Apps that you can use for information on plants you may see at a botanical garden. Do you see the same disconnect to the outside world here that I do? How strange would it be to walk through a botanical garden or garden center come across a cool flower and then immediately search for information on your smart phone?

 

This brings me to my point of the day, simplicity. Every management and time expert guru pushes the acronym KISS for Keep It Simple Stupid. Few however end up practicing what they preach. For example an activity as sublime as barbecue it is very easy to get all knotted up determining which recipe to use for ribs. There is one book on BBQ with more than 500 recipes for ribs alone. A closer look reveals that despite there being 500 recipes, rubs, and sauces it comes down to four basic needs each time. They are ribs, rubs, sauces and smoking chips (or chunks). Further study of the 500 rip recipes reveals that the ingredients in almost all the rubs are based on this system of four. Same for BBQ sauce, marinades, etc.

 

Just for the record the four ingredients I see the most are garlic, oregano, tomato and, salt. There are many others that could be grouped into fours as well but the topic here is four not eight or twelve!

 

Could it be that ancient cave dwellers knew something we did not? Is there something more to four ingredients and say the four directions of the wind. I would say compass but I do not believe Ogg and Orga had such luxuries. If you adhere to Darwinian Theory it would make since that Ogg and Orga were the first BBQ pit masters since they were the first to cook with live fire for sure.

 

I fell Simon and Garfunkel put it best in their hit song Scarborough Fair when the melody went: parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. Move them around, change an ingredient or two and you get the message, simplicity. If you are panning an herb garden this summer consider what you cook the most, what aromas you enjoy the most or what colors you enjoy the most. Pick four and see how far that gets you. See how far that gets you this winter! I would love to have access to my herb garden right now but it is buried under snow. I do have however four pots of herbs in the dining room window.

 

It just so happens that I only have room for four pots of herbs in that window. I hope my cousins Ogg and Orga are somehow aware of this fact and quite pleased with their influence upon me several millennia since their clubbing food to death. These four inhabitants denying themselves hibernation are rosemary, thyme, chives and oregano.

Simon and Garfunkel cannot get me on copyright charges since I have only half of their suggested mix. But I will give them a footnote just in case. These four are the superstars in my herbal potions. Basil is a glaring missing in action here I know. However basil does not perform well indoors over the winter. Plus basil, extra virgin olive oil, garlic and balsamic vinegar are everywhere anyway. Again you can see the power of four!

 

Four can suffice just about any garden need as well. For example a salad garden need not bee an entire back yard production.

 

The four salad stars are, greens, tomato, cucumber and………… (add your own fourth part here)

 

Root crops for the cellar: Onions, potatoes, beets, carrots.  Does anyone see these four doing double duty as soup?

 

Tomatoes: plum, pear, slicing, and salad

 

Vines: cucumber, melon, winter squash, summer squash

 

And just in case you haven't noticed there are four groups of four here. Four gardens with four crops. Not a potager per se' for the gourmet but a solid base from which to start.

Now it would be easy to add to the list of four but it may be getting picky.

 

 

Looking Back To Move Ahead

The 2010 garden season ended several months ago and the calendar 2010 is ending as well. It is now a good time to look ahead to the next garden year and look back on the current one. Another example that gardening should not be a mad dash in April and May is the fact that the garden year ends quietly and starts later than the calendar year in these parts. What other clue could anyone want that gardening is a fun PASSIVE activity. In fact gardening is the number one outdoor activity in America followed by bird feeding and bird watching. One can combine these two in one massive........passive activity and get the best of both worlds. Color from flowers and sound and color from attractive songbirds.

 

First a review of the garden season that was 2010. Tomato blight that devastated the 2009 season was almost extinct this year. A few cases did show up in the Hudson Valley but remained isolated. Another sign that buying local is better than buying from a huge provider located in another state. It was still a strange year for tomatoes however. I had no tomatoes at all for the second year in a row. Neighbors just a few mile away had hundreds. I am beginning to think they stole mine and tied them to their the plants in their garden. I will try many methods of growing them this year to discover the secret. None will be in raised beds. They will all go into containers enriched with my secret blend of compost, weird strains of bacteria, humates, endo and ecto things that I am told will not only grow really good crops but may glow in the dark. I will settle for a tomato that glows in the day time at this rate.

