Garden Culture Magazine: UK 5 by Garden Culture Magazine

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CONTENTS I GARDEN CULTURE

THYME

GROW-YOUR-OWN

plant nutrition

HONEY BEES

LUMENS FOR HUMANS

PRODUCT

SPOTLIGHT

FISH

FERTILIZER

TOXIC 74 FRUIT

IN THIS ISSUE OF GARDEN CULTURE:

7 Foreword

48 How food became a system

8 Product Spotlight

53 Messing with nature

12 Five mistakes that will bug you

56 Our cow Molly

14 Soil - still the stuff to grow on

58 The 15 most toxic supermarket produce

20 Chinese food - time to start reading labels

60 Home Grown Expo: much more than a garden show

23 Five cool finds

62 The U.S. honeybee dilemma

24 Bees are nog slaves

66 Waht is fertilizer anyway?

28 Do it yourself: Fish Fertalizer

70 Lumens are for humans

34 Thyme - grow your own

74 Plant nutrition

39 What is growing on?

78 What the internet did

44 Food injustice gardenculture.net

FOREWORD & CREDITS I GARDEN CULTURE FOREWORD

CREDITS Garden Culture™ is a publication of GC Publishers B.V.

This past year we were bombarded with one question, “When are you going to do a show in the UK?” As is turns out, The Grind Magazine was being asked the same question. With a lot of help from Richard at Down to Earth Kent, the 3 of us decided to put on a show. The Homegrown Expo opens to the public on the weekend of May 31st – June 1st at the Coventry Ricoh Arena. This unique event attracted international exhibitors from far and wide, including the USA, Australia, Spain, Canada, France, and Holland. It’s an incredible showcase of the very latest innovations from the fastgrowing world of hydroponics and controlled environment gardening. We’ve also lined up workshops with the world’s top botanical brains. Learn skills, get tips, and check out cutting-edge indoor plant lighting, soilless growing media, and plant nutrition. We want to reconnect people with the food on their plate, and there’s no better way than to grow it yourself! Ditch that overpriced bag of green mush rotting in the bottom of your refrigerator, and start growing your own salad—365 days of the year—right in your own home. Anyone can do it! No transportation. No pesticides. And, of course, as fresh and nutritious as possible. • Gardening is the #1 hobby of Brits over 50 • Over 60% of Brits over 24 years of age like to garden. Office for National Statistics So, why doesn’t every avid gardener have an indoor garden? It’s not just the most fanatical gardeners who impatiently wait for spring. Perhaps they just don’t know. I believe that if every supermarket shopper knew what I knew, half of them would run out to their local indoor gardening shop, and at least get set up to grow some greens. In many ways growing food and medicine is like printing money. There are few things in this world that we absolutely need - food is definitely one of them. Time to start taking care of ourselves. Eric

ED I TO RS Executive Editor: Eric Coulombe e. eric@gardenculture.net Senior Editor: Tammy Clayton V P O PER AT I O NS: Annelies Lake e: annelies@gcpublishers.net t. +31(0)181-728101 DESIGN Job Hugenholtz Special thanks the following contributors: Richard Dennison, James Walton, Jair, Annelies, Lottie for helping make the Homegrown Expo a possibility. And our awesome writers: Tammy, Everest Fernandez, Jeroen Kateehm, Ron Finley, Evan Folds, Grubby, Judd Stone, Ryan Martinage, April and Darryl Cotton. PUBLISHER GC Publishers Postbus 483, 3200 AL Spijkenisse The Netherlands t. +31(0)181-728101 w. www.gcpublishers.net e. info@gcpublishers.net ADVERTISING Eric Coulombe e. eric@gardenculture.net t. +1-855-427-8254 SUBSCRIPTIONS e. subscriptions@gardenculture.net D I ST R I B U T I O N PA R T N ER S • Nutriculture • Maxigrow • Direct Garden Supplies ISSN: 2211-9329 © GC Publishers B.V.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from the GC Publishers B.V.

Website : www.GardenCulture.net facebook.com/GardenCulture twitter.com/GardenCulture

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PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT I GARDEN CULTURE

. T . E . G E nhancer ns Quickly becoming one of the most talked about products to hit the market, this highly effective, user activated CO2 canister has growers switching over across the globe. Delivering a high rate of CO2, comparable only to that of a costly CO2 system, the Enhancer has competitors scrambling to stay relevant. The Enhancer’s unique features include its ability to slow the release of CO2 dur-

ing the night cycle, improving overall plant health and final yield. Store owners love its three year shelf life while growers are amazed how the Enhancer generates the highest PPM’s in the ‘all natural’ category. The Enhancers simplicity and ease of use (adding water and shaking) and the fact it emits no heat, makes it a top choice for knowledgeable growers. For more information, visit your local garden store. www.tnbnaturals.com

Joi ture l u c i t r o H h t i r E Growing Edge Technologies introduces their newest distributor, Erith Horticulture - your source to G.E.T. all your Growing Edge Technologies products. Give each level of your shop’s gardeners an edge empowering their succeed. Grow better gardeners with G.E.T. plant products, including: • The Aroma Formula • Let’s Grow and Let’s Bloom A & B • Power Thrive • Power to Bloom and Umph Power • Let’s Garden Series We G.E.T. it! And you will have the garden of your dreams. See what 29 years of proven solutions makes. Trade only. More Info: www.growingedgetechnologies.ca www.thearomaformula.com

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PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT I GARDEN CULTURE

Building on the success of the Wilma XL range launched late last year, Nutriculture are pleased to announce a completely new and improved Wilma range for 2014. Produced in 16 new sizes to suit the most common grow room spaces, the improved Wilma comes with new features, including a handy nutrient mixing tap, multiple pot locators per tray - giving the grower the ability to switch between pot sizes, and more drippers per pot on the larger systems. collaboration A between Nutriculture and Atami, the Wilma range is despecifically signed for growers looking for the flexibility of growing in pots, combined with the accurate feeding and increased yields that are possible with active hydroponics. For more information on the new Wilma visit www.nutriculture.co.uk/wilma

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Gavita 6/750e DE FLEX fixture with new electronic lamp

RAM® Filters The RAM® Pro Active Carbon Filter Range is a professional range of filters designed for growers. Guaranteed to do the job - they’re easy use, value for money, flexible, and offered in a variety of sizes. This filter uses virgin Australian RC412 Carbon, widely considered superior for air filtration carbon. With less than 13% ash content, this granulated product compacts tightly, leaving no air space for odours to escape. RAM® Pro Active Carbon Filters feature a very high specification carbon pore size of 0.02 micron, making it far more absorbent of volatile organic smells, and odour elements become absorbed. They use inline drying and dehumidifying in the filling process to make sure the carbon is in peak condition before filter compaction, and special expansion foam on the neck makes sure that the compaction rate of the carbon always remains high. More Info: www.hydrogarden.com, search RAM Filter.

The new Gavita e-series fixtures have arrived in the shops! All e-series fixtures are suitable for external control with the Gavita Master controllers. A new fixture in the range is the 6/750e DE FLEX, which is equipped with a uniq ue double ended Gavita electronic lamp. It has a wide control range between 375 and 825W and a very high efficiency (2 μmo l s-1 per Watt) in a range of 600-825W. This flexible control range with high efficiency makes this fixture suitable for rooms where 1000W is a bit too much or even as a 1-1 replacement of tradition al single ended air cooled 1000W fixtures, saving 15-25% of ener gy with the same output. The Gavita Pro 750W EL DE lamps have been thoroughly tested in large horticultural projects over the last two years. The Gavita electronics are developed specifically for this lamp. www.gavita-holland.com

gardenculture.net

BY JUDD STONE

Some people’s grow rooms are down right nasty

5 5

s e k a t s Mi

u o Y g u B l That Wil What makes a person a master gardener? One of the greatest attributes of a master is avoiding mistakes. On your path to becoming a master, many (if not most) of the lessons learned are from making mistakes. Some gardeners with naturally green thumbs have some methodology in place that prevents them from making the mistakes that others will inevitably learn the more difficult way. In this article I am going to touch on a few simple mistakes people make that lead to bug infestations in the grow room.

1) General Cleaning

2) Studious Gardening

It may come as a shock to some of you, but out of all the grow rooms I have visited, none of them have ever been sufficiently clean to prevent bug infestations. Some people’s grow rooms are down right nasty. It is extremely important to pick up plant debris every day. If you don’t do this, the debris immediately begins to decay, and provides a nice home for mold and mildew to begin growing, along with a cool shaded spot for bugs to hang out.

This one is simple. In general, healthy plants are more resilient, and with some species, more resistant to pest attacks. Over-watering is a primary cause of fungus gnat proliferation.

I make it a rule of thumb to disinfect all surfaces of the grow environment at least once a month, again being sure that you’ve wiped up all debris and spills. Proper airflow keeps things fresh in the grow room. Stagnant, dirty conditions attract bugs.

GARDENING MISTAKES I GARDEN CULTURE

5) The Order of Things Consider the immediate environment of the grow room, and the method to your madness. I consulted a gardener with a good-sized indoor operation that had repeated issue with spider mites. He tried everything, and everything worked, but the bugs just kept coming back.

3) Regulate Your Traffic By that I mean watch what you might be bringing into your grow room. If you are introducing new clones or plants for the first time to your grow environment, it’s a good idea to keep them a day or two in a separate place in your house. Give them a thorough inspection, or preventative treatment for bugs or mildew infestation.

4) Sole Policies

He had to wear his shoes, because it was in an outbuilding on his property. Although he did his best to keep things clean, his problem persisted. Next to his outbuilding was a garden plot of outdoor veggies. I went to visit, and I asked if I could just watch him run his routine. We walked out of his house and toward the building in the back of the lot, through long grass. He watered a small garden plot on the side of his outbuilding, pruned a couple of suckers from a tomato, and we went inside to his prized peppers.

Don’t wear your shoes into the grow room, especially when coming straight in from outdoors

Don’t wear your shoes into the grow room, especially when coming straight in from outdoors. If you must wear your shoes - rinse the bottom in your tub first. Better yet, buy a set of shoes or slippers exclusively for use in your grow space. As much as you might want to show friends your healthy plants, you run the risk of them bringing in an unwanted visitor. Don’t let your pets into your grow room. Although they may like the warm inviting environment of your grow room, your best pal carries not only hair into your grow room, but also pests and pest eggs!

In his case, I recommended he first cut his lawn, and keep it short. Then I told him to start his work in the clean controlled environment before doing anything with his outdoor plot. If you’ve worked in your outside garden, it’s not unheard of to change clothes, or maybe even shower before introducing yourself to your indoor grow environment. Change air filters in your home regularly. Keep your floors well mopped and vacuumed, and you will win the war before it begins. Happy Gardening! 3

gardenculture.net

BY JEROEN KATEEHM

Y O U R YA R D I S F U L L O F I T

soil

stillthe stuff togrowon Even though hydroponics continues to grow in popularity, soil is still the stuff to grow on. There are a many types and compositions of soil. It’s no news that having healthy and fertile soil is important for plants to grow efficiently. Taking care of your soil isn’t that complicated, but it’s important to understand the principles that govern soil health if you’re going to understand your garden, and improve on your gardening skills.

SOIL I GARDEN CULTURE

CARING FOR SOIL IS MANAGING LIFE, THIS IS NOT AN OFFICE JOB, BUT DEPENDING ON THE AMOUNT OF STUDY AND CALCUL ATIONS YOU PUT IN, IT CAN BECOME ONE... Soil itself is not living per se, but an assortment of things, some of which are alive. Dead soils do exist, but a healthy soil should contain a lot of life! To keep it simple, soil consists of three things; live, dead, and parts that have never been alive. Caring for soil is managing life, this is not an office job, but depending on the amount of study and calculations you put in, it can become one. Generally speaking it’s ‘dirt simple’... pun intended. Since soils form over long periods of time, changes are not usually seen in the blink of an eye. It’s easy to say up front what the hardest part will be, gaining experience, the ability to see what is going on, and recognize any problems before they get out of hand.

DEAD PARTS The dead parts of soil make up its structure. Most of this structural material is rocks of various kinds. These rocks, over millions of years have weathered and broken down into smaller fragments. The texture of a soil is mostly determined by the size of these fragments. The fragments are commonly graded in three sizes. Sand being the biggest, medium-sized mineral particles called silt, and the smallest mineral particles known as clays.

