Lord, I know "green" is the ultimate cache for marketing these days but I am truly amazed at the ways in which it is showing up on products. I don't know whether this is all pure misleading hype and manipulative marketing - or whether it is a hopeful sign that businesses are choosing to commit to reducing the environmental impact of their products and their packaging.
Two examples of product "greening" from this week's shopping, both brought home by Rob, the Happy Shopper. (I should note here that my husband doesn't critique labels as he shops. He is 95% impulse buyer - the odd 5% being those items on the list his spouse has given him. Everything else leaps into his cart as a momentary inspiration, triggered by a colorful photo on the package, a sudden memory or simply the joy of a new food discovery. Rob is also primarily a packaged-food eater. He likes entrees he can drop into a pan from the freezer and eat within 15 minutes.)
Contessa frozen foods Paella package now sports a Green Cuisine label on the bag. On the back of the bag, taking up most of the back, is statement that Green Cuisine "comes from the first green frozen-food manufacturing plant in the world", followed by a short explanation of global warming. According to the explanation: "Manufacturing accounts for about 80% of the industrial energy use and emissions. Within this group, the food industry is the 5th largest consumer of energy." and it continues to say, in bold print:
So why not choose food produced in a manufacturing plant that reduces its energy use and CO2 (carbon dioxide) emisisons by more than 65% daily. The approvals/inspections for this are listed and the small print even notes that the package is printed with environmentally friendly ink.
Demerara Sugar's bag now sports seals at the top that is is Certified Vegan (http://www.vegan.org/) and Certified CarbonFree (http://www.carbonfund.org/). The copy on the back of the bag (still plastic, alas) extolls their "eco-friendly farming and business practices". The copy continues: Our renewable energy facility recycles sugar cane fiber (bagasse) and urban wood waste to produce clearn, reliable energy that powers our sugar operations and tens of thousands of homes. Our facility reduces America's dependence on foreign oil, saves valuable landfill space and reduces CO2 emissions. All that from a bag of sugar for Rob's coffee (which he bought because he likes the taste.)
Hype? Pure marketing? If they are really following through on these claims, does it matter if it's good marketing? Isn't increased business - more buyers - the profit that we hope will encourage more businesses to follow a 'clean living' model?
Does this mean that conscientious shoppers have become enough of a force that manufacturers are taking serious heed and are moving their businesses into models that meet the hopeful visions of the consumers? Maybe this is the balance point - that at the same time large firms are working to manipulate the FDA organic standards into meaninglessness , other businesses are moving toward a more sustainable model of doing business.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Things are Looking Up
During my hiatus from this vbgarden blog, I've been working on the http://www.usefulgardens.blogspot.com/ entries and helping with the establishment of the Hampton Roads VA Buy Fresh Buy Local Chapter. (Find us on Facebook.com under Buy Fresh Buy Local Hampton Roads). It's inspiring to have so many local growers, ranchers, beekeepers and fishermen signed up to be in the new Local Foods Guide. It's a real thrill to be part of energizing our local food community!
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Transplanting and Renewal
I've been out separating daylilies into new plantings. I know it seems like an odd time of year to be doing this but daylilies suffer mid-summer moves well and it is the only way I can judge the bloom color of the daylilies I'm moving - yes, I really have lost ALL the tags. I've been working at this job, off and on, since June, moving clumps into new configurations that better show the colors of each variety.
I think of what this is like for the daylilies as I am tearing clumps apart, ripping the roots free and brutally separating what was a happy, if crowded, family of daylily shoots. Some break, are cut by the shovel, missed in the transplant and otherwise doomed to die. To the original plant, at that moment, the transplanting process must seem like the strike of a horrific tragedy. The shock! The pain! The disorientation!
As I work, I keep consoling them. "It will be better for you in the long run," I assure each traumatized transplant. "You needed to move, to grow, to have a new situation. It will be okay. It is for the best - you will see" .
