Are You On Facebook??? Come see the Giving Tree Gardens Facebook Page! While you're visiting be sure to check out our new Facebook page for Healthy Yards, Healthy Lives. If you're not already on Facebook, sign up here!
Seeds of Change!
Economic news must be a little hard for the average C.E.O. to swallow these days, that is unless the C.E.O. in question is lucky enough to be running a seed company. As National Public Radio reported in February, Burpee Seeds, one of the nations largest distributer of vegetable seeds, claim that they expect seed sales to increase 20 to 30 percent this year alone, while organic seed sales will be up as much as 46%. Cucumbers, snap peas, and tomato seeds are flying off store shelves. Surely high food prices are at the base of this upsurge in demand. If you haven’t hit the garden stores yet, then get off the computer and run to your favorite local nursery before the selection is “eaten” up. Now is the time for Minnesota gardeners to get out and purchase their veggie seeds. Once you’ve got your seeds picked out, get yourself some clay and compost to create “Seed Balls”, which are the most effective and easy way to directly sow your seeds into the garden bed. Simply make a golf ball to baseball sized clump of clay and compost mixed together with a vegetable seed in the middle. Drop this ready to grow concoction into your prepared, composted garden bed and Voila! Within a few months, you’ve got vegetables!
Buying seeds in the spring can be a lot like shopping for food on an empty stomach. For any green starved winter weary Minnesota gardener the tendency to over shop for seeds in the spring is an easy trap. Don’t worry though if you get home and find you’ve purchased enough seeds to fill the whole block, seeds save very well in the packs that they came in, or any other paper envelope. Just keep them in a dry dark cupboard and check your supply before you head to the garden store next spring.
Victory Through Freedom!
When Michelle Obama flexes her strong arms, the world pays attention. Recently the First Lady has used some of her political strength to help turn over a new leaf in American life. Last week, Michelle Obama teamed up with a crew of D.C. area school kids to plant a victory garden in the White House lawn. Some of the seeds planted at the White House descended from plants cultivated by Thomas Jefferson, who saw himself as a farmer first and viewed an agrarian society as the creator and protector of democracy. Freedom, democracy, and big juicy tomatoes are just a few of the rewards of the gardener’s life, and this gardener’s hat is off to Mrs. Obama for leading by example.
It’s Heating Up In Here!
The U.S.D.A. is about to tell us all what we already know. It’s warming up around here. While the findings haven’t been officially released yet, experts who helped to revise the Plant Hardiness Zone Map say that we can expect to see a sharp extension of plants northern ranges in this year’s map. Gardeners everywhere use the Plant Hardiness Map to judge their plant selections. When you turn over a garden store tag for your favorite tree, shrub, or perennial you should find a listing for zone hardiness. Here in the Twin Cities area we’ve been officially listed in zone 4 since the zone map was first created, though any experienced city gardener can attest to the heat island effect that allows Minnesota urbanites to grow items such as zone 5 hardy Japanese Maples in our back yards. While some local gardeners find short-term gains in plant selections, others may rightly be worried about long term troubles as local eco-systems are thrown out of balance by rising temperatures. According to a study published by the Minnesota Sustainable Communities Network, 22 years ago as many as 4,000 moose roamed the woods and grasslands in the northwestern part of the state. By 2003, the number had dropped to only 237. Scientists believe the culprit is higher temperatures sparked by global warming, making the moose more vulnerable to parasites. The study goes on to say that average winter temperatures in northwestern Minnesota have climbed around 12 degrees during the past 40 years as average summer temperatures have increased by four degrees. Treat Garbage Like Dirt!
Here’s a quote for you from BioCycle magazine, August 2008:
"The only effective method to prevent methane emissions from landfills is to stop biodegradable materials from entering landfills. The good news is that landfill alternatives such as composting are readily available and cost-effective. Compost has the added benefit of adding organic matter to soil, sequestering carbon, improving plant growth and reducing water use - all important to stabilizing the climate. Composting is thus vital to restoring the climate and our soils and should be front and center in a national strategy to protect the climate in the short term."