Silt, being an intermediate size, also has intermediate characteristics. Soils are usually made of these three elements in combination. Agricultural scientists and agencies use a triangle graph to classify the texture of a soil. (--For instance the UK-ADAS and USDA textural triangle.--) Laboratories use extensive methods to accurately measure the mixture of particles in a soil. There is a slightly less accurate do-it-yourself method too. Apart from rock derived particles, soil can contain other things that change its texture. Organic matter is an important component of a healthy soil, although quite often limited in its amount. Soils that have depleted their organic matter will become less fertile, quickly. Organic matter, although not high in nutrient concentration, is important in regulating nutrients. Humus - the end product of composted plant life has chemical properties helping to free up minerals for plant uptake. Humus provides a lot of other benefits for plant life and soil health, but without additions of new organic matter, it won’t last.

LIVE PARTS Each of these particles has different effects on how a soil behaves. Functions like water and nutrient retention, the ability to hold temperature, or support root growth - are all determined by this composition. Sand, for instance, lets water pass through more easily than clay does. The finer particles in clay are better at storing water, but its also much more dense. This makes it harder for roots to penetrate, and among other things it’s less porous, allowing less air into the soil, and between the roots.

As is extensively covered in this magazine, soil is full of beneficial life. Not only do plants support each other in certain cases, but other life forms, such as the bacteria and fungi that play a vital role in healthy soils. In forming, and in maintaining structure. When soils form naturally, it is through interactions of many unique life forms. Bacteria play a role in breaking down plant matter from the first pioneering species. Fungi provide symbiotic relationships with plants to aid them in harsh conditions, such as droughts. Plants

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help absorb nutrients, and store these in their tissues. Because of this, soils grow slowly from infertile lands to nutrient-rich soils with improved qualities. The type of plants that grow naturally on a soil are usually a good indication of the health and type of soil you’re dealing with. Plants that need a lot of nutrients will be outcompeted by others. Plants requiring a lot of water will do poorly in sandy soils. Most of these things are obvious, but realizing that requires experience.

SOIL MAINTENANCE How to maintain your soil is one of the most hotly debated topics ever. Mankind has been growing crops for thousands of years, and the start of this is often marked by the plow’s invention. The plow has been in use for longer than almost any other tool humans have invented. However, are they essential? There are a few reasons why plowing might be unbeneficial in all cases. The soil life is disturbed. Natural channels for water to flow through are broken, which changes the permeability and water absorbing capabilities of a soil. Plowing increases the quality of a soil in the short term, but quite possibly, and if not managed carefully, damages it in the long term. But it’s a hot issue. Maintaining the amount of organic matter in a soil can bring some complications with it. The easiest solution to this is simply to let surplus plant material decompose on top of the soil, or plow it through the top. While this is easy, many people find that this method attracts more pests. An indirect method is to feed compost to the soil, in this way the risk of pests is lowered. Another hot topic is whether or not to plow through these soil additives, specifically with potted plants or grow-beds. Many choose to completely remix their substrate after a growing cycle by breaking up clumps, and adding new materials to upgrade the soil. Others choose disturbing their soil as little as possible, only removing stumps or other debris that won’t compost fast enough. The difference is that by not mixing up the soil completely a natural concentration gradient will form, even inside the pot of a potted plant. There are good arguments for both sides, so it’s up to the growers’ preference. Generally though, it’s advisable to disturb a healthy soil as little as possible, what good would it do?

SOIL I GARDEN CULTURE

THE WAY NUTRIENTS BEHAVE IN SOILS IS GREATLY DEPENDENT ON THE SOIL TEXTURE AND HEALTH. The way nutrients behave in soils is greatly dependent on the soil texture and health. Sandy soils have a lot lower buffering capacity in this regard. Mobile nutrients are easily washed out, creating a nutrient imbalance. At the same time pH levels are also more susceptible to swinging up and down. Humus, clays, and things like volcanic rock, can help with buffering these elements making the ups and downs less violent. Timing of nutrient application, and the relative input amounts are important to consider. Soils that have a low buffering capacity will need more regular application, and smaller amounts of nutrients. The key to understanding how to maintain a healthy soil is to understand what is going on inside it. Every soil is different and requires different maintenance. Learning how these processes work is rewarding. Healthy soils are the backbone of a productive garden. Take care of it and it will take care of your plants.

D I Y SO I L TE ST Not sure what kind of soil are you dealing with in your garden? This will give you some clues. • Take a sample of soil. • Pulverize it until you’ve broken up all clumps. • Put a layer of the pulverized soil in a glass jar. • Fill the jar with water, and put on the lid. • Shake the jar and let the particles settle on the bottom of the jar. The biggest particles will settle first, so the bottom layer will be sand. The middle layer is the silt layer, and on top is clay. It can take quite a while, but when everything settles you can measure the individual layer proportions, and calculate what kind of soil you’ve got. To help with getting an even distribution after shaking, add a small amount of non-foaming detergent. TIP: Soils aren’t always the same all over the yard. Test a few spots. How many? How big is your garden? 3

gardenculture.net

BY AMBER FIELDS

CHINESE

FOOD

T I M E TO S TA R T R E A D I N G L A B E L S No doubt you’re picturing white boxes packed with enticing fragrant oriental dishes supported by a mountain of sticky rice, and egg rolls with duck sauce. Kung Pao, General Tao’s Chicken, Szechuan Beef, Moo Shu Pork... mentally craving some Chinese takeout? Me too! But I apologize in advance for killing your food mood. This is about another kind of Chinese food. Definitely nothing to have a yen for. Food exported from China, grown in contaminated soil with contaminated water using banned drugs and pesticides, or processed in deplorable conditions, being in carry-out boxes from your favorite Chinese restaurant isn’t a certainty. Then again, like anything else you eat today, it’s possible. Just as it’s possible you’re eating Chinese imports on a pizza delivered, at any restaurant or cafeteria, or in home-cooked meals processed, or prepared from scratch. Time to really start reading labels.The obscure fine print.You’re looking for ‘Product of China’ or PRC. If the food was processed in China, the label must state the country of origin. Foods containing multiple ingredients do not have to state countries of origin, and so you really have no way of knowing where any of it is from. It could be a complete frozen dinner, tinned soup, fruit preserves, or something as simple as mixed frozen vegetables. One might think that North America grows enough apples to supply US and Canadian markets. It looks like we don’t, because 60% of the apple juice on the market comes from China, even under labels as venerable as Mott’s and Tree Top. Naturally, it’s not real apple juice, but reconstituted from some crystallized

stuff sold as apple juice. God only knows what’s really in there. It’s likely as mysterious as the 100% pollen-free honey imported from China.You can’t have bona fide honey without any pollen, but China does. Forget debating ingredients or processes involved in creating synthetic honey. Let’s just settle for the fact that honey coming from China isn’t allowed to enter the US, but it still does via honey launderers in India. Use a lot of garlic? Chances are those lovely looking cloves you picked up at market are a product of China. They grow 75% of the global garlic supply. Don’t assume that it is rigorously examined before entering the country. Only 1-2% of imported foods get inspected by the USDA or the FDA, so that garlic could have been grown in conditions that would make your stomach turn. Buying fresh or frozen fish filets? If you love tilapia, it’s time to start growing your own, because the tilapia marketed in the US is an export from China.That is unless you’ve tracked down the fish farmer closest to home. A wise move on your part with over 80% of tilapia, and 50% of cod on the North American market being China exports. Why a country as large as the US with huge expanses of

CHINESE FOOD I GARDEN CULTURE

“ D E F I N I T E LY N O T H I N G TO H AV E A Y E N F O R.” coastline on two oceans, numerous lakes and major rivers can’t supply enough fresh fish and seafood to go around is kind of crazy. Perhaps it’s time for a boatload of unemployed people to get involved in fishing and fisheries? Then again, maybe not. Business profit is impossible competing with Chinese prices, yet you must do both.This situation causes unemployment. Even shipping food halfway around the world, the Chinese can still come in a lot cheaper than domestically produced or processed food. They don’t have to comply with food safety or food quality rules. Everyone between the fisheries in China and your local meat department is profiting, or there would be no Products of China available. You can buy only what is profitable to sell. Fresh mushrooms aren’t as convenient as canned, and while canned ones are certainly more budget-friendly, price indicates country of origin. Cheap canned mushrooms are likely from China, the source for over 30% of the processed mushrooms on the global market. China also grows 50% of the world’s Mandarin oranges. If you don’t have one aspect of food quality to worry about, it’s another. Recently under debate was the idea to ship US-grown chickens to China for processing. Sound ridiculous? It’s cheaper than processing them here, but while writing this article the USDA vetoed the notion, because Chinese processing plants didn’t meet safety and quality guidelines. A big part of why they can profit at ridiculously low prices. You might want to avoid soy sauce, imitation vanilla flavoring, and foods purchased at a dollar store, because these are likely imported from China too. Xylitol used to sweeten sugarfree candy, and folic acid are also major Chinese exports. The solution? Be aware, read labels on the food you buy. Or better, grow your own food, buy from regional farms or ones you can visit, and get to know the people who grow it from start to finish. Don’t be any more wary of Chinese take-out than ordering up a pizza, they both get their mushrooms from the same sources... the US food supply, and at the lowest cost possible. More info: www.hoax-slayer.com/chinese-food-import-screed.shtml 3

ONLY 1-2% OF IMPORTED FOODS GET INSPECTED

60% OF THE APPLE JUICE ON THE MARKET COMES FROM CHINA

gardenculture.net

GREEN PRODUCTS I GARDEN CULTURE

cool finds 1

M I N I A L LOT M E N T GA R D E N

A fun container garden for growing in your urban flat. The kit comes with 3 growing pots, herb snips, soil pucks, and basil, oregano, and coriander seeds to get the garden started.The garden shed isn’t just for looks, but handy storage for your snips. Use it in a window sill or beneath a small grow light to produce fresh herbs year around, no matter where you live. Open the box from the post, sow it, and grow it. Available from: http://www.thebalconygardener.com/shop/kidsfun-growing/mini-indoor-allotment.

ORCHARD BEE HOUSE

Truth be known, the most efficient pollination of spring blooming fruit crops is actually the Orchard or Mason Bee. Unlike honeybees, this species doesn’t sting or swarm. They also live alone, and don’t make honey. You’ll have a better harvest from fruit and nut trees, or a berry patch, with these simple little bee houses nearby. Available from: Amazon.co.uk/BeeNesting-Box-Zinc-Roof/dp/B000AMWT34.

N A N O D O M E P R O PA G ATO R

Efficient grow lighting with far more serious plant energy than LEDs. SunBlaster combines their 18” T5HO light fixture, Nano Reflector and domed propagator tray into a mini greenhouse you won’t want to hide in the closet. Buy them as a kit, use a larger light to power several domes, or stack them up to create an indoor farm.A cool little addition to the kitchen available from many hydro shops and Amazon. More Info: Google - ‘SunBlaster Nanodome Kit’ or www.futureharvest.com

WO O D E N P OTATO BARREL

THE HOLISTIC ORCHARD

Can you grow 100 pounds of potatoes on the balcony, or a corner of your allotment? There’s only one way to find out, and with a unique planter like this one - no one would possibly complain about it. You’ll even be able to harvest some early baby potatoes without disturbing the plants’ production up on top. Naturally, patience means you’ll have larger spuds to harvest. Available from: Primrose.co.uk/ original-wooden-potatobarrel-p-10354.html.

Fruits are lovely,but thanks to their sweet, juicy attributes, they’re some of the most heavily laden with pesticides items in our food system. IPM or integrated pest management, which is the scientific description of what you’ll learn from Michael Phillips’ book, provides a path to totally organic fruit production. Holistic orcharding works with all of Nature - not just the crop. Available from: Amazon.co.uk/The-Holistic-Orchard-BerriesBiological/dp/1933392134.

gardenculture.net

BY AGENT GREEN

Bees

Are Not

“THE ONLY POLLINATOR YOU CAN CRAM IN A BOX”

SLAVES They aren’t here to pollinate cultivated crops. Their purpose is not to support farmers, the food industry, or a nation’s economy. A bee’s job is to eat and make honey. In doing so, the circle of nature is complete, and allowed to continue because of them. Humans enjoying their donated services is a lucky coincidence. Bees are only doing what they must to survive as a species. This requires an appetizing and balanced diet from spring through frost that is free of chemicals and foreign inputs.

There are 27,000 kinds of bees on the planet, and certainly more kinds in North America than honey bees. For some crops, efficient pollination actually comes from wild bees. So why not use different types of bees for pollination of Big Ag? Well, honey bees are very unique. They are the only pollinator you can cram in a box and keep together. No other pollinator forms this type of tight-knit community, it’s almost like an organism made up of a multitude of separate pieces. Like people, they are easily controlled. For the factory farming industry to rely on them to create profit is pretty absurd. The industrial mentality has to stop. The Earth is not a production line. Mass production works great for cars, televisions, and tennis shoes. But food is different. Fruits and vegetables aren’t nuts and bolts. Bees aren’t servants or slaves, but that’s how they’re treated managed. Vast expanses of land being occupied by any singular thing contrived by man leaves pollinators without food, be it a certain crop, or lots of buildings and pavement. A thousand acres of orchards might sound like bee heaven, yet in reality it’s a feast and famine environment - a food desert to bees the rest of the year.