And as I work I think about God and the scale of things and how our lives are torn and upheaved with traumas we think we cannot endure. And I think of all the platitudes and comforts people say to us with love, with concern, and how we cannot hear them at that time.
And I watch the lilies - how they wilt and they struggle. They don't see me caring for them, watering them, watching over them. Slowly, carefully, they put down new roots. Their leaves lift... and they begin to grow and thrive.
Sometime later when I'm st
rolling through the garden I see the daylilies growing in their new locations - vibrant, blooming, happy. They have coped, they have survived, they are doing even better than they were.
And I tell myself.... remember.
I think of what this is like for the daylilies as I am tearing clumps apart, ripping the roots free and brutally separating what was a happy, if crowded, family of daylily shoots. Some break, are cut by the shovel, missed in the transplant and otherwise doomed to die. To the original plant, at that moment, the transplanting process must seem like the strike of a horrific tragedy. The shock! The pain! The disorientation!
As I work, I keep consoling them. "It will be better for you in the long run," I assure each traumatized transplant. "You needed to move, to grow, to have a new situation. It will be okay. It is for the best - you will see" .
And as I work I think about God and the scale of things and how our lives are torn and upheaved with traumas we think we cannot endure. And I think of all the platitudes and comforts people say to us with love, with concern, and how we cannot hear them at that time.
And I watch the lilies - how they wilt and they struggle. They don't see me caring for them, watering them, watching over them. Slowly, carefully, they put down new roots. Their leaves lift... and they begin to grow and thrive.
Sometime later when I'm st
rolling through the garden I see the daylilies growing in their new locations - vibrant, blooming, happy. They have coped, they have survived, they are doing even better than they were.And I tell myself.... remember.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Organic Gardening Turned Me Into a Ruthless Killer
Organic gardening has turned me into a ruthless killer.
It’s true.
Back when I used popular chemicals to ward off insect attacks, garden defense was a matter of gracefully waving my sprayer wand over my beloved plants, much in the manner of Glinda the Good gracing the Munchkins with her benevolent presence. A gentle spray drifted down over the leaves and slowly, silently, the offending insects fell to the ground. All was well. No distinction was made between “good” insects and “bad” insects, all were treated with equal dispassion. My plants were inviolate. They probably glowed – gratefully, I would have thought - in the dark. While I was never entirely comfortable with spraying, all of the accepted farming dogma insisted that a carefully followed spray schedule was necessary to produce good crops. I was a good grower, I followed the directions carefully.
Eventually, I gave up standard commercial growing and all the chemical pesticide and fungicide formulas. I couldn’t justify poisoning myself any longer, even for perfect looking food. I also couldn’t justify poisoning the frogs, toads, dragonflies, water, earth and air. The list of victims, the collateral damage, was endless. The results were becoming obvious, even on a small farm like ours. Amphibians of all sorts - frogs, toads - and many of the lovely insects we liked – bees, butterflies, fireflies- were scarce. We began creating meadow spaces across the farm, half an acre here and there, where clover, Queen Anne’s Lace and other wild flowering plants could flourish, hoping to lure back and nurture some of what had been damaged.
But let me point out that what never became scarce were the original offenders, the Japanese Beetles, the whiteflies, the hornworms – all of the munching, tearing, sucking, piercing horde that made gardeners like me take to poisons in the first place. The newly available organic sprays worked to an extent, but I was now the caretaker and defender not only of my plants but also of the beneficial insects I worked so hard to encourage. The new sprays were equally lethal to those newly beloved friends. What to do?
And so it came down to hand-to-hand combat, mano a mano with the bug world. Where I once wandered ladylike, gently wafting airborne particles across the garden, I now crept clumsily, eyes narrowed, ready to pounce. I’ve become a one-woman SWAT team for bugs. I’ve graduated from gently knocking insects into water-and-soap filled containers, flicking them down with genteel distaste, to removing them with glove covered hands (and stomping on them) and finally, now, to quickly and casually squishing them with my bare fingers as I move through watering and weeding. I squint into the leaves and I pounce. I pinch a pair of mating Japanese Beetle and feel a grim satisfaction as the shells crack. No grubs will come from that pair to destroy my plants next summer. I move a waiting mantis and flatten the nearby berry-eating stinkbug. I’d leave him for the mantis but she takes too long. She can have the ones my eyes don’t see.