 

Peppers did incredibly well last year. Helped by the warm weather, unpredictable rain and a new plot to grow them in. Chiles did well especially in my outdoor hydroponics pots. I will use the same esoteric strains of soil" amendments" to grow more chiles in  for 2011. And maybe just maybe et to sell something at a farmers market come summer. My favorite pepper this year was the marconi Italian frying pepper. Long and beefy is the best way to describe what is looks like. About as long as a good bell pepper is tall but not fat. Maybe 4-5 inches across. Marconis are great to stuff with cheese, sun dried tomatoes in oil, sausage, and even eggs. Cook the eggs and sausage before hand to make sure they are cooked through. Then stuff the peppers to the gills and slow roast them on hardwood charcoal using the indirect method. My recipe is called "sausage IN Pepeprs" instead sausage and peppers. This way you can skip the carbs on the hard roll and enjoy slicing a pepper and munching on the goodies inside.

 

Broccoli and cauliflower went bust in my yard this year. After growing broccoli and cauliflower the size of basket basketballs in '09 I was excited to see what would happen this year. Nada, no, nothing. Small florets that blasted way to soon even when it was cool outside. I think the tomatoes and cauliflower were in a scheme to deny me a salad this year.

 

As always I am planning on a bigger garden for next year. I planned on that for this year too. Did not happen. Don't know if it will in 2011 either. But at least I am admitting that early and not getting my hopes up. I really have no excuses though. Plenty of compost is ready and more is being placed in the bin though frozen solid toil spring.

 

As for 2011 here is what I see happening as I not only read the tea leaves but drink them as well. Homemade herbal tea of course. I have no idea what the exact ingredients are as to the proportion but suffice to say not enough lemony stuff as the tea is more like a grog or potion than tea. But that is how I like it. I just do not think a nice tasting blend of lemony stuff fights colds and flus like a bitter tea. We'll see. So far no bronchitis like I always get! Thank you horehound!

 

Urban farming will continue to grow, pardon the pun. the only thing standing in the way of more urban farms in inner city areas are the city officials themselves. Now that folks have found uses for empty lots the powers that be feel the need to impose regulations upon lettuce farmers. Even worse in some cases community gardens are being run by what I call "Garden Owner Associations" akin to home owner associations in condo and vacation communities. GOA's have gone so far as to tell plot renters what to grow and what they cannot grow.

 

Urban farming involves small farm animals like chickens and rabbits. after all it is farming. As long as the powers that be understand this urban farming will bring healthy food to inner city areas that have little access to fresh veggies. It is less expensive to allow urban farming than to coax supermarkets to downtown with hefty tax breaks.

 

Organic gardening will continue but has reached a sustainable pace. So to say the band wagon has become mainstream and sensible. In fact we are already moving to the next more mature stage of organic gardening and replaced it with the buzzword sustainable. What that means to gardeners is there are times when organic growing is more detrimental to the overall environ men than some traditional methods. It may not seem so when looking at the crop one  is trying to grow but presents itself readily when considering the overall footprint, carbon or otherwise, an organic method leaves behind. If you add up the total "cost", again economically and environmentally, there are times when the natural methods incur more costs than non standard ones do. For instance in the case of a sudden huge infestation of pests. I will use Japanese beetles for example. There just is not a quick effective natural control for them. By the time you add up the cost of materials, packaging, shipping, manufacturing costs and water to mix a natural spray that cost is much higher than a quick effective standard pesticide.  

 

Vertical gardening will be everywhere roof gardens and rain gardens will not. Vertical gardening on walls, in homemade PC pipes, and commercial devices will be everywhere. Vertical gardening works as a space saving logical way to grow more stuff in smaller places. It works because folks are moving in to retirement communities with small yards but plenty of wall space. It works because you do not have spend all day bent over weeding. It works because you can see the garden easier in a vertical planter than an in ground bed. I will also add elevated garden bed contraptions to the list. Picture a 3x5 wood garden bed supported by three or four foot tall legs that a wheel chair can pull up to! No bending, plenty of room to grow real gardens. You cannot grow real gardens in an average size window box.

