Ornamental Grass For Termite Control

Nothing pleases a gardener more than combining Beauty with Function. Now, research has proven what our ancestors have known for centuries about the insecticidal attributes of an ornamental grass.

Vetiver Grass has been used for centuries inside the home to repel clothes moths, cockroaches and ants as well as outdoors for tick, weevil, nematode and mole cricket prevention.

Dr. Gregg Henderson of Louisiana Agriculture Center has recently released studies which prove the grass is also a deterrent against the formidable nemesis of many southern states: the Formosan subterranean termite.

Because these termites are destructible foes in many states, those landscapes may begin to include more of these ornamental grasses, not just for their form and beauty, but for their functional abilities as well.

The Earth's Liver

If you consider the Earth as a living thing, then having "organs" with which to survive and cleanse its body of toxins isn't all that far fetched a reality. This article from The San Francisco Chronicle makes an interesting analogy between a human and an earthly cleansing organ.

The growing repository of Earth's human, horticultural and industrial waste lies in the digestive gut of the burgeoning compost industry. Recycling and processing of various and sundry wastes into viable properties. Much the same as the liver does for humans.

While this increased endeavor toward sustainability is laudable, the "liver" or composting facilities are also filtering all manner of toxins, pharmaceuticals and possible carcinogenic herbicides and pesticides. Is the Earth heading for cirrhosis or can we call an "intervention" on what we're putting into Earth's body and act preventatively? Is there any way to assist the Earth in its cleansing our castoffs?

Caught With Their Pesticides Down!

The EPA in a rare instance of actually doing its job by enforcing hazardous violations, has fined Perfect Expressions, a garden store in Ely, Nevada, $14,000 for selling banned insecticides. The products, Green Light's Dursban Granules and Ortho's Dursban and Dursban Lawn Insect Spray were ordered off the market and out of production by the EPA several years ago due to the reported connection between harmful exposure of Dursban's active ingredient, chlorpyrifos, to children.

Apparently, "Perfect Expressions" weren't so "perfect" after all.

Organic Battle Lines Being Drawn

"NIMBY" may very well be the new slogan for organic lawn care advocates. Those homeowners who chemically treat their lawns may hear "Not In My Back Yard" mantras echoing over neighbors' fences... of those who've chosen a more earth-friendly, environmentally safer organic alternative to lawn care. This story in the Wall Street Journal includes a video clip of one woman who went over to the Dark Side (her neighbor's compost pile) and found there's life after pesticides and herbicides.

Lots of life.

"Food" For Thought

The latest spate of pet food recalls from Menu Foods (see above) is major, of course. But by comparison to the overall horror caused by pet food companies on a routine, daily basis...it pales in comparison.

Purina, Eukanuba and Iams are all under the Proctor & Gamble umbrella which is in major part supplied and funded by Menu Foods Income Fund. (The subject of the recent recall.) Nestle makes Friskies, Whiskas and some others and also receives supplies from Menu. Believe me that the least of the problems w/any of these foods is this latest recall.

Some people reading this may not want to view any of the following video clips from these links, but even if you see a few seconds of either of them, I can assure you that you may never plunk down another red cent for any of the aforementioned foods.
Animals Suffer For Menu Foods
Iams Cruelty

Pet food companies that purport to be in business for the "sake and health" of companion animals are no different from many other businesses: they are in it for the money and don't give a rat's ass --- or a dog or cat's life --- how they make their almighty freaking buck.

I've tossed my Purina One and am currently using the remainder of a bag of Flint River I've had and will be purchasing more from my vet.

Sorry if what's contained in those links is disturbing to some. Sometimes visions such as these are necessary to open people's eyes to the sad, horrible truth.

Bear in mind that the issues with these pet food companies are not about the ingredients in the foods. Many - hopefully most pet people know by now the disgusting and potentially unhealthy ingredients that go into some pet foods and how imperative is it to read labels and know what each ingredient really means. This story has to do with how the companies that proffer such concern for animals by their touted "need to feed and care for our animals with good foods"...it has to deal with how these companies treat the animals which they keep at their testing facilities where they feed them their foods. And it's not just a matter of this dog or this cat in that cage or in those restraints doesn't "like" a new ingredient. It's how they keep them, how they force feed them and they experiment on them to see how their food is digested or not.

An informed public is an empowered public. Be informed. Don't turn a blind eye. Otherwise, you'll never see "It" coming.

Recall Of Major Store-Brand Canned Dog & Cat Food

Menu Foods, a major manufacturer of wet dog and cat foods who distributes under varied name brands and for a variety of pet food outlets and supermarkets is under serious scrutiny by the FDA and others for releasing tainted foods that are being linked to the deaths of (so far) 10 dogs and serious kidney and liver failures of other dogs and cats.
Read The Article Here & Brand Names as well as the The FDA's Release.

Go to Menu Foods' website for a complete listing of those canned foods affected. Thankfully, many stores weren't holding their breath waiting for complete notification from Menu and have already removed all Menu products from their shelves.