All of this brings pest control down to a very personal war zone. I have to take personal, individual responsibility for every tiny life I’m taking. I don’t like it. Not only the squishy, icky parts of it, but also not the karmic, I-can’t-pretend-I-don’t-know-what-I’m-doing part of it. We are locked in a fight for food, these bugs and me. This is what the natural world dictates; this is what it all boils down to. For one to eat, another may not. And it is always this way. When I buy ‘conventional’ produce at the grocery store, I know that somewhere a field has been sprayed and resprayed, like bombers spraying over the far-away jungles we heard about when I was younger. Thousands have died there. Here in my garden, death is selective. If I can move the offenders to a different plant, less desirable to me, then we share. If they are too greedy, too voracious, if the plant is suffering and my crop – the whole purpose of the endeavor – is damaged, then we move to ultimatums. They bite into a fruit; I pounce. They are ruthless in their pursuit of food. So am I.
It’s true.
Back when I used popular chemicals to ward off insect attacks, garden defense was a matter of gracefully waving my sprayer wand over my beloved plants, much in the manner of Glinda the Good gracing the Munchkins with her benevolent presence. A gentle spray drifted down over the leaves and slowly, silently, the offending insects fell to the ground. All was well. No distinction was made between “good” insects and “bad” insects, all were treated with equal dispassion. My plants were inviolate. They probably glowed – gratefully, I would have thought - in the dark. While I was never entirely comfortable with spraying, all of the accepted farming dogma insisted that a carefully followed spray schedule was necessary to produce good crops. I was a good grower, I followed the directions carefully.Eventually, I gave up standard commercial growing and all the chemical pesticide and fungicide formulas. I couldn’t justify poisoning myself any longer, even for perfect looking food. I also couldn’t justify poisoning the frogs, toads, dragonflies, water, earth and air. The list of victims, the collateral damage, was endless. The results were becoming obvious, even on a small farm like ours. Amphibians of all sorts - frogs, toads - and many of the lovely insects we liked – bees, butterflies, fireflies- were scarce. We began creating meadow spaces across the farm, half an acre here and there, where clover, Queen Anne’s Lace and other wild flowering plants could flourish, hoping to lure back and nurture some of what had been damaged.
But let me point out that what never became scarce were the original offenders, the Japanese Beetles, the whiteflies, the hornworms – all of the munching, tearing, sucking, piercing horde that made gardeners like me take to poisons in the first place. The newly available organic sprays worked to an extent, but I was now the caretaker and defender not only of my plants but also of the beneficial insects I worked so hard to encourage. The new sprays were equally lethal to those newly beloved friends. What to do?
And so it came down to hand-to-hand combat, mano a mano with the bug world. Where I once wandered ladylike, gently wafting airborne particles across the garden, I now crept clumsily, eyes narrowed, ready to pounce. I’ve become a one-woman SWAT team for bugs. I’ve graduated from gently knocking insects into water-and-soap filled containers, flicking them down with genteel distaste, to removing them with glove covered hands (and stomping on them) and finally, now, to quickly and casually squishing them with my bare fingers as I move through watering and weeding. I squint into the leaves and I pounce. I pinch a pair of mating Japanese Beetle and feel a grim satisfaction as the shells crack. No grubs will come from that pair to destroy my plants next summer. I move a waiting mantis and flatten the nearby berry-eating stinkbug. I’d leave him for the mantis but she takes too long. She can have the ones my eyes don’t see.