We all know that monoculture farming is where food comes from today. But do you really know how huge each monoculture is? To gain some perspective, let’s look at almonds. California is the largest producer of almonds in the world, harvesting 80% of the global supply each year. There are over 323,748 hectares of almond orchards there. That’s 3237 km2 of trees that they force managed bees into pollinating every February. A land mass close to all of Wales and Northern Ireland combined. Pollen chasers, will do anything to keep their contracts too, including emergency bees flown in from Australia that they drop in the orchards straight off the plane. Why? It pays £93 £102 a hive for three weeks of service. So, if you’ve got 22,000 hives in your operation? We’re talking some serious money, honey. You would net well over £2 million in 22 days flat, off the almonds alone. No wonder there are shady folks in the industry who drop off empty hives. No surprise it matters not whether the colony is healthy, or on its last leg. Drop your boxes and pick up a check, but don’t land a contract and be late, and whatever you do, don’t miss a season. You’ll get tagged as unreliable, a sure-fire way of being excluded... forevermore.

“ THE EARTH IS NOT A PRODUCTION LINE”

BEES I GARDEN CULTURE “SELLING HONEY ISN’T PROFITABLE”

“THEIR PURPOSE IS NOT TO SUPPORT THE FOOD INDUSTRY” While it is big money made in short order, the Almond Rush does present beekeepers with a gamble on being winners or losers. An orchard is like a brothel with bees from all over the country breeding, and sharing diseases and parasites while they’re at it. Since most of the country’s bees are still hibernating in February, the beekeepers have to roust them from their slumber with high fructose corn syrup, and human-harvested pollen cakes imported from China. Some beekeepers mix up their own concoction, but getting the mix right is difficult, and when it’s off, it makes the bees sick. Preparing for the almighty Almond Rush includes forced early brooding to fatten up the colony headcount. It takes 2.5 fully colonized hives per acre to pollinate California almonds. This requires upwards of 2 million hives given the immenseness of land devoted to just this one crop. Yet, there were barely enough managed honey bee colonies in existence in the US to pull it off for the spring of 2013. When the almond service ends, beekeepers load up and head to North where it’s soon time to provide pollination services for the apple, pear, and cherry orchards in Oregon and Washington. In April and May the massive acreage of fruit trees

and berries on the East Coast and the Southeastern states requires pollination services. Come summer, many beekeepers head home to the Midwest where the bees will forage on meadow clover and wildflowers, cultivated sunflowers, alfalfa and other field crops. There are always calls from smaller growers who rent hives for pollinating tomatoes, cucumbers, squash and melons. Some cold climate beekeepers winter their colonies in Florida to keep them working year around. Still, no other crop is as lucrative as the almonds. And almond pollination only produces money. No honey is harvested. The stuff is so bitter it’s a waste product that has no use or value. Selling honey isn’t profitable with cheap imports flooding the market. The pros say keeping the honey and money flowing is the only way a beekeeper can stay in business, but bees aren’t factory workers. This is tunnel vision; an industrial mindset much like spewing out a quota of new Fords every week. Meanwhile orchard bees are more efficient fruit and nut pollinators, but they aren’t manageable. These bees won’t go along with the system. An agricultural operation - a farm - like a stock portfolio, is best diversified for a variety of reasons. It keeps pollinators

gardenculture.net

BEES I GARDEN CULTURE

”HONEY BEES ARE EASILY CONTROLLED”

“DROP YOUR BOXES AND PICK UP A CHECK”

healthy and present. A farm’s market should be local - feeding its community, not the entire world. Perhaps when they run out of bees to drag hither and yon, the wisdom of working with nature, and not against her, will make more sense. Can we stop monocropping, factory farming, or honey bee enslavement? Unlikely. Can we reverse development, shrink metropolises, or unpave paradise? Definitely not. We can, however, work at creating food diversity for bees and ourselves. Small crops in large variety scattered through every community are best for us humans, and our nectar-loving friends. You can grow bee-friendly plants wherever you live. They come as wildflowers, or garden perennials and annuals grown for beauty. Some, when deadheaded regularly, can produce food that bees love from early summer through fall in little space.

If every household in the world did their part in helping bees find good food that’s free of any chemical fertilizer or pesticide, bee populations could improve without any assistance from big food or big farming. Don’t forget we do outnumber them. A couple pots on the porch, the fire escape, a small plot in the corner of the yard, or a guerilla bee garden in a median may not seem like much, but to starving bees, it could mean the difference between life and death. Imagine just how much change a chain of people across a continent, or around the world, could bring about if we just begin. Not just in urban places, but those who live in the middle of farmland too, because bee food deserts exist everywhere today. You’ll find comprehensive lists for both ornamental plants and wildflowers compiled by the Royal Horticultural Society here to pick and choose from: www.rhs.org.uk/Gardening/ Sustainable-gardening/Plants-for-pollinators 3

More info: www.sfgate.com/magazine/article/The-Almond-and-the-Bee-2518870.php www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/region_focus/2009/spring/pdf/feature1.pdf winfreelab.rutgers.edu/documents/LonsdorfEtAl2011_NaturesServices.pdf

gardenculture.net

BY RYAN MARTINAGE

DIY

DiY

fish

fertilizer Thanks to the many benefits gained using inputs made from fish in gardening, fishbased products are a familiar sight within the retail gardening industry. With all the products on the market, the liquid fish fertilizer segment has two separate categories: fish hydrolysate and fish emulsion.

, e l b a n Sustai l a r u t a N g n i w o r G

FISH FERTILIZER I GARDEN CULTURE

Emulsifying fish is a hot process

Outside of specialty gardening shops, fish emulsion is the product most commonly found. This is most unfortunate for the average organic gardener. Fish emulsion production is like hydrolysate, in that both source their ingredients mainly through byproducts of the fishing industry. The manufacturers use fish heads, bones, organs, scales, and fins, but this is where the similarities between the two end. Emulsifying fish is a hot process. They heat the fish materials to extract oil for commercial purposes, as well as protein in the form of fish meal for gardening or animal feed. When the extraction processing finishes, the brown slurry that’s left gets bottled and sold as fish emulsion. It’s a dead product. This form of liquid fish is devoid of organic compounds. They get burned off in the emulsifying process leaving varying concentrations of nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, trace elements, and a high concentration of chlorine - which is harmful to beneficial microbes in your garden. That being said, this is not the type of fish fertilizer we will be focusing on. Let’s get acquainted with the good stuff, fish hydrolysate. Fish hydrolysate comes from the same inputs as fish emulsion, but the key difference is that it’s made using a cold, and all natural process. Without the heat, there is no breaking down of the beneficial organic compounds that are naturally present in the fish carcasses. All of the vitamins, amino acids, and fish oils remain in the product. Typically, when creating fish emulsion, the fish parts are turned into a substance called ‘gurry’. This gurry is basically fish + blender. When the fish parts are ground into bits, the exposed surface area increases phenomenally, making it easier for the enzyme-powered digestion process to occur. After making the fish parts into gurry, it’s added to water along with an enzyme concentrate. After a period ranging from a few days to over a week, the solution is then strained and stabilized. Phosphoric acid is most commonly

used as the stabilizer to prevent further decay, and enables the product to have a shelf life. The good news for you? This complicated sounding processing is more than what is necessary to make a fantastic liquid fish input. If you want a high quality product at a great savings, keep reading. Should you run out of homemade fish fertilizer, or simply don’t wish to make it yourself, don’t just buy anything fishy. Always stick with cold-processed fish hydrolysate. Check the product label. It’s often stated by the manufacturer that it’s made using a cold process or is a hydrolysate.

Now it’s DIY time! I’m going to tell you how to make fish hydrolysate using fermentation as our cold process of choice for many reasons. Chief among them is you need no special commercial enzyme concentrates, no acid stabilizers, and it doesn’t smell bad! Here is a list of what you will need: • 1-part Fish or Fish Scraps • Blender or Food Processor • Lactobacillus • 3-parts Dechlorinated Water • ⅓-part Brown Sugar • Airtight Plastic Jug • Home-Brewing Airlock • DIY instructions below Where does one get fish scraps? Inquire at local fish markets. Naturally, you can also catch your own. Finding lactobacillus is easy. It’s available from your local pharmacy next to the vitamins. Remember - chlorine kills microbes, so be sure you use dechlorinated water or well water. I’ve given the measurements in parts to deal with different sized blenders or food processors, and get the ratio of ingredients right.

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Distributed in the UK by:

FISH FERTILIZER

I GARDEN CULTURE

the best all-natural plant food possible

...it doesn’t smell bad! Let’s get started!

About that DIY airlock...

1). Depending on how much you want in the end, you may have to do several sessions with your blender. Be sure to take into account the maximum volume of your blender when figuring the parts measurements.

This is an inexpensive item if there’s a home-brewing store handy. Even so, I believe making your own airlock just adds to the DIY experience of this fish fertilizer! We must use an airlock for a true anaerobic fermentation of our gurry.

•

You will need: • 6.4mm Grommets (2) • 6.4mm Flexible air hose (As much as needed) • Water-filled plastic bottle

• • • • •

Chop up the fish, or fish parts as small as you can to help the blender/ processor. Place bits into blender. The amount is your 1-part of fish. Add your 3-parts of water and ⅓-part of brown sugar. Blend until smooth! This can take several minutes. Pour into your fermentation vessel (plastic jug, bottle - anything with a cap.) Repeat process if you wish to make more gurry.

2). With your gurry ready, we need to get ready to ferment. For our fermentation to work, we need to add lactobacillus to our mixture. We’re using an over the counter lactobacillus from my local pharmacy. It is possible to harvest and cultivate your own wild lactobacillus culture, but that is for another time! • •

•

Add 4 lacto-pills to your mixture per blender-full of gurry. Stir well. If you purchased a pre-made airlock, fill it with water and screw on your jug / vessel. If you wish to make one yourself, see the next section! Let the jug ferment until there are no more bubbles appearing in your airlock. This is usually a 7-10 day period. If you are in doubt, or bubbles are getting scarce, the smell disappearing is a great indicator you’re done!

Putting it together: 1. Consult the grommet manufacturer’s literature, drill the proper sized a hole into the lid of your fermentation vessel to accommodate the grommet. Do the same on the bottle that you will fill with water. 2. Drill a second small hole next to the one made for your grommet. THIS IS IMPORTANT. This second hole allows gasses to escape from the fermentation vessel. 3. Add water until the water bottle is ¾ full. Insert your 6.4mm hose into your fermentation jug through the grommet just 50mm or so past the lid. Do the same with the water bottle, but insert the hose through the grommet until the hose is underwater and at the bottom of the water bottle. When the processing finishes, use at 30-60 grams per 4-liters as a fertilizer. You can also add 15 grams per 4-liters to compost tea. Thank you so much for reading! I sincerely hope this knowledge can get you one step closer to producing the best all-natural plant food possible. 3

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e m y h

â&#x20AC;&#x153;THYMES THRIVE IN FULL SU N A N D AV ER AG E S O I L â&#x20AC;?

H I STO RY According to Greek mythology, we owe thanks to Helen of Troy for the many wonders of Thymus vulgaris. She shed a tear, and the plant appeared as a gift of courage to the soldiers of Greece, and so carrying sprigs into battle became important. A practice the Romans took a step further, adding it to their bath to soak up this gift of courage and bravery before battle. Naturally, thyme went wherever the Roman army did, spreading this now commonly used herb throughout Europe. A native of northern Africa, Spain, Italy, and the mountains of Greece. While the Egyptians used thyme for embalming, the Greeks discovered it had medicinal value. It was the Romans who were brave enough to jump from being immersed in thyme infusions to enjoying it as an aromatic flavoring, beginning with liquors and cheeses. Its uses in the distant past include purifying rooms, being burned as incense in temples, and during the Middle Ages, sleeping with thyme under your pillow was the sure path to peaceful rest devoid of nightmares.

BY TAMMY CLAYTON

THYM E I GARDEN CULTURE Grow Your Own Series

“THERE IS NO SHORTAGE OF WAYS TO USE THYME”

...essential oil has power to kill microbes...