 

Rain gardens came about as a secondary trend in 2010. the idea behind a rain garden was to create a garden at your downspout that would filter out contaminants before the water entered storm drains or percolated back into the water table. Nice idea but not reasonable or productive. They are not cheap to build and only work when it rains. In order for them to survive they need a lot of water to maintain the wetlands environment during dry spells. So in the end the amount of water needed to maintain an artificial wetland may outweigh the amount of filtered rainwater. If you have clay soil that can hold plenty of moisture during dry spells a rain garden makes sense. Also if you have a sump pump like I do and clay soil better yet. The cool thing here is my "rain garden" has been in existence since my home was built 25 years ago. Water being pumped out of my basement and deposited outside has created an environment on it's own. Cat tails, iris and other wetland plants started growing there because of the ample supply of moisture. My point. If you have an area that is subject to constant runoff leave it alone. In time if there is enough moisture running through it a natural "rain garden" formerly called bogs will develop on its' own.

 

Micro farms will continue to replace large farms and diversify the agricultural treasures of the region. While large dairy farms are going away smaller specialty dairy farms are thriving. They supply natural hormone, BVG and steroid  free milk to producers of speciality diary producers that make products from ice cream to cheese.

 

Indoor gardening will explode with the advent of indoor growing systems that no longer look like laboratories but resemble fine pieces on furniture. Smaller more energy efficient LED lights are already hitting stores. Check out the cool new trend called window farming. Homemade systems that "hang" in windows to grow greens and herbs all winter long. Often these hanging gardens are made from two liter soda bottles.

 

So there you have my look back while looking forward to the next gardening season. I feel a cold coming on so enough reading the tea leaves...it's time to drink them!

garden aticle

The sun is now setting at the earliest hours of the year for a while. I find the weeks immediately after the New Year the most depressing. After all the holiday season is over the college football season done and the Super Bowl is still a month away. I mean what is there to do when the ground is frozen, it's dark and little to do? The biggest tease to me is that during the first weeks of January the days are getting longer. But still it is dark before 5 PM. The joke gets worse later in the month when the sun is just above the horizon when I pull in the driveway. Then I get out of the car and BLAST! Cold winds being thrown down from the Catskills on us poor souls in the valley between the mountains and the river. I guess the "beings" in the mountains are getting us back or sharing with us the colder weather and shorter seasons they have. Small price to pay I say for the better view of the horizons east and west they have than we do.

 

There is a small glimmer of hope this time of year in the garden world. Your local greenhouse. The inside of you car is a nice warm place on a sunny day in January even without the blower scalding your knees or knuckles with the same scorched air from your indoor furnace. The difference is that in a greenhouse you do not need your seat belt and an air bag will not go off if you bump your shopping cart into a table of plants at 2 MPH. Insurance on shopping carts is also cheaper since they do not go as fast and you don't really own them but rent them from the shop owner. I say rent because when you buy a tropical plant part of the price goes to pay for the shopping cart you just rammed into the plant display. I am not sure how the damage to the display table gets paid for.  

 

Another advantage, the best of all, is the humid lung repairing air in a greenhouse in the winter. Cold winter air just hurts when you inhale deeply. Scorched air from a car heater or furnace also hurts when taken in deeply. There us just something calming about a tropical greenhouse in the winter. Whether it's the longing for return of summer weather or just a respite, however brief, from Old Man Winter, humid warm greenhouse air has a healing affect on me and others. Add to that a fountain or pond filled with swimming fish and it is irresistible. Madison Avenue could not come up with a better marketing plan than a greenhouse in January.