All of this brings pest control down to a very personal war zone. I have to take personal, individual responsibility for every tiny life I’m taking. I don’t like it. Not only the squishy, icky parts of it, but also not the karmic, I-can’t-pretend-I-don’t-know-what-I’m-doing part of it. We are locked in a fight for food, these bugs and me. This is what the natural world dictates; this is what it all boils down to. For one to eat, another may not. And it is always this way. When I buy ‘conventional’ produce at the grocery store, I know that somewhere a field has been sprayed and resprayed, like bombers spraying over the far-away jungles we heard about when I was younger. Thousands have died there. Here in my garden, death is selective. If I can move the offenders to a different plant, less desirable to me, then we share. If they are too greedy, too voracious, if the plant is suffering and my crop – the whole purpose of the endeavor – is damaged, then we move to ultimatums. They bite into a fruit; I pounce. They are ruthless in their pursuit of food. So am I.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Leafblowers - The Philosophy
Today I drove past a number of landscaping crews busily cleaning up business "yards" and subdivision entrances in the aftermath of a quick series of storms that brought down the last of the fall leaves. The workers were armed with safety goggles and leaf blowers, which they aimed ferociously, like weapons, at the leaves and litter, blasting them to new locations off the property they were hired to protect.
It occurs to me that the irresponsible attitudes that have weakened our society can be related to the effect of leaf blowers. (Yes, I know it sounds mad, but hear me out.)
Do you remember, years ago, how each business owner would be up and out early in the morning, diligently tidying the entrance to his/her shop, sweeping and raking the area and gathering the debris into the trash bin or compost? People swept and cleaned the sidewalks in front of their homes. Leaves were gathered and composted or burned (and I still guiltily miss that wonderful fall smell). Each resident took responsiblity not only for cleaning their personal area but also for making sure the material gathered was disposed of properly. Compare this to our manic, modern work crews and residents with their noisy blowers. Sure the leaves and trash get rapidly moved out of the way, from the sidewalk or parking lot into the street - or neighboring property - but is it actually taken care of? No, it's just loudly shuffled far enough to become someone else's problem.
Too many of us, individuals and government representatives alike, have behaved exactly like those landscape crews. Problems were never really solved, no one took responsibility for seeing that a situation was truly "cleaned up and put away" - things were just quickly shuffled off - with a lot of blustering! - for someone else to deal with... again.
Now when I hear someone say that they took a problem in to be solved and the representative or responsible person "just blew it off", I know exactly what image fits.
It occurs to me that the irresponsible attitudes that have weakened our society can be related to the effect of leaf blowers. (Yes, I know it sounds mad, but hear me out.)
Do you remember, years ago, how each business owner would be up and out early in the morning, diligently tidying the entrance to his/her shop, sweeping and raking the area and gathering the debris into the trash bin or compost? People swept and cleaned the sidewalks in front of their homes. Leaves were gathered and composted or burned (and I still guiltily miss that wonderful fall smell). Each resident took responsiblity not only for cleaning their personal area but also for making sure the material gathered was disposed of properly. Compare this to our manic, modern work crews and residents with their noisy blowers. Sure the leaves and trash get rapidly moved out of the way, from the sidewalk or parking lot into the street - or neighboring property - but is it actually taken care of? No, it's just loudly shuffled far enough to become someone else's problem.
Too many of us, individuals and government representatives alike, have behaved exactly like those landscape crews. Problems were never really solved, no one took responsibility for seeing that a situation was truly "cleaned up and put away" - things were just quickly shuffled off - with a lot of blustering! - for someone else to deal with... again.
Now when I hear someone say that they took a problem in to be solved and the representative or responsible person "just blew it off", I know exactly what image fits.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
New Website - Welcome UsefulGardens.com!
As a response to the many questions coming in lately from friends and wonderful folks who are intending to get into gardening for the first time this spring - or who are expanding their gardens to include edible plants either for the first time or with a new emphasis - I've created a new website: www.usefulgardens.com. It is designed to be a community site rather than a solo blog, a place where I can offer accumulated ideas, tips and advice to veggie and fruit gardeners. As you all know, I hardly hold myself up as an expert on all things gardening but I do have two great assets - a large store of anecdotal experiences growing both vegetables and fruit for personal and commercial use AND a terrific network of friends who are sensational gardeners.