Now I’m not a scientist, so I’ll just have to trust the compost crazed folks at BioCycle when they say that composting will cut down on greenhouse gasses entering the atmosphere. As a gardener though, I can surely attest to the notion that garbage is valuable. I’d never seen results in my gardens from chemical fertilizers like I have from composting. Compost not only provides nutrients as any fertilizer should, but it also provides microbial life that lives symbiotically with garden plants, and an excellent soil texture for roots to easily and rapidly grow through. If you start composting your own food and yard waste at home you’ll be doing yourself and the rest of the world a big favor. Not all of us have space for a compost pile at home, and so the innovative folks at Linden Hills Power and Light have been working out a way to help make composting more accessible for everybody with their new “Green Tub Club” program. Linden Hills residents can now sign up to have a green compost tub dropped off at their curbside. Simply place your food and non-recyclable paper products into the green tub and put the tub out on your regular garbage day. The city of Minneapolis will pick up the garbage and take it to a commercial composting facility. This is an excellent example for the rest of the city, and with a little encouragement of your city council person, your neighborhood could be next. Compost, and home vegetable gardens are two of the most effective methods that any home gardener can employ in the fight against global warming. Without a planet to live on, victory in the garden would be pointless. Gardeners, let’s plant the seeds of freedom and change together, so we can all enjoy the fruits of our labor for generations to come! We simply must do everything we can in our power to slow down global warming before it is too late. The science is clear. The global warming debate is over.
Our generation has inherited an incredibly beautiful world from our parents and they from their parents. It is in our hands whether our children and their children inherit the same world.
The global warming scenario is pretty grim. I'm not sure I like the idea of polar bears under a palm tree.
| ||||
The Seed Vol. 25 April. 20, 2009 A Giving Tree Gardens Newsletter
Photos by Russ Henry ©2009 ,Text by Russ Henry ©2009 by Giving Tree Gardens, all rights reserved.
Let Freedom Grow!
Sharpen your shovels, and turn your compost pile, Spring Has Arrived! Nation wide, gardeners are busy preparing for the upcoming growing season, and from the look of things, this year will be a time of organic garden expansion throughout the land.
Even in this troubled market, seed sales are a boom industry raking in 20-30% gains over last year’s sales. Gardening is the new favored pastime of many a cash strapped American family. Presenting an example to the world, First Lady Michelle Obama’s even getting in on the action, as she put her strong arms to work digging a Victory Garden into the White House lawn!
This profuse blooming of garden interest is just what the world needs right now. The U.S.D.A. is about to release a new Plant Hardiness Map that details what anyone with a lick of sense has by now accepted as fact, the “inconvenient truth” that the earth’s climate is rapidly warming. Vegetable gardens and local composting efforts are two of the best ways for folks to work at home toward a healthier, happier planet.
While the Obama’s of the world may be planting the seeds of victory in their gardens, I reap the bounty of freedom in my back yard. Freedom from chemically grown, dangerous, over priced food, the freedom to enjoy the beauty and bounty of life on earth, and the freedom to live with respect for the planet that raised me are all a part of my garden harvest. It’s this humble gardener’s opinion that victory without freedom is meaningless! This spring and summer as I install gardens throughout the Twin Cities, I’ll be sowing the seeds of freedom. I invite everyone reading this newsletter to do the same. Together we can reclaim our planet and our lives from the carelessness of our elders, to give our children and grandchildren hope for a healthy life.
In this month’s issue of The Seed we’ll take a look at some of these garden headlines that define and inspire this new movement to reclaim the good life. With a little luck, and a whole lot of compost, this spring gardeners everywhere will help freedom grow!
LOCAL LINKS
Click here for the coolest local resources
Hey Facebook Fans!!! Let's Be Friends!
Find the shade of green that's right for you!
May 2-3, 2009
Join Russ Henry of Giving Tree Gardens this May 2nd and 3rd at the Living Green Expo!!
