Pittsburgh Garden Experiment

Hey, everyone!

Throughout the month of August, the Black and Gold City Goes Green wants to show how eating a local, organic, vegetarian diet saves heat-trapping emissions.

This month, we encourage Pittsburghers to have at least one meatless day per week (green action), shop locally (greener action), and buy organic (greenest action!). By reporting your greenhouse gas saving action this month at www.TheBlackandGoldCityGoesGreen.com, you can see how much you're saving and how the rest of the area is doing. Also, by reporting July, August, or September's actions, you're in the drawing for an awesome gift basket.

So keep eating those greens, and see how it's helping to make Pittsburgh even greener!

Lauryn Stalter- The Black and Gold City Goes Green

OK this is a personal rant about my thoughts on lawns and our organized destruction of the urban/suburban environment.  Please comment with your thoughts on lawns.

First I'll start with some reasons for and the place of lawns but then follow with discussion on why I think lawns are idiotic, and we should get rid of them in favor of biodiversity and productive landscapes.

Don't get me wrong.  Lawns have their place:  golf fairways, football, rugby and parks all are great places for lawns.  However outside of sports and recreational areas, lawns are a threat to our health and wealth, literally. Here are some reasons against lawns:  lawns waste money,  lawns waste time, lawn care pollutes.

We spend a ton of money on lawns.  Even in my tiny suburb of Pittsburgh, there isn't a sunny day that doesn't humm with the sound of my tax dollars as well as my neighbors' hard earned income burned in a lawnmower, leafblower, chainsaw, hedgetrimmer or some other high-powered weapon of lawn destruction.  Go out to the country and it's the same thing. Only out there people have tractors for lawnmowers and spend thousands of dollars on mowing acres of lawn.  We are facing $5 / gallon gasoline by the end of 2011, and run-away climate change. Is it only me that wonders why we must attack our surroundings with machines?  Are we really that stressed that we have to take it out violently on our front yards?

On one hand, all of this money spent is paying for a market of "landscapers"  who seem to spend every waking minute burning some form of fossil fuels.  These are jobs, and this is a rough economy I'm sure, but every one of these jobs and more could be put into orchards, coppice forests, pollinator gardens and bee boxes, rain barrel installations, and many more.  All of these jobs would produce a income producing product without burning fossil fuels.  Hmmm.

Speaking of that humming of lawn destruction.  Ever wonder how much time people spend in their lawns dumping poisons, attacking nature with gas engines, and otherwise disturbing the order of things?  If everyone quit mowing their lawns and took a break or a nap, maybe we could get along better...Just a suggestion.  How many days did you lose to lawn work last season?  Weren't they the best days of the year to be inhaling gas fumes and tearing apart living tissue?

All of the "lawn care" chemicals, fertilizers, and fungicides leave our soil in pretty rough shape.  With no biology left, and no roots to hold it, increasing runoff water starts to pollute the surrounding areas without natural cleaning.  The lack of retention causes flash floods, and in Pittsburgh the soil starts slipping downhill.  This erosion and water pollution along with air pollution of small engines, and sound corrupting our peace make it hard to appreciate the quiet and deliberate design of natural forest systems.

But at least you get to look at short, parched, sunburned grass leaves.  That's beauty, right?.   Then we spend money on drinking water to resusitate the poorly rooted plants.  We are literally pouring recently chemically polluted drinking water into the storm drains and watersheds to keep our lawns alive when they thoroughly want to die.   Suburbanites grow lawns in the desert too.  Why?

Alternatively: trees, perennial herbs, rocks, and swales would passively regulate the water and temperature with no external inputs.  In this sense, spreading lawns across America is actually helping contribute to our loss of climate control. 

"Lawn's looking good today neighbor. You have conquered your soil to the edge of death and starvation.  You have tossed the life of topsoil to the wind while managing to burn through excessive amounts of gas and drinking water.  Then you poured poison on it.  Well done.  Take that nature."            <3 Jeff

OK so what is this all for?  I've heard two suggestions:

One was that we hold this aesthetic from our days from the African Savanna where trees and low grass happen naturally.  Until an elephant knocks the tree down in favor of forage grass.  Grasslands only occur naturally where there is disturbance, due to animals, fire, or lawnmower abuse.  In our geographic location, the natural succession would be to forest, so cut the lawn we must to keep the aesthetic of a savanna with large foraging animals. 

The second suggestion was that a lawn is a status symbol from the days when you would have had a huge sheep flock to forage a large lawn.  Large lawns mean that you are wealthy.  I think this also has some merit because considering how wasteful lawns and suburbs are, it fits right in with the American plan for "conspicuous consumption" as a way of demonstrating wealth.

Bottom line:  lawns are the fashion right now.  The lawn economy is based in a fashion that was sold to us.  Like the economy that it built, lawn fashion is also phantom and volitile.  For any reasons, if it is a question of aesthetic, the predominant belief semas to be that a large short lawn is a good, beautiful thing. 

This is a question of fashion, but I believe we can change it.  We must help create a positive vision of a life without lawns:  a life with cleaner water & air, quieter streets, healthier ecosystems, and productive jobs.  By standing out and turning each of our lawns into a backyard oasis for wildlife, food production, herbs, forest farming or any other type of natural landscape, we will continue the trend towards the tipping point where people might get it.

