Tag: gardening

Healthy Lawns, Healthy Pets, Healthy Kids, Healthy Families

September is Lymphoma Awareness Month: time to dispose of weedkillers containing glyphosate (such as Roundup), which are known to cause non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and about healthier alternatives.

We stopped using herbicides and pesticides on our lawn over twenty years ago, and it is still green and lush. If you take a close look at our lawn, you will see Dandelions, Violets, Cinquefoil, Chickweed (left), Sweet Clover and Veronica (right) and more. Some of these “weeds” are highly nutritious and medicinal, and they represent the biodiversity that makes nature so resilient.

A lawn that grows only one species of plant, such as Bluegrass, is called a monoculture. It lacks diversity, and it is a wasteland for pollinators. It lacks nourishment – no flowers, no pollen and no nectar essential for sustaining wild bees, honey bees, butterflies and other pollinators. Furthermore, maintaining the perfect monoculture lawn requires the application of chemicals, including herbicides to eliminate all other plant life and pesticides to eliminate insect pests. These chemicals are harmful to pollinators, as well as pets and children. They also pollute groundwater and run off into streams and rivers, where they cause harm to fish, birds and other wildlife. So why use them? 

If weeds truly bother you, try these safer alternatives solutions, presented by Drugwatch. I love my weeds, however, I will use mulch to keep them out of my garden beds.

Reduce yard labor, save money, and create a safe and healthy outdoor space for pets, kids, wildlife and you. Check out these Story Walking Radio Hour podcasts.

Pesticide Free Parks, Lawns and Gardens

Lawns into Meadows: Rebuilding Biodiversity

Wild Weed Wisdom: Gather and Give

Dispose of lawn chemicals properly. Rhode Islanders can take their hazardous waste to the Eco-Depot. Where can you take it where you live?

Beneficial Garlic

Friday, April 22, 2023 (Earth Day) – I am in the process of digging up two large beds of garlic, so that I can rebuild the beds and plant them with vegetables. But, what will I do with all this garlic?

I’ll relocate some to serve as companion plants for select fruits and vegetables. Garlic has a strong odor that deters garden pests. It can repel cabbage worms, Japanese beetles, moths and aphids away from cabbage and kale. It can even help deter rabbits and deer.

In addition, garlic bulbs release sulfur into the soil, which helps to reduce fungal infections in nearby plants and fruit trees. For example, garlic is known to reduce potato blight and apple scab.

Garlic is an essential perennial plant for both permaculture and medicinal gardening.

Among its many health benefits for people, garlic is anti-viral, anti-bacterial, anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer. Garlic also a natural blood thinner, however, people should avoid it before surgery, and people on blood thinner medication also need to be cautious.

Garlic provides the culinary benefits of distinct flavor and versatility, and it stores well.

I use a lot of garlic in my cooking. For example, I harvest Rosemary buds and Garlic scapes in July to infuse with olive oil. After pouring the olive oil into a double boiler, I add the flowers, rolling the rosemary between my palms to release the oils and crumbling the garlic scape flowers with my fingers.

Then I heat the oil and flower/bud mixture in the double boiler for ten minutes, turn off the heat, and let the mixture sit for an hour, before straining out the herbs and decanting the oil into a clean bottle.

Still, I have far more garlic than needed, and I am ready to share the abundance with interested neighbors.