 

While not possible without large wads of cash and even bigger oil tanks to recreate the entire experience at home we can create a  small piece of a tropical garden in a room in our home. Most plants end up in living rooms. Not a bad place. But is the living room a place we spend a lot of time in in the winter? How long do you stay in bed in cold weather? Have you ever thought of taking the private sanctuary of your bedroom to the next level? A tropical paradise perhaps even with a table top fountain or at least a nature CD of waves, birds and moving water. 

 

You already have part of the equipment for complete relaxation away from the TV. A bed, huge comforters and if like me several pillows. Also nearby is a lamp to read by and a small bookcase complete with 6-10 books I am in the middle of reading. Most master bedrooms have at least some windows. These windows have at least a 50% chance of facing the right direction to support life (plant life).

 

Should you not have windows facing the right direction there are plenty of light fixtures that fit neatly onto bakers racks that can hold many plants all in one tidy garden space. Plants clean our air by filtering out toxins like formaldehyde. They also provide oxygen. No amount of houseplants will provide enough oxygen for our needs but they will give you fresh air like never before. Plants by their very nature have a calming and nurturing effect on people. Any doubters of this fact just need to visit a greenhouse on a sunny day in winter.

Smiles abound people slow down and enjoy the experience.

 

A simple primer on light for indoor plants. During the winter the sun is low enough in the sky so most any plant can handle direct sun. The best light for most of the year is called bright indirect light. This simply means as much light as possible without getting any direct sun. This is generally just to the side of south facing glass or 6-8 feet across the room from such facings of glass. The same quality light can be gotten directly in an easterly window or a western window that gets early evening sun.  

 

Medium light comes from  sitting directly in a northerly facing window. No room for error here. Moving to any side out of the northern exposure and you end up in the dark in most cases. Very few plants grown in dark areas.

 

Room color plays a huge role in lighting for plants. Brightly painted rooms scatter light all around offering up larger canvasses of bright light and limiting areas of medium or low light. On the other hand dark colored rooms limit dramatically the bright light areas as the darker colors soak up rather than spread light around.

 

And last and most important for "planting up" a master garden suite, always by the plant for the lighting you have or will provide. Do not buy a bright multi-colored Croton if you have dark walls and no plans on running plant lights 8 hours a day. Plant care tags should have the lighting and care instructions right in place sight. Often the light needs are color coded. Yellow usually means bright light and purple or dark colors indicate plants that will take lower light conditions.

So there you have it...........a remedy for the winter doldrums and a healthy start to the New Year.

garden article

Hopefully by now the triptofan has worn off and we have all made it back across the river from Grandma's house. Our gardens and many furry creatures that habitate near our gardens have all but gone to sleep for the winter. The closest we get to enjoying the winter off is the afternoon nap after getting filled up on turkey. Another close call is so called elusive long winters' nap. I never get the long winters' nap probably because I would look kind of foolish putting on a cap before going to bed. Probably would not sleep well either as the brim of said cap would always be in the way or I would fumble around looking for it after it fell off somewhere between the good dream and the nightmare.

Which brings us to the subject of long winters. Any season the precludes gardeners from playing in the dirt is a long one. Winter for gardeners starts with the last bulb planted or garlic harvested and ends with the last mud pit drying up. Mud pits in my back yard clay can last until May in a rainy season. So what to get the gardener on your shopping list this holiday season? I know that gardeners get itchy when the seed catalogs come in which would make buying a garden gadget for a gardener seem more like punishment than a present of good thought.  Fact is though we like getting seed catalogs. I spend my lunch hours in January at the local book store looking through all the new garden magazines, catalogs disguised as magazines and garden books looking for what is new. Fact is I already what is new having seen many new items at all the trade and garden shows I attended the previous fall, eleven to be exact. What is refreshing to see is the items I chose made the cut and appear in the magazines in January. One of the pit falls of being responsible for purchasing items for sale is visiting the bone yard, the corner of the warehouse, where items that seemed like a good idea end up when they turn out not to be good idea.