Lead-Loaded Childrens' Vinyl Lunchboxes

It's not what's in your child's lunch that's could be a health hazard this time. It's what your child's lunch is in.

California-based Center for Environmental Health (CEH) recently released to The Associated Press over 1,500 documented reports, interoffice memos and emails and other data from the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) which reveals the skewed criteria and fudged numbers charting the lead levels in children's vinyl lunchboxes.

After filing over a year ago through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the CEH disclosed the manipulated results of these studies which showed that more than 20% of the lunchboxes tested had over 600PPM of lead. California's federal safe lead level. Other levels detected were as high as 9,600PPM, more than 16 times the federal standard.

The AP story quotes a CPSC spokeswoman:
"When it comes to a lunchbox, it's carried. The food that you put in the lunch box may have an outer wrapping, a baggie, so there isn't direct exposure. The direct exposure would be if kids were putting their lunchboxes in their mouth, which isn't a common way for children to interact with their lunchbox." Indicating the test swipes of the boxes were only performed on the outside of the boxes. Dismissing any parent's or teacher's observations of children rummaging around with their little hands inside lunchboxes for that juicy red apple, pear or any other raw, uncovered food item that junior promptly puts in his mouth. Apple or pear... hands and all.

A typical test is done with a "swipe". Initial swipes revealed the highest lead levels. But numerous swipes - in the same spot - lessened the lead numbers. Because the CPSC did not do a cumulative account and rather an average, their average lower lead level conclusions (which allowed for those numerous same-spot swipes) recorded lead levels as within standards.

The fuzzy logic of the director of chemistry for CPSC: "The more you wipe, the less lead you actually find. With fewer wipes we got a higher detection of lead presence. We thought more wipes was closer to reflecting how you would interact with your lunchbox. It was more realistic."

Yet another example of bureaucratic agencies working under the guise of protecting the public and really protecting the vinyl industry and manufacturers of these products. All of which were outsourced to Chinese manufacturers for American distribution. The CEH has a complete data sheet detailing the most circumspect lunchboxes as well as reprints of interoffice memoranda.

"Organics": WalMart Style

WalMart’s deleterious effect on the American economy is way more than luring customers away from Mom & Pop’s General Store on Main Street. It’s also cruelly ironic to use “classism” in support of WalMart . (As in: "The anti-WalMart proponents are elitist; knocking the lower-classes who can't afford to buy anywhere else." That paranoid logic is an insult and slap in the face to the now nearly defunct Made In The U.S.A-label and the hundreds of thousands of near-pension-eligible-ex employees who are out of work from companies for whom they’ve loyally toiled behind desks or worked on oft times non-unionized production lines (see: textiles) for 30 years. Companies who've had to close their doors permanently or outsource the majority of jobs overseas because of enormous, unparalleled pressure from the world's largest retailer to tow the WalMart line or suffer the consequences. Jobless, no prospects, with no health care, perhaps no pension and too young for social security, many of these disillusioned folk can now ironically only afford to shop at the very store which put them out of a job in the first place. Perhaps that’s part of WalMart’s plan, too?

I think this article gives a pretty complete description of WalMart’s m.o. and can serve as a background primer for "Organics: Walmart Style" based on their past history.

For the economic-terminology-challenged (myself included), it's helpful to know terms such as “Monopoly” (which is the only one I knew wasn’t just a board game), “Oligopoly” and “Monopsony".

-Monopoly: A market where a seller controls and dictates price and availability.
-Oligopoly: A market of few sellers for a product or service. i.e. multinational corporations that dominate specific products or services.
The main difference between monopolies and oligopolies is monopolies attract a bit too much government attention and regulation for the multinational’s taste.
Then there’s...
-Monopsony: A market similar to a monopoly except that a single, large buyer (i.e. Walmart, which controls the largest proportion of the world retail market) drives prices down by driving manufacturers to slavishly slash their operating costs to the severe detriment of a manufacturer’s profits leading them to either declare bankruptcy or outsource the bulk of their manufacturing to Third World Countries. WalMart has honed monopsony to a fine art.

”Organics” is the hottest potential market. It’s only natural that the world’s largest retailer would salivate at the chance to jump on the bandwagon. But, Walmart doesn’t just want to ride the wagon, chances are it’ll grab the reins, hurling organics down a muddy, dead-end road by undermining quality and purity for profit. Novel? No. But for organic advocates (we are aren’t we?) and organic growers, the potential for dilution of that "organic label" both for U.S. and foreign producers is infinite.

From Eco-Labels.org:
"Originally, the USDA National Organic Program required that all substances used in organic production meet National Organic Program standards. The USDA has since narrowed the definition of substance to ingredient used in organic production. This means that a substance - used in processing that may leave residues but that is not actually an ingredient in the final product - does not have to have USDA approval. " In other words, as long as it’s not used as an intentional ingredient, the residue (pesticide, herbicide, etc.) gets a pass. As long as the alleged chicken has access to a 4x4 outdoor enclosure for 10 minutes a day, it’s considered “free range”. Is it any wonder, then, why so many small & large family organic, sustainable farms have regretfully abandoned the USDA’s organic certification because of the whoring of true organic criteria and More diluted standards.

