Great article at Takoma Gardener about the effects of climate change on our gardens – and what we can do to help.
In my own garden, I’ve developed the idea of “canopy gardening”, so the large trees provide shade for most of the yard and smaller shrubs offer some protection from winter frosts and freezes. I still lost a lot of plants this year due to the big chill in December and the long dry summer. Our extremes here in SoCal have been severe this year, from five nights in a row of freeze in the winter to five days in a row of 100 plus temperatures this summer. Overall it’s been much cooler in San Diego in the past year. May gray and June gloom this year extended into July, and we didn’t have a very hot week until late August / early September.
Coming into a La Nina year, there won’t be much rain, so we’re looking for our eighth year of drought conditions. I’m going to need some very tough plants! Go read the full article, it’s well worth it.
Takoma Gardener: Global Warming in the Garden
How Gardeners Can Help Reduce Climate Change
To borrow from one of the central tenets of organic gardening, the first goal of gardening should be to do not harm. Here are some ways:
* Stop using gas-powered lawn equipment or products that use fossil fuels in their production, like synthetic fertilizers. Gas mowers spew as much pollution in one hour as a new car does in 40 hours – that’s how terrible the gas-mower technology is. And those synthetic fertilizers can be replaced primarily by compost and organic mulches, supplemented with organic, slow-release fertilizers when an extra boost is needed.
* Instead of blowing leaves into plastic bags for them to be trucked away to landfills or to an incinerator, turn them into soil, by composting. Home compost operations help lighten pressure on landfills and result in more water-retentive soil for the gardener – that really cool circle of life thing. Some municipalities collect leaves and turn them into free leafmold mulch or compost.
* Grow your own food. It’s fresh, it’s as organic as you want it to be, and it doesn’t have to be trucked or flown in from far away. In the alternative, frequent our local farmer’s markets.
* Finally, the quaint suggestion that we bring back a garden ornament from our grandmothers’ gardens – the clothes line – comes from the Goracle himself.
4 Responses
You know, I hate the sound of power lawn equipment, particularly the absolutely useless item known as a leaf blower. Rearranging the leaves seems like a particularly futile task.
I’ve given some thought to ordering those who do my lawns not to use gasoline-powered equipment. Can one still buy the electric kind? Better yet, maybe I’ll buy a manual push mower.
Our gas dryer died this summer and it took a while to get it replaced. I suggested a clothesline, but with fog almost every day it wouldn’t have done much–100% humidity ain’t much for drying. We took our washed clothes to the laundrymat.
Back to the gas-powered stuff. Is one hour of a gas mower really as polluting as 40 car hours? And I was so proud of buying my new hybrid!
You can still get reel mowers, but you need to take care of them, since the blades need to be sharpened every so often.
We got a front-loading washer that doesn’t use as much water or leave as much in the clothes, so now they take less time to dry. I’ve never really liked line-dried clothes since they collect a lot of pollen around here (oh, that’s a whole ‘nother blog post on not planting enough female plants!) , but we do use the dryer less now.
See http://www.nativegrowers.com/?p=102 for safe sex in the garden…..
I find it heartening how much these little choices can add up. Organic gardening, hanging the clothes out half the time, using a push mower – they are a matter of slightly different choices than maybe we’re used to, but with everyone making them, they do make a difference.
Yeah, Clea, that’s kind of the problem, though – we have to change people’s attitudes to do these things that seem small. We think we need big massive societal change, but people don’t realize those changes actually happen one person at a time. And even one person chaniging the way they live and being more aware can make a difference.
Namaste!