BENEFITS There are some 350 species of Thymus scattered around the world, but only 3 of them have use as herbs. In the past, people have used this plant to treat just about anything anemia to warts. Modern natural medicine gives the essential oil quite a list of uses. Thyme tea has long been used for treatment of coughs, and it’s still used as a home remedy for that and bronchitis. The Greek practice of using essential thyme oil for massages wasn’t without merit, it is still used in liniments for both humans and animals. Due to its strong antiseptic qualities thymol from the essential oil was once used to medicate bandages. Today its the main active ingredient in Listerine mouthwash, and some all-natural hand sanitizers. Thymol has also been found effective for treating toenail fungi and acne. This power to kill microbes make it ward off mold on paper, and gives it credit for purifying water in some countries. The flavonoids in Thyme increase its antioxidant capacity, and like other members of the mint family its recognized as a cancer preventative. The herb is also claimed an aid to digestion, though it is definitely a rich source of vitamins A, K, E, C, and B-complex, manganese, beta carotene and folic acid. The best known benefit is purely culinary, and having been spread far and wide from the plants origins, the herb has a place in many culture’s cuisines.

gardenculture.net

“THYME TEA LONG USED AS A COUGH TREATMENT ”

“ YOU WILL NEED A DEC ENT GROW LI GHT”

CU LT I VA R S

G E T T I N G STA R T ED

Thymus citriodorous: A creeping form that offers Lemon Thymes, Orange Thymes, and Lime Thyme. An excellent herb for growing in hanging baskets, it is 50102mm tall and 304-584mm wide. They are perennial in zones 7-9, but you can move it indoors in winter. Use these in any recipe calling for the citrus it’s named for, be it sweet or savory. Thymus herba-barona: A very different flavor known as Caraway Thyme, because it tastes just like caraway seeds. Used in breads and meat dishes, this creeping form grows 101-254mm tall and 304mm wide. It is winter-hardy in zones 5-11. Thymus vulgaris: This is Common Thyme, a.k.a. English Thyme, French Thyme, and Garden Thyme. This upright woody-stemmed perennial is indigenous to the Mediterranean region, but is hardy in zones 4-11. It matures to 457-609mm high and wide, but constant clipping reduces its maximum size. It’s hard to kill these plants once established in the soil, as long as they have excellent drainage. They are evergreen to semi-evergreen. All thymes thrive in full sun under average garden conditions. It deals with drought well once established in the soil, but provides better harvests with regular watering. While it’s easy to grow any kind of thyme on a sunny balcony or patio if you have no ‘ground’ to plant it in, there comes a time of year that many will have to protect it by moving it indoors. Then there are those who don’t get enough sun on their outdoor space to succeed in growing it even seasonally. The good news is that you can grow it indoors year around.

Thymes can be grown from tip cuttings, seed, and root division. In the indoor garden, seed germination will be the best way to ensure that no pests or diseases are present, but cutting grown starts are fine if you isolate the plant until you are sure it has brought nothing unwanted with it. Thyme seed germination is best done at 24°C and 75% humidity. Using traditional potting methods seed germinates in 8-20 days, and a maximum of 14 days in a propagation chamber. This is a full sun plant, so you will need a decent grow light to keep it in good, healthy condition. It does very well under CFLs, HO T5s, and HID lights. There is some success in growing it on a bright windowsill, but better control over sun hours and temperature will be more rewarding, and save your plant from getting stressed. You can grow thyme plants indoors using traditional potting methods. Indoor humidity will be almost non-existent with the furnace running in winter. Make sure the potting soil doesn’t get overly dry. Water the plants often and regularly, and only use potting soil with excellent drainage. Thyme does well in hydroponic systems. Start the seed or cuttings in rockwool cubes. Transplant to slabs or NFT when seedlings have at least 3 mature leaves. The best growing environment is daytime temps of 21-29°C and 16-23°C during the night cycle. Set the daylight cycle to 14 hours minimum. Thyme has no special fertilizer or nutrient requirements.

THYM E I GARDEN CULTURE

“THE M AIN ACTIVE INGREDIENT IN LISTERINE MOUTHWASH”

Roasted Tomato & Artichoke Salad Herbed with plenty of fresh thyme, and served on a bed of greens with some lovely mozzarella. Once anointed with freshly made oil and vinegar dressing, this is the perfect complement to chicken - roasted, grilled, or fried. Start with heirloom tomatoes, just harvested thyme, and the freshest artichokes you can find.

INGREDIENTS

PESTS & DISEASE In perfect conditions, thyme is very resistant to pests and diseases. When grown in conditions that are stressful, it can become prone to mealy bugs and whitefly. Treat pest issues organically with neem oil products. Greenhouse growers note some issues with fungal disease without auxiliary lighting in winter. (Insufficient light = stressful conditions.)

HARVEST You’ll be able harvest marketable sprig lengths 5 weeks after transplant in summer, and up to 8 weeks later in winter. Hydroponic yield rates are 453 grams per 6 meters of trough in summer, and half that in winter, based on commercial crop results. When growing a couple of plants for home cooking use, you can snip tips at about 4 weeks. In an outdoor garden, you can harvest fresh thyme year around. If like locating it beneath a snowdrift sounds inconvenient, no problem, it’s simple to preserve.

P R ESER VAT I O N Thyme is easily dried or frozen for later use, and one of the few culinary herbs that doesn’t lose a lot of aroma or flavor after drying. You can use a dehydrator, or the age-old method of hanging springs in a dark room for several weeks. The leaves readily separate from the stems when the cuttings are dry enough. Store them in airtight containers or spice jars. There is no shortage of ways to use fresh or dried thyme. You’ll find recipes that feature this ancient herb in beverages, entrees, side dishes, condiments and desserts from around the world.

• • • •

• • • • •

6 - Fresh Tomatoes, halved across 60 ml - Virgen Olive oil 6 sprigs - Thyme, leaves only 2 heads - Little Gem Lettuce, separated into leaves * Romaine Hearts will also work 25g - Baby Leaf Spinach 150g - Fresh Artichokes, grilled 100g - Baby Mozzarella Balls 29ml - Red Wine Vinegar Salt & Black Pepper - to taste

DIRECTIONS This is a dish that isn’t a lot of work, but like all the finer things in life, does require some veggie preparation in advance of assembly. Best started a day before serving time.

Prep Work • • •

Preheat the oven to its lowest setting. Place tomatoes cut-side up on a roasting pan or cookie sheet. Tip! Line the pan with butcher’s parchment paper to preserve tomato flavor. • Drizzle with about 60 ml of olive oil. • Season with salt and pepper. • Scatter half the thyme leaves over the tops. • Roast for 4-6 hours - until slightly dried out. Turn the oven off and allow to cool overnight in the oven. • Grill your ‘chokes in advance too. • Don’t know how to grill artichokes? • See: thechubbycook.com/2010/05/char-grilled-artichoke Note: Reserves any artichoke-infused oil for your dressing.

Assembly Place the lettuce and spinach in a large bowl. Add the cooled tomatoes, artichokes, and mozzarella balls. Put vinegar and remaining olive oil in a small bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Whisk well to combine. Pour the dressing over the salad, adding any oil from the artichoke, and toss to coat. 3

gardenculture.net

WHAT’S GROWING ON I GARDEN CULTURE

What’s

g n i w o r G n the UK On

1) Dublin, Ireland

“Courtesy of Urban Farm Project”

Urban Farm Project The roof of an old candy factory probably isn’t the place you’d expect to find a potato farm, but in Dublin they’re doing it. Not just a couple of potato barrels either. It’s the scene of industrious potato production amid thousands of plants in an array of crops. The urban farmers here grow a sampling of the largest potato variety collection in the country - whopping 168 varieties! A bounty being specially grown for Gallagher’s Boxty House to supply all manner of potato goodness for their annual harvest dining event. Organic potatoes grown sustainably in repurposed cast offs, the Urban Farm Project Dublin might be the only place in the world you’ll see recycled containers clad in fake grass to make sure no potato ever sees the light o’ day. That’s not all farmers, Andrew Douglas and Paddy O’Kearney, grow above the bustle of urban streets. Their farm boasts chickens, aquaponic tilapia, tomatoes, a sea of lettuce, cukes, and much more. The reason they started this farm? A better unemployment solution. Don’t let the economy get you down, grow a brighter tomorrow. Way to grow, guys!

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WHAT’S GROWING ON I GARDEN CULTURE

2) Clapham, London

North Station. Steven Dring and Richard Ballard’s hydroponic produce will sell under the Growing Underground brand, and never travel beyond the M-25. By September 2014 they will reach serious production levels. An idea that surpasses fresh.

3) Salford, Greater Manchester,

The Biospheric Project This urban farm encompasses 4 levels of freshness going on inside and atop an old mill building on the River Irwell. Sharing space with the Manchester International Festival, just across the water from the City of Manchester, lies a center of agricultural study and production whose chemical-free harvests only leave the premises carried by local shoppers. Their healthy food store is known as 78 Steps, because that’s how far it is from farm to grocer. It’s middle-class-quality food sold at prices that surprise the neighborhood residents as much as the freshness and healthy aspects do. The scientific study of aquaculture carp and tilapia raised inside the old brick Blackfriars estate building teaches school children about fish farming, while simultaneously feeding the aquaponic growing system on the floors above. Their vermiculture operation offers the urban farm many benefits, but with over 100,000 worms it’s created a spin-off market catering to the needs of the angling club in Salford. Director Vincent Walsh has also installed a 70-tree orchard, and raised bed Good King Henry production on the grounds. An excellent start on a 10-year plan. 3

gardenculture.net

“Courtesy of The Biosphere Foundation”

Why go up, when you can go down, and gain greater garden efficiency with less energy input? Growing on a rooftop exposes the garden to the whims of Nature, where winter production means heat, summer production means cooling, and in between the electricity bill isn’t quite as scary. That is if you’re under glass. Forget idle buildings. What about the miles of bomb raid tunnels sitting 33 meters below London? No bugs. Consistent temperature 365 days a year. A colossal idea that sounds a bit mad until you consider the advantages. Zero Carbon’s harvests travel up and not abroad to the plate. Their market is commercial, and hyper local. Celebrity chef, Michael Roux, eagerly awaits seriously fresh herbs, greens, and more to arrive via the floor of Clapham

Courtesy of Zero Carbon Food

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BY RON FINLEY

“I DON’T CALL IT A FOOD DESERT. I CALL IT A FOOD PRISON”

FOOD

I NJ UST IC E

THE REVOLUTION S TA R T S I N T H E G A R D E N

FOOD INJUSTICE I GARDEN CULTURE

Many low-income communities around the country Photo: cdrin / Shutterstock.com

are located in what policy makers, activists, and media refer to as “food deserts” -- places where there is an abundance of cheap, processed food and an absence of healthy, fresh, affordable food. In a food desert your food options range from a variety of fast food chains to “food” sold at local corner stores, liquor stores, pharmacies, etc. I live in South Central Los Angeles, and it is undoubtedly a food desert. But I do not call it that. I call it a food prison. And if our communities do not take the necessary steps to break out of this prison, we will remain trapped by the immobilizing confines of our zip code.

“FOOD INJUSTICE IS A STRUCTURAL PROBLEM”

From Chicago to Philadelphia to New Orleans, the new epidemic in AfricanAmerican communities and other low-income neighbourhoods is a result of the food prison. This epidemic is one of preventable diseases: hypertension, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and so on. In these prisons the green grocer has been replaced by the dialysis center, the drive-thrus have become more deadly than the drive-bys, the rate of malnourished children is on par with the rate of the failing schools, and teenagers are having heart attacks. As this epidemic is starting to gain the attention of the general public, it is important that we frame it in terms of food injustice, so as not to disguise what is really going on. Food injustice is a structural problem. It is about corporate consolidation of power that has monopolized the agricultural industry, and encroached on our food consumption. We need to understand that the demand for big agriculture and fast food did not come from the consumer market. For the past 50 years or so we have been told that the industrialization of food production gives America the power to feed the world, the justification for taking food production from the farm to the

laboratory -- a controlled environment in which our food is grown, manufactured, and prepared. The end result is a toxic recipe intended to keep our bodies craving a perfect scientific formula comprised of additives, preservatives, salts, manipulated fats and sugars: a recipe for disaster for the people eating this stuff, while ensuring enormous profit financially. In other words, as the girth of the average American has grown, so have the bank accounts of the executives of agribusiness. Food injustice weakens those at the bottom of the pyramid. Agribusiness and fast food came up with an ingenious model based on quantity at the expense of quality intended to entrap those with the least amount of purchasing power. In a market of cash-strapped consumers the calorie-to-price ratio of fast food versus real food is how choices are made for us. When forced to choose between a meal that offers 2,000 calories or an apple, both costing $1, for someone who lives near the poverty line the choice is simple. Fast food companies, in league with corporate agriculture, manufactured the Big Mac to be the meal of the working class and the poor, producing lifelong consumers addicted to their products and subdued by the physical effects of this consumption.