In light of all of all the aforementioned, here's why WalMart's organi-bubble should be burst.

Once WalMart commences outsourcing (and it will), it’s noteworthy that even the USDA will admit that because of precious few organic certifiers in the field and vast distances between supplier, certifier and retailer, an enormous potential for oversight exists. Especially if the retailer at the reins has golden saddlebags loaded with lobbying loot and foreign certifiers are easily influenced to look the other way.

Even if doubts about WalMart’s foray into organics doesn’t mean diddly to the general population, then the next time you’re checking out at WalMart, take a gander at the person standing next to you in line and wonder if the pair of cheap pajamas, very possibly the only ones you could afford, wasn’t made from the crap Pakistani material that replaced the material that guy or gal or their relative once produced on a loom, 10hour- days , six days a week in a North Carolina, non-unionized mill that now stands quiet, gathering dust. Tough decision, to buy or not to buy? But, sometimes there’s no option. If that’s all you can afford, what are you going to do? Then try to imagine the depression, anger and humiliation that other person must feel if they’ve got the same pair of pajamas in their cart, too. Sad. Very sad.

Sam Walton must be spinning in his grave. He who proudly lauded “Buy American!” on banners upon the grand opening back in Bentonville, Arkansas away back when.

Cultivating Patience

"Patience" is a virtue. It is also a mainstay for a gardener when it comes to seed starting indoors.

There we sit, seed starting mixture at the ready, seeding containers, cells, plug trays, yogurt cups...whatever...all cleaned and prepped. Tiny tools, spray bottle, fish emulsion ready to dilute when little cotyledons have given way to the first set of true seedling leaves. Heating mats or warmed rooms are arranged and set up. Expensive gro lights or considerably less costly shop lights (one warm and one cool to cover the full spectrum of light) are plugged in. Seeds chosen and journals to record (you do have a journal, don't you?) are at hand. All that's needed now is: Patience. Patience to sow that first little seed.

I've been down that eager road years before and learned the hard way that sowing seed indoors too early can lead to disaster or just a big pain in the neck trying to manage 2-3 foot-tall tomato plants or spindly foot-tall pepper plants or leggy, tangled summer heat-loving herbs like oregano and basil.

Timing is everything. In life and plant life as well. In the life of a soon-to-be-germinated seed, it's crucial to know when it should be sown. As a rule, I don't plan on planting out anything that may be harmed by late frosts, until a week after my last frost-free date. Since that date seems to be getting more and more ambiguous these days thanks to rising and erratic temperatures and the globe's warming climate overall, those FROST FREE DATES must be individually tweaked. Meaning a gardener's eye must be even keener to their previous year's planting-out dates. Most plants placed in its final garden home - even on the late side - will catch up to those planted too early and will stand a better chance of surviving aberrant frost damage, insect and drought conditions as the season progresses. A smaller, stockier plant will overcome even a touchy hardening-off process and better withstand transplant shock. So, I'd rather err on the side of caution and start my seeds later than earlier.

My usual rule of thumb is to consider when I want to ultimately plant out a particular seedling, then count back a week for hardening off and four to six weeks (sometimes eight if the seed needs a longer germinating time) before actually sowing the seed. In a season when my energies and enthusiasm is high, I'll start more seeds and use my 172-plug trays. They take up less space on my heat mats and in their little domed homes. The downside is they'll all need transplanting up to larger cell packs eventually. When I'm thinking a little more rationally and give in to the logic that I can't handle as many seedlings as I used to, I'll start my seeds directly in six or nine-cell packs, under the same conditions as I do for the plug trays. The benefit here is that once these seedlings germinate and begin growing on, they can skip the transplanting process and go directly to hardening off and planting out. The downside is less seeds started. There's a bargain in everything isn't there?

My best advice for first time seed starters when sowing indoors is to count to ten...then count again before dropping that first seed into warm, waiting soil and in eager anticipation of that hint of green to push through the surface into the light. Patience is a virtue to be cultivated as much as you'll need to cultivate those little plants once they've made their debut to the outside world.

Pesticides & Porn

What do the two have in common you may ask aside from the obvious analogy?

Well, just as those....eh.."magazines", pesticides sold on Canada's Prince Edward Island are now relegated to behind-the-counter-status.

Now, anyone wanting to purchase a potentially toxic pesticide/herbicide must specifically request it and a duly-apppointed, informed store rep must give the consumer proper instructions as to its usage and (hopefully) its potential hazards.

No one's preventing the sale of these items. Just making sure that a consumer really knows what they're getting; whether its appropriate for a specific targeted pest; and how to use it. IMO, these products are dangerous enough, but left in the hands of the ill-informed who might skip over the "use as directed" part of the label, makes these products downright lethal. Kudos to P.E.I.!