First and foremost every gardener needs a good pair or two of pruners. If the gardener on your list has a lot of cut flowers on the table from their garden they need a pair of bypass pruners. These work like a pair of scissors with two moving blades that are sharp enough to cut through tender foliage without crushing tender stems. Anvil pruners, the ones with a fat blade on the bottom are not the kind to buy the cut flower gardener or someone who like me does a  lot of soft stem cuttings to make new plants. The gardener who has a lot of woody trees, shrubs and other such ornamentals can certainly benefit from the anvil style of pruners. A flat blade on the bottom holds the stem in place so the the cutting blade coming down from the top can get through the thicker and often dead branch being removed. Trying to prune pencil thick or fatter dead or woody plant tissue with bypass pruners will damage the pruner and the plant. Just like trying to cut through to many pieces of paper with scissors the blades will separate and become useless. The pages will shred and so will plant tissue  causing acute and chronic damage to the plant.

Gardeners love to dig. A round point shovel is the worst digging tool ever used in a garden. The end result is a bowl shaped hole that is narrow on the bottom and wide on the top. Plants come in containers with straight sides and need holes the same shape. Gardeners who like to dig to plant also like to dig things up as well. A round point shovel used to transplant spreading perennials or herbs cuts off a majority of the important feeder roots. No feeder roots on transplanted material stunts and can kill the plant. The proper digging tool for gardeners is spade, basically a shovel with straight sides. Much more root structure is dug up with a spade making the transplant success rate much higher. Spades also dig holes that look like the pots plants come in, straight sides.

Any gardener would love to garden all year. These days we can at least pretend we are in a greenhouse with the slew of new grow lights on the market. Gone, or at least on the way out are older style tube lights. They are being replaced by smaller tube lights called T5s. They put out twice as much light and use 40% less energy. Being smaller they easier to ship and put less strain on landfills when the burn out, in 125,00 hours or so. The fixtures are much more attractive and come in blue spectrum for seedling or foliage growth and red spectrum for flowering/fruiting plants. Next on the horizon are LED grow lights. They use even less energy than T5s and are even more compact. A really cool unit I have seen lets you change the blend of red and blue lights according the stage of growth your plant is in.

And of course for really high tech indoor gardeners hydroponics continues to head towards mainstream acceptance. With the right set up it is possible to grow tomatoes and herbs year round on a window sill or a full fledged grow room. HID, high intensity discharge lighting systems, up to 1,000 watts can light up a 10 x 10 room with sunlight quality light for all one's growing needs. The mixture of nutrients and measuring devices, meters and pumps and stuff will make any smart phone groupie want to grow something not just know something.

Last but not least remembers gardeners are a hearty but sensitive bunch. We will get over the winter blues quicker than golfers and baseball fans who cannot wait for the grapefruit leagues to start.

Water Worries in Pottery Land

Pretty pots can enhance the look of a plant in the indoor or outdoor environment. It is well understood that the black plastic or green containers plants are purchased in are utilitarian and not really attractive at all. The first decorative, rather functional, pots are basic terra cotta. The value to the plant placed in a clay pot is that the earthen material from which the pot is made breathes. This breathing allows for a somewhat limited exchange of oxygen and transpires excess water to the atmosphere around the plant. This benefits the grower and the plant since 80% of all plants die due to over watering.

 

Even with breathable clay that lightens when dry we still over water our herbaceous friends. Over watering leads to water draining out the bottom of the pot onto the surface the pot is sitting on. This could be a family heirloom table, an Antique Road Show first prize Louis The XIV original or even the hardwood floor in the living room. Water dripping or flowing onto such surfaces leaves water stains that often cannot be fixed easily. Water can ruin the value of such tables, desks and floors making them unworthy of appraisal on  prime time PBS.

To combat water running onto the floor decorative clay was glazed then painted. The result was a planter even more suitable to the environment in which it was placed. The result for the plant in such containers, often with no drainage holes, was death from.....you guessed it, over watering. Except in this case, drowning.

 

Logic has told indoor gardeners to combat the lack of drainage holes in such pots place a layer of stone at the bottom of the planter. This is supposed to create a pace for the water to collect and save the the roots by leaving them out of harms way. This is one of the oldest Old Wives' Tales in my Directory of Old Wives' Garden Tales. If this OWT were an old coin or piece of paper currency it would be worthy of incredible value just due to the low serial number alone. Drainage stone in pot bottoms to alleviate water damage to roots is cataloged as OWT #00001.1 . No subsection letter or number as my other OWTs warrant.