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FOOD INJUSTICE I GARDEN CULTURE

“THE URBAN GARDENER T O D AY I S A RENEGADE AND AN ARTIST” Food injustice is socially engineered. Living in a food prison means you do not choose what you put in your MANY body. You are dependent on corporations to feed you. PROGRESSIVE Today, elementary school students around the country GARDENING have a greatly diminished food vocabulary. I have seen a STORES MAKE classroom of kids draw a blank when asked to name the FRESH COMPOST tomato I am presenting before them. I have had kids tell TEA WEEKLY me watermelons grow on trees. I have talked to grown THAT YOU CAN adults who do not know that ham and pork both come BUY. THEY USE from a pig. Is this the mark of a first COMPOST, world nation, a country that claims EARTHWORM “AN INGENIOUS MODEL CASTINGS, AND to feed the world, one in which its BASED ON QUANTITY ADDITIVES TO FEED citizens are denied the basic knowlAT THE EXPENSE OF THE MICROBES edge of Food 101? Is it civilized to QUALITY” disassociate the chicken from the chicken nugget? Or the cow from the steak in the grocery store? If we are what we eat, then what are we? This is how a food prison immobilizes its inhabitants. In a food desert the soil is impotent. In a food forest the soil is fertile. Food justice is about changing the comstructed -- masterminded -- by corporations motivated position of the soil to change the landscape. It is about solely by their own gain. The urban garden is no longer resuscitating the nature around us, and relearning the just a garden; it is an act of defiance. art of nature. It is about collaboration, bringing people I see the urban food forest as a gateway to food justice, and communities together to learn how to feed ourbreaking the chains of the food prison. Every garden selves, and feed each other. It is about taking responsichanges the composition of the soil of the community bility, building agency in individuals and communities. It cultivating fertile grounds for nourishment. The garden is about communities becoming sustainable, and learnengages and includes. In the urban gardens I have particing how to live hyper-local. ipated in, including my own, I have seen kids and adults In my eyes, the urban gardener today is a renegade explore the wonders of the natural world, one which and an artist. He uses nature for his canvas, and his art they can taste, feel, smell, see, hear, and create somechanges lives. The urban gardener sees food not only thing of great value. I have seen gangsters reform, and as the problem, but also the solution. By breaking free homeless people remember a feeling of home. Above from the entrapment of our modern day food system, all, I have seen gardens change an inner-city landscape, the urban gardener is breaking down a system conproviding true nourishment where it is needed most. 3

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BY AMBER FIELDS

“A G R I C U LT U R E I S A R E A D Y S O U R C E O F N E W, R E A L C A PI TA L A N D I S R E N E WA BL E , U N L I K E M O S T O T H E R F O R M S O F W E A LT H .” Bryan Jones, The Farming Game

H OW F OO D B ECAM E A SYSTE M It’s not the unpredictable nature of the weather and commodity prices that are causing the median age of farmers to increase, and fewer people to make farming their career. Most people haven’t the means to become an agricultural engineer, unless they inherit the farm. It’s caused by deliberate government policy, and modern farming being highly capital intensive, on top of the cost of purchasing the farm itself, and maintaining the tax bill on all that land.

Many people believe that the Great Depression was the underlying cause of the shift from the US being a nation populated by independent farmers to a population working for a steady paycheck. While that did cost some people their land and homes, it wasn’t what set the stage for food to become a system, and not a lifestyle. A smooth combination of moves made by the Eisenhower administration started this evolution. Industrialists in the developed Eastern cities needed cheap labor to fill their factories. They also needed to create a willing market for their wares, one that would just keep buying what they were making. And so in the mid 1950s, Ezra Taft Benson, President Eisenhower’s secretary of agriculture, pushed a soil bank law through Congress that

when coupled with Eisenhower’s interstate highway plan, forced thousands off the farm, and into the big city, where the opportunity to make a steady wage beckoned. They arrived in droves. Across the road from the Thunderbird plant in Wixom, Michigan, displaced farmers and farm workers from the South actually lived in tents for a full year before the new Ford factory was open, and ready for them to go to work. Even then, this particular factory was sitting in the middle of rich farmland some 30 miles from Ford’s nucleus of operations. The land to build on came at an attractive price, for the interstate was coming through the front section of the farm that owned it. This kind of thing went on all over the Rust Belt in the mid to late 50’s and early 1960s.

FOOD SYSTEM I GARDEN CULTURE

“THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE NOW REQUIRED A DEPENDABLE SOURCE OF FOOD” The government literally removed ownership of marginal from them. It meant a complete overhaul of the small famlands in the South from poor, small farmers who were ily farm, and huge injections of capital. The strategy behind black, and handed their land over to college educated sons turning food into a system for profit sent more waves of of the elite in an attempt to prove that higher learning had farm folks into urban areas. As it is today, the corporate everything to do with making any soil productive. It didn’t. profit first and producer profit last structure left many What it did do was increase the populations in industrial open to foreclosure of land used as collateral in the purcities. chase of farm equipment purported to increase efficiency. Whether they had a good payWhether the bank foreing job that required punching closed on the land, or they “WHAT IT DID DO WAS a time clock, or they found INCREASE THE POPULATIONS IN simply sold out for every only menial work, thousands penny they could muster INDUSTRIAL CITIES.” of people now required a defast, it opened the doors pendable source of food. They no longer had the land, the for big pockets to snatch up huge tracts of land hither and means, or the time to grow and preserve it themselves. yon. Land that would create new money faster than just In the beginning of this induced transition period in the about anything else they could invest in. While the people 1950s, the big food companies from the city went into who knew nothing more than that land and the sustenance farming communities and established a relationship with it gave them discovered the wonders of regular paychecks the small farms that were still operating. They did this by and benefits in exchange for the days of their lives. buying out small processing plants throughout the HeartNothing like trading a world of continually renewed moneyland. Once an important part of farm towns that provided making possibilities to make money for others in a situation a place to sell your harvest regardless of size, find local that will never allow you to get ahead. Once they bought employment, and a social hub ceased overnight. Things into the system, there was no turning back. They designed changed. Either the farm invested all of its land and energy the system to keep people working, and making payments. into the token crop, or the corporation would buy nothing Fifty years later? Washington runs agriculture? Agriculture

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FOOD SYSTEM I GARDEN CULTURE

“THEY BROKE IT, BUT WE CAN FIX IT. THE SOLUTION ALREADY EXISTS”

“A SMOOTH COMBINATION OF MOVES MADE BY runs Washington? Who knows, but it’s obvious they’re in THE EISENHOWER bed together... and the government continues to systemADMINISTRATION” atically eradicate small farms, and big ones who go against the grain. Cheap food chock full of synthetic, mysterious, and downright scary ingredients costs a lot. Quality long ago replaced by profit for every chink in the food system, except the farmers. Who either have to get big, adopt the factory farming system, or get out. There are few jobs available. Benefits are almost extinct. Cheap labor exists on other continents. The only way for the average person to get good food is to grow their own. It’s a broken system, but people forgot... there was life before becoming dependant on the system. As in any failure, here too lies the seeds of change. They broke it, but we can fix it. The solution already exists. Combining past knowledge of sustainable farming with modern technology gives anyone with an interest new

hope - the answer to feeding yourself, your neighborhood, and even your region. The percentage of the continental population that demands organic and locally grown food has hit about 50%, and continues to rise as more people become truly aware of what is in the food. Coupled with the world-wide anti-GMO sentiment, change is already taking place. More and more farms of all sizes are becoming organic. Vacant land, roof tops, balconies, basements, closets, spare rooms, and backyards everywhere are getting transformed into spaces that grow food without chemicals that is totally free of GMOs, and hasn’t traveled great distances to sit on your plate. Hope grows. It is fresh, it is the solution, and it’s green. 3

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BIOLOGY I GARDEN CULTURE

SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY REINVENTING NATURAL OR HEY MOM LOOK WHAT I MADE

Messing

Nature

They say that this is the answer to natural, sustainable night lighting. Genetically engineering trees to have glow-in-the-dark trunks, branches, and stems is the ultimate goal of the guys behind the funded Kickstarter project, Glowing Plants. This image shows their success in the lab making a tobacco plant glow by inserting lightning bug genes into its DNA.

Now they’re splicing that glowing gene into invasive weeds, and send glowing GMO seeds to about 8000 people worldwide who helped them raise almost £300,000 to create the first plants. Sounds pretty cool, until you ponder the reality. Doing this to an annual plant may sound harmless. However, Arabidopsis thaliana, a native of Europe, will live anywhere regardless of soil, sun exposure, or climate. It has self-seeded its way onto every continent, along with Japan, and is one of the 14 well-known Roundup resistant plants that quickly mutated its DNA to laugh in the face of glyphosate. Plants that glow are not natural. They certainly have no place in becoming more sustainable. Like the Love Bug in Florida, Kudzu vine, and a host of other engineered life forms unleashed and allowed to roam free, this too could very well become a nightmare in disguise. It blooms in spring and is pollinated by bees. Do you suppose they’ll THEY SELL GLOWING start glowing too? They could have company, PLANTS GENETIC Glowng tobacco plant the white cabbage butterfly lays its eggs on ENGINEERING KITS this Thale Cress plant, and they feed on it ON THEIR WEBSITE after hatching. ALREADY NASA is also dabbling in the glow-in-thePerhaps pseudo science has gone too dark Arabidopsis breeding arena on the far. This is some pretty scary plant International Space Station. However, it seems they have just manipulation. It makes a mockery of both natural and sustainable. inserted the gene rather than reinventing the plant’s genome. Glowing plants are far from greener living, but look to be coming Additionally, studying this kind of thing in isolation is one thing. to thousands of locations in 2014. The synthetic biologists Spreading it all over the world by handing GMO seeds over to at Glowing Plants say they picked this plant, because it isn’t anyone willing to give them £24 or more is alarming. They sell indigenous to the United States making the risk of contaminating glowing plants genetic engineering kits on their website already, other plants low. There seems to be many unanswered and have added glowing roses to the mix GMOs they will offer questions about long term dangers of such genetic manipulation. to the public. Unfortunately, profits and apathy trump public safety, again. 3

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GARDEN CULTURE I SOCIAL MEDIA

Our Cow Molly

British farmers dive into social media.

Farming Selfies

The latest group to discover the wonders of social media in the UK? Farmers. The country isn’t the disconnected place it once was. Most farmers today are as attached to their tablet PC and smartphone as anyone in the city or suburbs. Modern agriculture uses computers for everything from fertiliser calibration to planting, maintenance, and now - communication. social media too. Weekly meets on #AgriChatUK gives them Unlike your standard job, farming is a lifestyle, and not simply employment. The work keeps you busy sunrise to sunset eva venue for discussing many topics, thanks to the foresight of ery day of the week. So busy, that leaving the farm for the sole farm service provider, Simon Haley. purpose of a leisurely visit doesn’t happen on a regular basis. The conversation isn’t confined to Britain or the UK. TradFor some, though they love the rural life, being a farmer can ing tips and advice on technical stuff is becoming popular with leave them feeling a bit isolated from the bulk of the populafarmers everywhere. Not long ago, a farmer in the Cotswolds tion. wouldn’t think of comparing methods with someone in New The internet is changing the isolation factor quickly. There Zealand. But half a world apart isn’t very far anymore. Liveare several Twitter hangouts just for UK farmers, where they stock and plants have the can communicate with each other and their customers too. same basic needs, no matWhere else can you show off selfies of your best lambs, that ter where the farm is. prize milker, and your sure-to-be blue ribbon bacon still dashAside from learning more ing about on the hoof? Not many will find much interest in about where your food those, or their latest equipment procurement like another could come from, some of farmer. the social sites and twitter streams can teach things Twitter, Facebook, and other social media avenues are the about farming too. 3 place to learn about farm events, and where fresh local food is abundant. UK Farmers are integrating it into their marketing strategy at a rapid pace. Not just the young farming crowd. Here’s some farmer social spots you might find interesting: They’re present in all age brackets, and www.farmingselfies.com - they’re collecting the images from being taught the ins and outs of using soaround the world. • @FarmersoftheUK - features a different farmer each week. cial media by Paul Bradley from the Na• @OurCowMolly - home of fantastic Sheffield ice cream. tional Farmers Union. Agricultural businesses who provide services to farmers • @FarmersMinds - speaking their minds. are in the thick of exposing farmers to • @GarethBarlow - farmer turned farmer for hire/media person.