If anyone wants any ideas on what to do besides lawns, send me a message.  Be safe out there.

End of Rant. Thanks :)

You are reading this article on a gardening website, so you probably already agree.  But In case you are still wondering, here are some reasons to grow organic food in your back yard. 

While pondering the current state of nutrition and food supply for about 4 years now,  I personally have realized the serious potential in eating our backyards.  I basically have dedicated my life to this notion, but why?  What are the implications of starting this trend?  The answer for me distills down to community, economy, and health.

It isn't hard to prove how lonely we are as a species,  especially considering the number of Facebook friends I have.  Anyways building community is the first step in localizing food supply.  Imagine knowing your neighbors well enough to share your food supply through backyard farming.  With soil management, suburban farms could grow enough food to feed urban neighborhoods.  With work and ride share CSAs  this could  bring a whole new appreciation, tradition and cooperative nature to something as fundamental as the stuff we eat.  Imagine growing our health, soils, and security, by growing close relationships in our community.

Ok let's keep going with the suburb/urb workshare CSA example.  How would the money work?  That's just it.  The money would do work!  A regional food economy would be created.  With proper farm managment and design, the system would improve soils every year.  With food forestry; timber, fruit, berries, herbs, and a ton of other species could be introduced into a purely local economy with all the regional businesses that would join with value-added products.  I'm not sure where the money goes when I give it to the grocery store now, but I don't see it improving my environment and job market like local organic food would.

For health's sake, here's a crash course in microbiology:  The amount that we don't know far exceeds what we do know.  What does this mean?  For me, it means that there are universal organisms with local adaptations.  Your body is dealing with bombardment of these unknown species daily by packing beneficials with you to fend off the invasive intruders.  I believe that soils, plants, forests and animals have a similar immune system and localized populations of beneficial microbes.  When we eat food from healthy local soil, we are boosting our local immunity.  This is one of many reasons why eating and growing local is good for your heath.

I must take a second to stress the root here.  In many ways our food system is killing us.  The farm system in America is our largest exporter (of grain).  This is a direct correlation with the value of the US dollar.  This industry is failing technologically and ethically.  The processes put small domestic farms out of business when oil was from Texas.  Now oil is half-way around the world in a hostilely garded position and agriculture is putting small farms out of business around the world.    The soil microbes in our domestic farmland are long gone with yards of topsoil eroded, and yet this system is dependent on only about 6 species of food.  So while it may or may not be the best thing for the global economy, this problem needs o be addressed.  It is a matter of national security and the health of the world that we save our forests and quit destroying our farmland with chemicals.  As for foriegn countries, I would suggest the same advice: compost mulch and compost tea. It echoes out there.  It starts here, in your backyard.

After hundreds of books, thousands of movies, and countless hours of careful consideration.  It is now time to reveal my findings.  

Agriculture is what's killing us. 

Support Local Food:  Eat Your Backyard. For Life!

Thank You.

I happened upon a website, www.thegreenhorns.net that reinforces so many of the ideas behind the 21st century gardening/farming movement.  There is a clip from a soon to be completed movie that shows the diversity and breadth of people taking the lead in growing food and communities.  It is especially exciting because the farmers in the clip take it in stride that what they are doing is obvious and there is not a question about why or even how - just go ahead.

On seemingly the other end of things I was in Lowes recently and saw Urban Farmer magazine.  Granted, it looks like someone took back issues of Mother Earth News and recompiled them, but it was in Lowes! I was surprised and dismayed and then surpised all over again.  Even if it was placed next various Martha Stewart clone magazines it still seems to indicate that there is something afoot, even in the suburbs.

The first CSA came to the US in the late 80's (?).  By the early 90's they numbered less than 500 across the whole country.  I do not know how many there are now (2000?), but almost everywhere you go it is not hard to find someone who has heard of one or is a member of one.  I think we as a country are finally seriously redefining what the word "progress" looks like.  The best part is that it is the best possible grass roots movement from the bottom up.  We are not turning back, just quietly (not) tilling the soil.

Our friend Rose Lord has a weekly email garden newsletter, Angels In My Garden, which tracks garden activities throughout the season for the beginner gardener.  Check out the link here:

http://www.makegardensnotwar.com/Angelsinmygarden.htm

 

 

 

Yinzer Grant Application -

Complementary Currency Grants for your community garden projects.

- check out our Urban Farm Picture - @ OnlyInPGH.com

Check out this website hosted by Ohio State University's Agroecosystem Management Program.

http://localfoodsystems.org - a site for networking, collaborating, and building new economies

Once you are approved for an account, join the Pittsburgh Coalition for Food Abundance, and the Ohio River Valley Permaculture discussion group!

 

 

Western PA Mushroom Club:  Indiana Chapter.

I'm thinking....Pittsburgh Chapter?

Jean Pain

Jean Pain (1930 – 1981) was a French innovator who developed a compost based bioenergy system that produced 100% of his energy needs. He heated water to 60 degrees celsius at a rate of 4 litres a minute which he used for washing and heating. He also distilled enough methane to run an electricity generator, cooking elements, and power his truck. This method of creating usable energy from composting materials has come to be known as Jean Pain Composting, or the Jean Pain Method.

 

Jean Pain On Wikipedia

 

Video - Jean Pain "The Power Of Compost"