This is a time when we are all being encouraged to reach out to our communities to offer our talents, experience and enthusiasm any place where we can best serve. I figure this is mine.
C'mon over to www.usefulgardens.com and let me know what you think.
Hugs,
Sybil
This is a time when we are all being encouraged to reach out to our communities to offer our talents, experience and enthusiasm any place where we can best serve. I figure this is mine.
C'mon over to www.usefulgardens.com and let me know what you think.
Hugs,
Sybil
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Planning the Veggie Garden - Early Spring
Seed catalogs rest in piles about my house. Lists, diagrams, notes from last season.... all the things that will coalesce into this year's garden seed orders. One of the difficulties for gardeners in a variable climate - like Virginia Beach's pseudo-southern, quasi-northern, rollercoaster weather - is in selecting varieties that will survive the changes in temperature that plague our early spring. It is the spring that is the hardest season for plants here, more so than the heavy heat of summer.
Many varieties of fruits and vegetables are triggered into early spring activity by a few days of 65+ degree weather, only to be hit hard when temperatures roll back into the twenties. (This is why many very "hardy" plants, like the arctic kiwi (Actinidia kolomitka and others fare worse in our variable spring weather than in colder climates where they wake up slowly in gradually warming weather.)
In addition, we all tend to hold off on planting until the spring warms up "just a tad", only to have it roll directly into hot weather - devastating to my plans for early sugar peas and sweet lettuces. Currently the garden is growing cabbages (which are not at ALL happy with the continuing damp), onions and garlic. All of these will be harvested and out of the raised beds by the time I need space for tomatoes and summer peppers.
January is for ordering seeds, taking advantage of any "early order" specials catalogs happen to be ordering. I do love the paper catalogs, even though I generally order online through the company's website. I love the photos - I love the illustrations even more. Mary Azarian's woodcuts were the inspiration for year of ordering from Cooks Garden. Besides, I can slap notes all over the paper catalogs - a service they have yet to add to website displays.
February is for turning the first gardens over thoroughly, mixing in the compost and chicken manure (thanks, girls!). Late February this year, my Sugar Snap peas will go in, along with seeds for bunching onions, the ones that really don't form decent bulbs but are wonderful in spring salads. With some protection, in the unheated greenhouse space, I'll sow trays of lettuce and mesclun mix for cut-and-come-again salad greens. Some of these sowings will become early transplants for the garden in late March, marking the areas where other lettuce will be sown in neat rows.
Many varieties of fruits and vegetables are triggered into early spring activity by a few days of 65+ degree weather, only to be hit hard when temperatures roll back into the twenties. (This is why many very "hardy" plants, like the arctic kiwi (Actinidia kolomitka and others fare worse in our variable spring weather than in colder climates where they wake up slowly in gradually warming weather.)
In addition, we all tend to hold off on planting until the spring warms up "just a tad", only to have it roll directly into hot weather - devastating to my plans for early sugar peas and sweet lettuces. Currently the garden is growing cabbages (which are not at ALL happy with the continuing damp), onions and garlic. All of these will be harvested and out of the raised beds by the time I need space for tomatoes and summer peppers.
January is for ordering seeds, taking advantage of any "early order" specials catalogs happen to be ordering. I do love the paper catalogs, even though I generally order online through the company's website. I love the photos - I love the illustrations even more. Mary Azarian's woodcuts were the inspiration for year of ordering from Cooks Garden. Besides, I can slap notes all over the paper catalogs - a service they have yet to add to website displays.
February is for turning the first gardens over thoroughly, mixing in the compost and chicken manure (thanks, girls!). Late February this year, my Sugar Snap peas will go in, along with seeds for bunching onions, the ones that really don't form decent bulbs but are wonderful in spring salads. With some protection, in the unheated greenhouse space, I'll sow trays of lettuce and mesclun mix for cut-and-come-again salad greens. Some of these sowings will become early transplants for the garden in late March, marking the areas where other lettuce will be sown in neat rows.
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