BY BRIAN BURK

So you’re shopping at your big box grocer, and buying fresh vegetables and fruits. One would

THE 15 MOST TOXIC SUPERMARKET PRODUCE

expect healthy foods. While the choice to eat fruits and vegetables is a good one, there’s a lot of hidden surprises in the selection at the supermarket like carcinogens, hormone disruptors, GMOs, reproductive toxins, and bee

toxins.

for

healthy

fruits

much and

vegetables! They’re tainted

by massive amounts of pesticides and genetically

AN APPLE SHOULD COME WITH A PHYSIC AL

modified foods.

We have compiled a list of the fifteen worst cases of chemical and genetically modified foods according to the EPA and the EWG (Environmental Working Group). Read if you dare!

1. Apples They say an apple a day keeps the doctor away. Unless you are going to your hometown mega mart where an apple should come with a physical. Apples found in most grocery stores, according to the Environmental Working Group, contain up to 48 kinds of pesticides. And unfortunately, this healthy fruit is routinely sprayed down with Paraquat, a chemical under fire for being possibly linked to Parkinson’s Disease. 2. Cherry Tomatoes These do quickly perk up a salad, but they’re loaded with hormone disruptors. They also feature a guest appearance from Chlorothalonil; a known carcinogen that causes kidney tumors. 3. Cucumbers Cukes offer you three different types of Endosulfan. They’ve linked Endosulfan to infertility and testicular lesions in the male workers picking the vegetables you find at your market. There is a slight risk that ingesting this chemical will cause infertility; I know that I am not willing to take the chance.

TOXIC PRODUCE I GARDEN CULTURE

“TAINTED BY M ASSIVE A MOUNTS OF PESTICID ES” 4. Celery Here’s a vegetable that’s always been said to be a superfood, but celery is loaded with pesticides. A whopping 64 different chemicals. This one you may want to grow or buy organic.

12. Kale Kale contains DDE and Imidacloprid, which is a known bee toxin. Kale is pretty easy to grow, so I would recommend growing most of your leafy greens.

5. Cherries Enjoy snacking on cherries? They contain Bifenthrin, a reproductive and developmental toxin, also a suspected hormone disruptor. This one you may want to pick up at your local farmers market or organic grocer.

13. Sweet Bell Peppers My poor fajitas are ruined! Bell peppers can contain Methamidophos, a neurotoxin. Luckily, these are also fairly easy to grow.

6. Peaches I love peaches, so this one really stings. Peaches have Iprodione, a likely carcinogen according to the EPA. It’s been linked to liver tumors in rats. 7. Grapes Bought at the supermarket, they’re more like the grapes of wrath. Captan is a pesticide found in grapes, and the EPA has linked it to intestinal tumors. I wouldn’t make any wine or raisins from these grapes, but they do. 8. Nectarines Nectarines are a naturally mutated version of the peach. Unfortunately, their resulting smooth skin is now covered with unnatural pesticides; thirty-three pesticides to be exact. 9. Spinach I do not know about you, but I use this one all the time in my salads. But according to EWG, DDE is a pesticide you can commonly find in spinach. Also, according to the EPA, it is a probable carcinogen. 10. Strawberries Store-bought strawberries are notoriously loaded with chemicals. It features, like the grapes, Captan. Strawberries also have Myclobutanil, which they’ve linked to reproductive problems. 11. Potatoes Grocery store potatoes contain o-Phenylphenol, a carcinogen that has been linked to urothelia lesions in animals. Potatoes can contain up to thirty-seven toxins. Think about that next time you have some French fries.

14. Summer Squash It might be better to play squash before stopping at the supermarket. Summer Squash can contain up to 41 different pesticides. One of them, a carcinogen called Dieldrin. 15. Blueberries Blueberries have a ton of antioxidants, and chemicals. Blueberries contain fifty-two chemicals, one of them being Iprodione. Iprodione is a carcinogen, and a suspected hormone disruptor. Buy some organic blueberries, and put that on your fresh oatmeal.

So now you know. Some of these are pretty easy to grow, others not so much. You could always go to a local farmers market and organic grocer in search of non-GMO and chemically “enhanced foods.” It is better to eat fruits and vegetables than to just avoid them completely. You could still eat this type of produce, but the long-term side effects on humans are not one-hundred percent known. Mostly due to lobbyists and advocates for major food corporations. The next time you’re enroute to the grocery store, try to imagine where your food came from. Is it really natural? Is it chemically “enhanced?” Are the workers picking your food being subjected to pesticides that are hurting them, and you, in the long run? We all have only one life, lets try to live it clean and get our food supply back to being the way it was, natural. 3

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So Much More than a Gardening Show Growing a small, but bountiful garden in a small space is a lot easier than you might think. The Homegrown Expo is for anyone who has thought about growing their own food, or has gardened forever, but never thought about bringing it indoors.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;I always believed that if everyone in the supermarket knew what I knew, half of them would run out to their local indoor gardening shop, and at least get set up to grow some greens.â&#x20AC;? Eric Coulombe, Garden Culture Magazine

HOME GROWN EXPO I GARDEN CULTURE

GROWING ALL TYPES OF FOOD EXPLORE NEW WAYS OF GARDENING

I have been a gardening enthusiast my whole life. I remember digging up my mother’s yard when I was 13, then the yard of the first house I rented, and building the garden at my first house here in Quebec. I love gardening, and lament Fall’s arrival when I have to pack it all away - that’s the end of September here. Then I patiently waited for the snow to melt, to begin again in Spring. Everything changed 12 years ago. I got a job as the sales manager for a “hydroponics” company. They were one of North America’s first indoor gardening companies, founded in 1969. There I discovered the wonders of hydroponics and indoor gardening. Now I garden every day, and have done so for a decade. I have devoted my life to selling this amazing idea, and now through Garden Culture Magazine, and the Homegrown Expo, I will continue to spread the message, “Autumn doesn’t mean the end of gardening or fresh food!” Most people don’t have the luxury of a plot of land to garden on, and fortunately the products here will work in city-center flats with the smallest available spaces. With food prices at an all time high, and increased public concern over GMOs, growing what you can in a small space is the best way to reconnect with nature. Less than a year ago, Richard Dennison from Down to Earth, James Walton from The Grind Magazine, and the crew here at Garden Culture Magazine, began discussing the idea of having a progressive growing show in the UK. The Homegrown Expo was born from the need to have a new type of UK gardening show. One that attracts a group of people who are willing to explore new ways of gardening, get their hands dirty, and feed their appetites for better food, local food, and a better world.

grow almost anything, anywhere. Every brand name product and system available for indoor/urban gardening in the UK will be on display. You’ll have access to advice from passionate industry experts. The feature areas will be alive with gardens of several varieties, growing all types of food, and someone there to explain how it works. This is the New English garden. Taking place in Coventry, England the weekend of May 31-June 1 at the Ricoh Center Times have changed in the past 50 years, and the food ‘system’, as managed by our governments in many developed nations, has failed us. Our fast food and over-processed culture is quickly creating the unhealthiest group of humans history has ever seen. As urban gardening projects grace the pages of newspapers and blogs across the world, it is plain to see that something is happening. People are getting excited about fresh food and urban gardens. They are also getting weary of mega companies and their influence on food politics around the globe.

Get yo www

Our mission is to change the world, one gardener at a time. Creating a new independence from a system that we have all been drawn into so slowly that nobody noticed. Take the first step and join us in Coventry on May 31 or June 1, 2014. 3

The EXPO was created to educate and motivate people about indoor and urban gardening, to grow their own food, and to expose hydroponics for what it is - the best, and most efficient way to

gardenculture.net

BY TAMMY CLAYTON

natural level of loss in hives from year to year of up to 15%

. S . U Thoeneybee H Dilemma For a decade the world has known there are worrisome problems with bees. Large losses in bee colonies both in Europe and North America is not news. It is a situation that grows more alarming as time goes by, but even more so when you really start investigating. There is an acceptable and natural level of loss in hives from year to year of up to 15%. We’re far past that, holding steady at a 31% average, but jumping to 45% for the 2012-2013 winter losses. For the past 8 years beekeeper surveys conducted by the apiary industry report the progress and egress of their hives. The survey gathers data of over-winter hive loss experienced by beekeepers. The best data on managed bees is kept by the Bee Lab in Minnesota. But no one is collecting data on wild bees, though it’s doubtful they’re unaffected. Poor nutrition is likely one cause of honeybee death. The loss of food variety, food quality, and food availability due to the magnitude of farmed and developed lands making big changes in the diets of pollinators. Monocropping on massive scales erases all plants but the crop, leaving little for a balanced bee diet. A creature’s system designed to run on flower nectar and pollen is probably not done any favors being fed high fructose corn syrup when their food source availability is low. Beekeepers have fed their swarms sugar-water to keep them from starving to death or leaving in search of food forever, but HFCS is cheaper than sugar. There is without a doubt some Roundup residue in a honey

bee’s emergency food supply. That’s nothing. Bees gather and consume 121 different pesticides from farm fields, orchards, landscaping and backyard gardens. Fungicides, insecticides and herbicides are found in honey and beeswax. Any hive - anywhere - will contain a minimum of 6 different pesticides, if not more than 24. Pesticides studies for toxicity only take into account separate active ingredients. Jaded research reporting being common, with not much attention paid to the other ingredients in the mix. Bees don’t collect isolated compounds. They collect multiple full-formula pesticides, and deposit them mingled in hives. Just as mixing the wrong medicines together is harmful, even deadly, what good comes from any living thing ingesting a molotov cocktail of pesticide chemicals with every meal? Aside from that honey on your toast including trace amount servings of a variety of unidentified pesticides, or that they use contaminated beeswax to make chocolate, candies, flavorings and processed foods... there are bigger things to worry about here. Bees are critical to all forms of life on this planet, and a major support to the economy. Fruit, nut, and vegetable growers

THE HONEYBEE DILEMMA I GARDEN CULTURE

all depend on bees to pollinate their crops and even increase produce quality. Livestock depends on honeybees to pollinate the alfalfa that provides a large portion of their diet. In 2008, the economic value of the U.S. crops that rely on pollination to produce food was in excess of £8.3 billion. California grows 80% of the world’s supply of almonds every year. Without honey bees to pollinate the blossoms, there would be no almonds. It once took half of the commercial bee population in the U.S. to pollinate the almond orchards every spring. There were barely enough to make it happen in 2013. While the commercial bee industry is naturally frustrated over their losses due to colony collapse where the adult bees simply vanish, disease spread by mites, or acute toxic poisoning... perhaps they should consider the upheaval of trucking honeybees from one end of the country to the other. Not everything was designed to withstand traveling 113-129 kilometers an hour through multiple time zones in the span of a day or three. Or fly them in from across the Pacific, and drop them in the orchard so they’ll get to work straightaway.

Still, if it weren’t for the beekeepers who make money off of pollination services, and honey and beeswax sales - no one would be too concerned about bee losses. Not the friendliest of nature’s creatures, counting abandoned wild hives isn’t being done. Most people would relish bees disappearing from the yard. The CCD phenomena and death by disease is nothing compared to the problem with yard care and agricultural chemicals. Disease is not an instant killer of an entire colony. It works slowly, and may very well be the result of weakened immune systems due to improper diets from monoculture farming, GMO crop pollens, high fructose corn syrup, and poor breeding habits - before

“If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.” – Albert Einstein

“Disease is not an instant killer of an entire colony”

gardenculture.net gardenculture.net

THE HONEYBEE DILEMMA I GARDEN CULTURE considering the effects of pesticides they’re ingesting and coated with. Bees with lowered immune systems would have a hard time making it through the winter, especially if temperatures were more frigid than normal. Some big beekeeping operations move their hives to warm climates for winter pollination services though. Like all businesses, keeping the money flowing is the goal. Heavy inbreeding for increased pollination and honey production is also thought as contributing to a less robust honey bee. Queens get imported from around the world, like any form of livestock, for breeding highly productive hives. The EPA and USDA suggests breeding back in native wild honey bee genes could improve health and resistance to disease in hives. Good point. Is an Italian or Russian honey bee hardy in any climate? Is there no end to what we can import, export, and factory-ize? Meanwhile, some of the most toxic insecticides can wipe out masses of bees in minutes, and are floating on the wind in the spring. Bee colonies near fields being planted with corn (maize) don’t stand a chance, and corn covers 25% of U.S. farmland and 121,400 hectares in Canada annually. They coat seed corn in neonicotinoid pesticides to protect the crop from being destroyed by bugs. Systemic compounds that work by destroying neurological and nervous system functions. The chemical is still present in the plants and fruit at harvest. Neonic coatings are on at least 90% of the corn seed sold in the U.S. It’s used on other seeds too, including sugar beets, cereals, sunflowers, and soybeans. So how does it wind up in the breeze? Sticky adhesive applied to the seed that’s coated in neonicotinoid powder. Farmers mix corn with talc for better flow, and the pesticidal coating abrades off moving through the planter from the hopper as an incredibly toxic dust that blows around the field, settling on weeds, trees, and any plants in the area. The amount of chemical on one seed is enough to kill a lot of bees... on contact. Beekeepers in both countries report the same connection to corn and mass bee-icide.