 

Drainage stone placed at the bottom of plant containers DOES NOT STAVE OFF DROWNING. In fact it could make it more likely to happen. This fact was discovered and written on way back in the 1930's in college level soil science texts. Here is why drainage stones in plants, no matter how well intentioned, is not doing anything except hurting your back with the extra gravitational pull of heavy rocks.

 

Water moves down in soil by gravitational pull for the most part. It is more complicated by simplicity in the garden rules in my yard. So if water is pulled down through soil by gravity what then makes soil go up, both into plant systems and evaporation? 

 

Capillary action. The same way that our circulatory system works. Except in the plant world no pump, aka heart, is forcing the issue. Water is very cohesive meaning it stays together and generally where it is put. That is why sucking through a straw idseasier with liquid then a slurry of solids like mud. While soil does not really have vessels to create a physical capillary network what is does have is air space between every particle of soil. Water flows through the air space not through the soil particle. So in essence there exists in soil a vast network of capillaries in the form of air.

 

The continuity of these air pockets determines how far and how fast water moves any direction up or down in the soil strata. As long as the air pockets are of a similar size moisture flowing through this virtual capillary network is even and predictable. But....break that network open by changing the size of air space abruptly and the flow of moisture is interrupted drastically. This radical change in air space, drainage stones under a layer of fine soil, breaks the cohesion factor of water almost stopping the push me pull you flow action. Basically the moisture becomes confused, scared and stops moving.

 

Studies have shown, with dramatic photographic evidence (NSFW for faint office environs) that the soil in contact with drainage stones and immediate above it is saturated, has low oxygen content and is often anaerobic in content causing roots to rot.  Think of it this way. Spill some water on the floor. Attempt to soak it up with "The Quicker Picker Upper" except that the Quicker Picker Upper" is fused on the upper  half with a towel of poorer quality, like larger weave brown industrial paper towels,  and you will see the water will not continue its'  upward capillary action

into the cheaper "Slower Picker Nothing Upper."

 

Solution to the no drainage but the pot is pretty anyway? Careful watering using a moisture probe all the way to the bottom of the pot to ensure no swamp is being created. In addition frequently lifting the plant out of that Ming Dynasty Vase to check the health of the roots. If the roots are whitish to whitish yellow and you don't drop the antique you are fine. If the roots are brown, smelly and putrid looking choose the Ming or the Marigold but you can't have both. 

Grow Lights Keeping the Grass Green for Green Bay Packers

I have always wondered how turf professionals repair sod at stadiums after football games. It could be a very expensive process to replace sod every week. In fact sod would root in one week before the next battle. Consider as well team practices during game week preclude the thought of replacing sod anytime during the playing season.

 

Well now high tech comes to cold tech. Lambugh filed often called the tundra is famous for games played in the snow let alone the cold.

 

Stadium Grow Lights to the rescue! This European firm has used outdoor grow lights at more then 60 soccer fields to date. They are now experimenting with these lights at Lambeau Field.

 

Here is more on the story from WBAY

Garden Trends for 2011

I would like to beat the other forecasters to the punch with predictions for 2011. I realize it is only the middle of October but for gardening the year is just about over. To affirm that fact in less than three weeks radio stations start playing Christmas music! I do not like the sound of that either but fact here is an interesting  fact. I am in the radio industry as well as gardening. I am co-host of the number one morning radio show in Ulster County. A little tid bit I found about radio ratings goes completely against what listeners say about hearing holiday music the first week of November. The radio station that starts playing Christmas music first by far wins the ratings for the fourth quarter. So while we say we do not like hearing holiday tunes so early we end up listening any way.