Free Expo Workshop
with Giving Tree Gardens owner, RUSS HENRY
Sunday, May 3, 2009 from
11 till noon,Join Russ for his class, Healthy Yards, Healthy Lives: 7 Steps to Growing Personal and Global Health In Your Own Back Yard!
Plant Profile: Sunflower (Helianthus annuus)
Get ready for Spring with a
home consultation from
Giving Tree Gardens.
We'll help you turn your lawn into an
oasis of health and beauty!
Freely planted by passing birds, sunflowers are a garden gift that keeps on giving. Every part of this plant can be used for a huge variety of human and avian uses. I love how the sunflowers in the parking lot pictured above attract wild life to an otherwise barren environment. Clever folks around the world have put these quick growing annuals to use in the most amazing ways, including cooking oil, bio-diesel, latex rubber, and livestock feed. Sunflowers may also be used to extract toxic ingredients from soil, such as lead, arsenic and uranium. They were planted in order to remove uranium, cesium-137, and strontium-90 from soil after the Chernobyl accident. To me one of the most elegant features of sunflowers is how they praise the sun they are named for. Heliotropism or the process through which the flowers face the East in the morning, then turn West to follow the sun throughout the day, is completed when the flowers turn back East through the night. Ending homelessness, one person at a time
Project Homeless Connect is a one-stop shop model for delivering services to people experiencing homelessness.. These services include: housing providers, employment specialists, medical care, mental health care, benefits specialists, eye care, haircuts, transportation assistance, food and clothing. YOU can help!
1,000 citizen volunteers are needed at the next event on May 11th, 2009. The Convention Center space will be set up with many tables, rooms, and areas for the various services available and volunteers will assist the guests in connecting with the services they need or request.
These hops vines I started from rhizomes last spring. In just one season of growing in well composted soil I had a bountiful hops harvest for use in my home made ales. Every time I pour a pint I thank my green thumbs for helping me free myself of mass produced beer and overpriced brewing hops! Pick up your own favorite hops rhizomes locally or online at
The government has finally started to acknowledge what we've all known was a problem for a long time, that climate change is real and it's a whole lot of trouble. Fragile ecosystems such as this one in Rocky Mountain National Park are among the first to be adversely affected by rising temperatures. Here's the U.S.D.A. Plant Hardiness Zone Map as we now know it. Check with the U.S.D.A. website for updates this year as a newly updated map will be released this summer.
Spring is the time for renewal, and your garden deserves a fresh start! Spread a thick layer of compost around your perennials, trees, and shrubs every year. Nothing makes annuals and food plants explode with growth like a 4 inch layer of compost turned into the ground with a shovel!Do yourself a favor and donate your roto tiller to a handy mechanic. Roto-tilling is very damaging to the soil structure as well as to large soil fungi and worms. Use your favorite garden fork or shovel to turn your garden over one scoop at a time. Take it slow and make sure you take time to stretch your muscles before that first big dig of the season!Seed sales are heating up! Get your garden seeds while they're still any left. Mother Earth Gardens in Minneapolis is my favorite place to pick out organically grown veggie seeds.
Itasca State Park, one of the last reserves of old growth pine in Minnesota is a growing symbol of freedom that we would not know if it weren't for the work and activism of generations of green thumbs before us.
First Lady Michelle Obama and White House Chef Sam Kass work with students from the Bancroft School planting the new White House Vegetable Garden. Thanks Mrs. Obama for your living green example!
Photo: Official White House
Much more then a symbol of our freedom, the health of the communities of large roaming animals is a direct indicator of the health of the land. The american buffalo in Yellowstone National Park, and the Roosevelt Elk in northern California claim a rightful ownership of their homeland regardless of passing traffic or invasive roads. The time has come for us to act locally to reduce our impact on these and other animal nations around the world.
Compost today for a healthy tomorrow!
ATTENTION GARDENERS:
THE SEED JUST GOT INTERACTIVE !!!
Check Out the new
Let us know what you think!