“The fact is, bees dying reflects a flowerless landscape, and a dysfunctional food system.” - Marla Spivak

there? Chances are it’s not many, if any at all. In many communities, they see unmaintained land as a danger, or an eyesore. They call it progress and development. Billions of acres of tamed land. Mow it, or pave it, or else. Wildflowers come from weeds that civilization won’t abide. Manicured landscapes sans holey leaves. Immaculate lawns mowed to precision, totally devoid of clover and dandelions - major components in a bee’s balanced diet. The coveted lawn is a monoculture bigger than corn - it covers 129,499 km2 in the United States alone. Where populations are the densest even manicured green space is at a minimum compared to the miles of asphalt, concrete, and buildings. Not much food for bees to survive on, if any at all. This massive loss of bees is not recent. The decline actually started right after World War II when they introduced synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, and the practice of planting cover crops like clover ceased. There were 42.5 million colonies of honey bees in the United States in 1945 that pollinated far fewer types of crops than they harvest now. Today we grow a total of 300 crops, and world population has also skyrocketed. Yet, in 2007 there were only 20 million colonies of honey bees, and in 2013? Bee Lab expert and University of Minnesota professor, Marla Spivak, puts the total cultivated honey bee hives at about 2 million. God forbid a bee nest appears in the yard. It’s quickly eradicated with a can of toxic bee killer spray to protect everyone from being stung. We, you and I, factory farming, industry... society as a collective whole have removed, or tainted the bees’ source of a healthy diet. Everyone tampers with their lifestyle and livelihood, as if they were machines or inert objects of little value to the unsustainable world people have created. 3

Arborists, landscapers, and homeowners use 40% more of this stuff in yards and gardens than the entire agricultural industry. There are neonicotinoid pesticides in many products used on soil, lawns, landscaping plants, fruits, and vegetables. They are systemic, which is why everyone is applying them, not just in the US, but around the world. While each group points its finger at a single cause, the reality is that what is going on with Learn more: the bees is due to multiple and interacting things: • beelab.umn.edu pesticides, disease, parasites, monoculture, and • ontariobee.com/sites/ontariobee.com/files/Evaluation%20of%20Canaa flowerless landscape. It’s not just agriculture dian%20Bee%20Mortalities.ENG-1.pdf that’s to blame. Look around you. Look at your • npr.org/2013/09/27/225440117/why-are-bees-disappearing yard, your neighborhood, your subdivision, your • sfgate.com/magazine/article/The-Almond-and-the-Bee-2518870.php city or town. How many acres of meadow are

gardenculture.net gardenculture.net

BY EVAN FOLDS

WHAT IS

FERTILIZER ANYWAY? The technology of farming is what literally started humanity. That’s right, before farming we hunted and gathered with most of our attention paid to survival instead of specializing. The first documented use of fertilizer is with Europe’s earliest farmers applying manure on their fields around 8,000 years ago. No doubt these ancient farmers noticed the thriving plants in the dung heap, and realized that using manure in their fields will help their plants grow bigger, better, faster. Mined inorganic fertilizers have been in use for many centuries, From the plants perspective, arguably not much. Consider whereas chemically synthesized inorganic fertilizers were only table salt, or sodium chloride (NaCl). When you stir it into widely developed after the industrial revolution, and through water it dissolves into a sodium (Na+) and chlorine (Cl-) ion. activity of the Military Industrial Complex. Plants eat these ions. “Fertilizer” is defined as: “a chemical or natural substance addAn ion is an atom or molecule in which the total number of ed to soil or land to increase its fertility”. This leaves how we electrons is not equal to the total number of protons, giving define “fertility” open to interpretation, and does not address the atom a net positive or negative. The relative imbalance of the fact that fertility is relative to the growing application. the ions begs cooperation with active transport sites in plant In a true objective sense, fertilizer is a crutch. Mother Nature roots in the electrical world of opposites attract. doesn’t require fertilizer. Fertilizer is a human invention used in Although there is a fair argument to be made about the commany cases to compensate for inferplexity and isotopic potential of “ F I R S T D O C U M E N T E D natural versus artificial sources of tile soil, but if used properly, can become a mechanism to enhance the U S E O F F E R T I L I Z E R . . . plant nourishment, technically, so strength and yield potential of plants. the argument goes, whether the ion 8,0 0 0 YE A RS AG O” In concept, the original manure is from a mineral salt or from bat farmer is really no different from a modern hydroponic farmer guano, the plant doesn’t really care. using fertilizer salts to grow crops in water or soilless growing However, from the perspective of the soil the natural vs. armediums. Many growers have experienced the massive yields tificial discussion is an entirely different story. Nature doesn’t achieved with hydroponics relative to soil-based applications. understand artificial. In fact, most artificial materials take adBut there is one major difference, the manure is Mother Navantage of Nature on some level, if they don’t kill her outright. ture’s creation, and the hydroponic fertilizer salt is artificial and Let’s be specific. Artificial fertilizers are not directly toxic, but created by man. Anyone attuned to hydroponics out there will they do not feed the microbes responsible for making plant food have surely had this conversation with someone at some point in healthy soil. The solubility is what makes artificial salts a good - what is the difference between an organic fertilizer and an fertilizer, and the technology is how the ratios of elements are artificial fertilizer? put together. This is completely different from Nature.

FERTILIZER I GARDEN CULTURE

“ N ATU R E DOESN’T REQUIRE FERTILIZER”

“IN HEALTHY SOIL, MICROBES MAKE PLANT FOOD - NOT PEOPLE” In healthy soil, microbes make plant food - not people. A tree doesn’t eat leaves, but the humus that the microbes in the soil make from it. This is what we call composting, which represents the most fundamental concept of nutrient cycling in living systems. In a forest there is no harvest, and in “A R T I F I C I A L the closed nutrient loop retains eveFER T I L I ZERS A R E N OT rything. Imagine if we pulled all the D I R E C T LY TOX I C” leaves out of a forest? The entire system would shut down, right? Now imagine if we only added half of what we removed back? This is the status of the modern garden and farm. In the end, it is nutritionally empty, and infested with pests and disease. Artificial salts bypass the natural mechanism of biological decomposition, and work to discourage microbes in an attempt So what the plant is eating in hydroponics is sufficient, but not to feed the plant directly. With awareness towards the comwhat it could be. But the real no-no is when we apply hydroplexity and subtlety of life, we can do justice to plants and ourponic principles in a soil-based environment. This doesn’t levselves using artificial techniques such as hydroponics - but this erage the point of the soil, or its strength, and brings into the scenario the need to flush excess salts out of the soil, which is is a larger responsibility than most fertilizer companies realize. Hydroponics makes sense because the growing process is todifficult to do in the Earth. tally separated from Nature, and accomplished in a closed sysThis is an important point in regards to the differences betem where one can leverage its benefits. But it would not be tween hydroponics and organics. With hydroponics we use reaccurate to say that the average hydroponic fertilizer that confined fertilizers, they are essentially everything a plant requires tains no more than seventeen elements is everything a plant for growth. But with organics, because Mother Nature creates the material, there is an innate diversity of nutrition that the wants. How could it be? Do we imagine that plants desire no grower gets without even trying. more than seventeen elements from Nature?

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GARDEN CULTURE I FERTILIZERS

“fertility is relative to the growing application” This is the qualitative difference some growers see in hydroponics versus organics. It’s not that it is impossible to achieve quality in hydroponics, but that the grower needs to pay more attention to the nutritional diversity, considering they have set themselves up as the sole proprietor. In the healthiest of soil all elements are in play. Even if the element is not used directly by a plant, microbes use every single one of them to create their enzyme potential. Growing a garden without all elements present is like hiring microbes to build a house and giving them half the tools. Think of it like the limitations of LED plant lighting technology. It’s great when you can choose individual wavelengths to save electricity, but what happens if you miss one? In regards to fertilizer, we end up with NPK-based fertilization and the average gardener creating obesity in their plants pumping them full of soluble nitrogen purchased cheaply at a Big Box store. We have to get past the marketing, and ask ourselves questions from the perspective of the plant. For example, why would Mother Nature make elements not needed in the garden? The essential difference of natural vs. artificial is humanity. It is our logic, our decision, our responsibility. This is why

our choices are so important. Any inkling of a closed mind on the best way to engage living systems will fail us. Soil’s fertility is innate if human artificiality does not intervene. It is when we apply hydroponic methods in natural living systems that we end up with empty food, and the toxic rescue chemistry of modern conventional agriculture. Bottom line: don’t treat your soil like a hydroponic system. Plants make their own food. We can have the poorest of soil conditions and apply fertilizer and create a yield. The question is what are we missing if this is all we are doing? In Part Two of this article we will discuss the specifics of how plants use fertilizer to build themselves, and how the use of targeted biocatalysts can take major responsibility off of the plant to accomplish monster yields in the garden. Don’t miss the next issue of Garden Culture. 3

B I O B I Z Z ® P R O U D LY S U P P O R T S TH E G R E AT I N ITI ATI VE

JUSTDIGGIT

Since last year, in 2013, Biobizz® is supporting an amazing initiative called JustDiggIt. It was initiated by the Naga Foundation mainly to combat desertification and climate change. Because of severe drought the rainwater glides along the surface and cannot reach in and moisturize the soil. This causes the dry soil to be infertile and unable to grow anything. JustDiggIt fights this by digging ditches, of about 1 meter/1.09 yards deep, removing the top layer and allowing the rainwater to seep into the soil, making it fertile. The seeds in the soil can grow and bloom again “re-greening” the areas and letting the natural vegetation restore. Biobizz® proudly supports this initiative, since they also want to contribute to a greener world and restore Mother Earth. In 2013 they held an online fundraiser on Facebook where people could show their support by ‘liking’ the page. For every like an amount was donated to JustDiggIt corresponding

one green square meter. Many people showed their support and Biobizz® donated, saving 10 000 square meters from desertification in total! Through the Facebook fundraiser, Biobizz® contributed to reaching their main goal, which is saving 266 000 000m² of land from desertification. Moreover, Biobizz® will continue supporting this inspirational and effective way of saving the earth. JustDiggIt wants to make people aware and wish that everyone who wants to, can get involved and contribute to a greener and better environment, one way or another. Do you want to know how many square meters they have saved in total? Or want to contribute to a greener world? Please visit their website: www.justdiggit.org or if you want to know more about Biobizz® and their contributions to Mother Nature? Please have a look at: www.biobizz.com 3

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“LIGHT PLAYS SUCH A CRITICAL ROLE IN A PLANT’S SUCCESS”

“A BETTER WAY TO MEASURE PL ANT LIGHTING IS HOW MUCH ENERGY THE L AMP CONSUMES”

LUMENS

ARE FOR HUMANS

ACCURATELY MEASURING PLANT LIGHTING

UNDERSTANDING PAR While a plant benefits to a small degree from the light wavelength or spectra that the eye sees, plants respond best to the Ultraviolet (UV) and Infrared (IR) regions of the spectrum. However, if the spectrum is narrowly or not emitted at all by the lamp, then the plants will not develop to its fullest vegetative or flowering potential that natural sunlight would allow.

70 70

BY DARRYL COTTON

LUMENS I GARDEN CULTURE

Since light plays such a critical role in a plant’s success, it’s important to have the proper quality and quantity of light available as the plant needs it. Insufficient light levels will reduce a plant’s overall weight and cause development of stress, decreased nodule density, and smaller leaves. While too much light can cause plant damage from excessive IR heat radiation or extreme UV radiation. This article will introduce you to the importance of two biological reactions that occur within a plant, as it relates to proper light selection; Photosynthesis and Photomorphogenesis. Plants absorb light by a green pigment within the plant known as chlorophyll. When chlorophyll absorbs light, and turns it into energy, it takes place through a chemical process within the plant called Photosynthesis. As Photosynthesis occurs, the wavelength spectrum that is most beneficial to plant growth is found within certain areas between the 380-720 nanometer range of the spectrum. The light that is within this region we refer to as Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR). A plant’s spectral lighting needs changes as it grows. Since spectrum plays an important part in the success of the plant’s growth, developmental biologists call the presence of these light mediated changes that the plant absorbs through a variety of receptors Photomorphogenesis. This chlorophyll absorption chart shows the average PAR ranges needed by most plants for maximum chlorophyll absorp-

tion. Within these ranges plants will respond very well to the emitted light wavelengths. We measure visible light in Lumens, LUX, Lumens Per Watt, or Footcandles. But are these same measurements also adequate when measuring for a plants lighting levels? No. While there is nothing wrong with knowing these measurements, they aren’t the best measurements for choosing the best lamp for our plants’ overall needs. A better way to measure plant lighting is to determine how much energy the lamp consumes, and how much light actually makes it to the plant surfaces where both Photosynthesis and Photomorphogenesis occurs. When measuring light QUANTITY for a plant, we look to measure how many PHOTONS (the minimum unit of energy involving light) are falling each second within a square meter. Photons are such a small unit of measurement we refer to them as MICROMOLES OF PHOTONS, or often just MICROMOLES, to describe measurements of how many photons are arriving at a plant’s surface from the emitted light source. For reference: 2000 micromoles would be a sunlight level measurement.