 

Organic is now passe'. Not going away but evolving into something more meaningful. In addition to more meaningful the evolution of organic into the next phase is also more durable, longer lasting and better for natural resources as well. We are beginning to hear more often the term sustainability. Sustainability is the new relevant term or re branding of organic. It is now not good enough to be organic in the market place. You now must be sustainable. There is quite a difference between the two. In many cases sustainable is not organic but leaves a smaller total footprint from raw ingredient to finished product. For example it is more sustainable for Great Britain to import sheep and sheep products from New Zealand than to raise sheep and produce products from them in England. First thought would cause one to think this can't be true because England and New Zealand are so far away. Well china is far away from most western markets yet look how much we import from them. When the climate is factored in New Zealand is just a far more productive place to raise sheep than England. I am not sure of the exact details but the "total footprint" is smaller even though a toe or two, air freight or shipping from NZ to England, may be larger.

 

However all is not what it seems with sustainable either. There has yet to be shake out of fact from marketing. A very strong under current amongst the green set is taking aim at certain garden practices relating to "sustainability." For instance lawns are not considered sustainable even though the functions they serve far surpass just a green carpet or status symbol in the neighborhood.  In fact the "Great Campus Lawns" on universities are under attack as well. These vast open areas are gathering places for conversation, places of study, places to pass the time between classes, read a book or enjoy the sunny spring and fall days. Yes they must be mowed, sometimes watered, sometimes fertilized. And yes these practices are questionable under sustainability. But what about the social benefits and sense of community and gathering they provide. The pluses could indeed out weight the minuses.

 

Growing annuals, and  therefore vegetables, is not considered by some to be sustainable. This claim comes from the amount of energy it takes to grow, ship, feed and water annuals every year. At first again it sounds plausible. But a look beneath the surface reveals the following. While it does take energy to grow, water and transport annuals the entire package and product is 100% recyclable. The soil, plant, remaining fertilizer can easily be composted and very seldom end up in the waste stream. The pot even if it is plastic is recyclable or at least re useable. Plastic flower pots are may times more sustainable then pots made from fiber, rice or other biodegradable products simply because they last longer. Biodegradable pots usually last two seasons. While they breakdown outdoors they must be manufactured more often than a pot lasting 10 years. This means 5 times more energy to ship and deliver them alone. Then one needs to add the energy to make them as well. Sustainability is not going away. Sustainability is to me the biggest trend in gardening for 2011 and the next several years from annuals, lawn care, vegetable and herb gardening. But since it is likely to become a run away train when it hits main stream a little forethought is in line before coupling up to this train.

 

In terms of real gardening trends for the future vertical gardening is hot. Container gardening, hydroponics, vertical gardening, and indoor gardening are on a collision course. It will be exciting to see what the category morphs into. I foresee a day when Grandma purchases a garden appliance/machine that can be wheeled indoors and out as the seasons change. This appliance will have a large area for storing tools, fertilizers and, growing medium underneath. A large reservoir resembling an aquarium, perhaps even containing fish, will sit below  shallow trays where plants will grow. Water will circulate from the reservoir, via a timed pump, several times a day depending on the growing medium, to the plants and back to the reservoir. Now if fish are in the reservoir they will feed off plant roots. The plants will feed off the fish waste.  There is no need to buy fish food or fertilizer in this set up. In fact on larger scale the fish could be harvested for food along with the spinach or herbs growing up top.

 

Above the plant tray an LED light system, capable of switching from red to blue color spectrum depending on growth phase, Will be automatically lowered up or down depending on plant height. This light will also be on a timer like the pump. All these things are already on the market place. What has to be done is for some product engineer to put them altogether in a neat well marketed package that the consumer will accept. Grandma will buy this "product" and not even know she is into hydroponics!

 

Still on the growth track: herbs, vegetable gardening, container gardening, composting, indoor gardening and hydroponics, healthier soil, canning

 

Slowing down: lawns (smaller but still important), Topsy Turvy, xeriscaping, drip irrigation, tick and mosquito control,

 

Never took off but needs to: soil fertility tests, mulching, moisture meters, ph tests, proper watering practices

 

Never really understood why in the first place: gazing balls, bio-dynamic gardening, organic grass seed, square foot gardening, hedge shears