Chloro p hy ll A bsor p t ion Ch ar t Nanometers

PAR Influences

200 - 280 280 - 315 315 - 380 380 - 400 400 - 520 520 - 610 610 - 720 720 - 1000 1000+

UVC ultraviolet range; extremely toxic to plants. UVB ultraviolet light; causes plants colors to fade. UVA ultraviolet light; is neither harmful nor beneficial to plant growth. Start of visible light spectrum. Chlorophyll Absorption begins. UV protected plastics ideally block out any light below this range. This range includes violet, blue, and green bands. Peak chlorophyll absorption influences photosynthesis. Most significant in promoting vegetative growth. This range includes the green, yellow, and orange bands, and has little absorption by receptors. This is the Red band where large instances of chlorophyll absorption occur, which promote flowering and budding. There is little chlorophyll absorption in this range. Flowering and germination are influenced at the high Far-Red end as infrared heat. Totally infrared range. All energy absorbed at this point is converted to heat.

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Of most value to the grower and his plant - the number of photons being measured at the plant, per second, per square meter, within the PAR ranges of 380-720 nanometers. This value is then known as the PHOTOSYNTHETIC PHOTON FLUX (PPF) level that the lamp emits. Meters that measure these PPF values are often called QUANTUM METERS, because the amount of energy carried by a photon is a quantum. These meters provide entire spectrum measurements of the total number of photons per second values, as well as measure the YIELD PHOTON FLUX (YPF) of the lamp, which as we’ve seen by the plants photomorphogenis requirements, assists the grower in identifying what lamp has the proper PAR spectrum for maximum photosynthetic response at that stage of plant growth. Another way growers like to measure light for plants is by PAR WATTS. What this refers to is how much light energy is available between the 400-700 nanometer ranges required for Photosynthesis. It’s extremely important to know the efficiency of the lamp being considered. Be careful when considering these values to not correlate higher PAR WATT values with more successful yields. With

D E

Down to Earth Kent Ltd

energy-efficient lighting, such as induction, the PAR Watts per square meter may measure 70% less than an HID, yet still deliver micromoles in excess of the HID within the plants PPF and YPF requirements.

Measuring Plant Lighting There are a number of ways to measure grow lighting levels. There remains much debate about which method provides the gardener with the best information in determining if the light source is providing the ideal wavelengths and intensities to optimize plant response. Ultimately, the right method will always come down to our plant’s response to those spectrums and intensities. The complexities of understanding and choosing which technology, or lamp, is best suited for indoor gardening is confusing for many. As you can see by the Net Action Absorption Chart, what is presently believed as the areas of greatest importance for a lamp’s energy to meet peak chlorophyll absorption points would be in the Vegetative Regions (Ultraviolet-Blue) and Flowering Regions (Red-Far Red). Plants need less energy from the Carotenoid Region (Green-Yellow), but as you can see there is still need for the lamp to emit within this region.

Tel: +44 (0) 1223 610021 Tel: +44 (0) 1223 500633

Email: info@downtoearthkentltd.org.uk Website: www.downtoearthkent.co.uk

LUMENS I GARDEN CULTURE Grow lamp manufacturers produce Spectral Distribution Graphs for their lamps that graphically depict where the lamp will output wavelengths, and in what intensities of emission. This works well in allowing growers to determine the lamp’s spectral output characteristics. The gardener can then decide if that particular lamp would work best for the type of plant being grown, specific growth cycles - or if the spectrum is broad enough to take the plants from vegetative through flowering stages using a single lamp. In determining the proper lamp to purchase, gardeners sometimes mistakenly rely on numerically driven data - such as a comparison of lumen output, lumen/watt, kelvin, lux, and μmole ratings. For plant lighting comparisons, each of these values will give incomplete information at best. They can also provide information that is mostly irrelevant to what your plants actually require. A more informed approach relies on a review of the manufacturer’s spectral distribution graph. Once installed, you’ll still want to measure light intensity to have complete lamp performance data. These types of field intensity measurements are usually made with a modestly priced PAR meter that’s been calibrated to the sun, and not the artificial light source being measured. Which leads us to why lamp output data should never be based on: •

•

Lumens, Lumens/Watt, Lux, or Foot Candles - These are all measurement terms that by definition reference intensities adjusted to the human photopic luminosity function. They have little bearing on how a plant will respond. Kelvin – This is another human visual standard with 555 nm being peak visual sensitivity, and 510/610nm being halfpeak visual sensitivity. Higher Kelvin values imply more blue to red ratio, and lower Kelvin values indicate a greater red to blue ratio. Basing your grow lamp decision on visual red or blue lamp emission levels is not a good means of determining if that lamp is meeting the actual absorbance regions. μMole – This value is obtained by using a PAR meter, which is a better meter for reading plant intensity values in that it is not correcting for human vision like the first two meters will do. It still has some of its own issues.

The problem with relying too heavily on a μMole value is that it is based on the total light intensity in the 400-700 nm range, and does not account for the spectral points within that range. This issue is further complicated by the fact that PAR meters actually measure light intensity (not actual photon counts). It must assume a spectral distribution to actually assign a uMol/ M2-S value. This assumed spectral distribution for a PAR meter will normally be natural sunlight, but for artificial light, with a different spectral distribution, errors will occur.

“PHOTONS - THE MINIMUM UNIT OF LIGHT ENERGY” For example, shorter wavelength photons have more energy than longer wavelength photons; a 420 nm photon has 1.5 times the energy of a 630 nm photon. If a particular light source was very heavy in the violet and blue region the PAR meter would likely yield a higher uMol/M2-S based on a sunlight calibration, assuming that some of that additional light energy from the blue must be red. Not having a weighted μMole value is also problematic when dealing with narrow spectrum technologies such as LED panels. Manufacturers will often advertise high intensities of 2000 μMoles @ 609mm from the source. While that reading might very well be in a peak absorption region, it could easily be a reading in a green-yellow region, or of such narrow bandwidth, that its output is of little value to the plants overall or regional net action absorption requirements. It is for these reasons a complete determination of the lamps output should include reference to the manufacturers spectral distribution graph, and the amount of energy being expended in the three PAR absorbance regions. Manufacturers need to publish plant lighting data in a metric that will enable gardeners with a numerical value that describes the lamp’s value in both plant spectrums and intensities. A single number, such as lamp lumen output, does not provide the gardener with meaningful data. Since no lamp technology is 100% efficient in turning electrical energy into light we have to take these conversion efficiencies in the three plant absorbance regions into account: • Vegetative 400-520 nanometers • Carotenoid 520-610 nanometers • Flowering 610-700 nanometers 3

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7373

BY GRUBBYCUP

PLANT

NUTRITION “MACRONUTRIENTS ARE THE NUTRIENTS PL ANTS USE IN THE L ARGEST QUANTITIES”

“PL ANTS ARE UNABLE TO ABSORB NITROGEN FROM THE AIR” 74

PLANT NUTRITION I GARDEN CULTURE

Macronutrients are the nutrients plants use in the largest quantities. These are nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and sulfur. Nitrogen(N), phosphorus(P), and potassium(K) are the most important nutritionally to the plant, and therefore are the most important to you as a gardener.

“ N P K R AT I N G S A R E P R O P O R T I O N S” Fertilizers list the NPK values for the first three macronutrients. The first of the three numbers indicate the percentage of nitrogen. Ammonium nitrate (NH 4) (NO3) has an NPK rating of 34-0-0. Therefore 34% of the weight of the fertilizer is nitrogen, and 66% of the weight of the fertilizer is something else.

nitrogen directly from ammonium (NH 4) well, but flowers and vegetables respond better to nitrogen further processed by bacteria into nitrate (NO3). Nitrogen deficient leaves will contain relatively little chlorophyll, and will thus be pale green or yellow, and plants will have slowed growth. Nitrogen is very mobile in plants, and this enables them readily to move supplies where they are most required. Such transference is common from old growth to young growing tips when supplies are short. This mobility and reutilization of nitrogen explains why deficiency symptoms appear first in the older parts of plants, working their way up to the grow tips. This same type of symptom creeps from bottom to top is common to all mobile nutrients.

“VEGETABLES RESPOND BETTER TO NITROGEN PROCESSED BY BACTERIA INTO NITR ATE”

The second number is the amount of phosphorus by weight, as if the phosphorus expressed comes from phosphorus pentoxide (P 2O5). This is true even if the phosphorus is in another form. Phosphate Rock with a NPK rating of 0-30-0 indicates that it contains enough phosphorus to create enough phosphorus pentoxide (P 2O5) to equal 30% of the total weight.

The third number is potassium content by weight, as if the potassium expressed comes from potassium oxide (K 2O). A NPK rating of 0-0-60 for potassium chloride denotes a potassium content equal to 60% potassium oxide. NPK ratings are proportions, so a fertilizer with an NPK rating of 2-1-2 has the same relative proportion as a fertilizer made from the same ingredients at 4-2-4. The difference would only be in the percentage of fillers or in the concentration.

Nitrogen (N) In gardens, nitrogen deficiency is the most common nutrient deficiency. Nitrogen is important for the proper development of chlorophyll (the green in leaves) used in photosynthesis. Nitrogen compounds comprise 40% to 50% of the dry matter of plant cells. It promotes large healthy foliage, absorption by roots, and proper plant development. Used in chlorophyll, amino acids, proteins, and nucleic acids. Trees and shrubs absorb

Nitrogen gas (N 2) is the most common element in our atmosphere. Plants are unable to absorb nitrogen directly from the air. The nitrogen gas (N 2) must convert into ammonium (NH 4) or nitrate (NO3) before it’s available to plants. Nitrogen from the air becomes “fixed” in the form of ammonia (NH 3) by microorganisms. Bacteria, such as rhizobiums live in the roots of legumes (i.e. beans, clover, peas, peanuts). Because of this symbiotic relationship with nitrogen-fixing bacteria; legumes are often used in crop rotations to restore nitrogen to depleted soil. Organic nitrogen from organic material isn’t readily available to plants. It’s locked up until decomposition, when it becomes a natural source of ammonia (NH 3),

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PLANT NUTRITION I GARDEN CULTURE

and ammonium (NH 4). Waste products of animals contain nitrogen in the form of urea (NH 2)2(CO). Urea converts to ammonia (NH 3) by bacteria using the enzyme ureasec. Regardless of the source, when exposed to acidic conditions (pH less than 7) the ammonia (NH 3) picks up another hydrogen (H) atom, and converts to ammonium (NH 4). A man-made source of ammonium (NH 4) is by manufacture from nitrogen gas (N 2) by applying heat, pressure, and an iron catalyst. Ammonium sulfate ((NH 4)2 SO 4 ) and Ammonium nitrate (NH 4)(NO3) are other manufactured forms of nitrogen used for fertilizer.

“ORGANIC NITROGENS ARE NOT IMMEDIATELY AVAILABLE TO PLANTS”

Trees and shrubs absorb nitrogen ammonium (NH 4), but grasses and vegetables respond better to nitrogen further processed by bacteria into nitrate (NO3). Nitrifying (with an “i”) bacteria such as convert the ammonium (NH 4) to nitrites (NO2), then nitrafying (with an “a”) bacteria such as nitrobactera convert the nitrites (NO2) to nitrates (NO3).

“THEY USE MORE NITROGEN IN THE VEGETATIVE GROWTH PHASE”

Nitrates are in a state that the plant can absorb, but nitrates are also soluble in water so excess amounts are easily washed away, and can contribute to agricultural pollution issues. Ideally, plants would have exposure to nitrates at a similar rate to what they use. Too little, and the plant underperforms. Too much, and the excess can go to waste, or cause environmental damage. Common forms of nitrogen used as fertilizers are: Potassium nitrate (KNO3), sodium nitrate (NaNO3), and ammonium nitrate (NH 4)(NO3) are fertilizers that supply immediately available nitrates (NO3). Ammonium sulfate ((NH 4)2 SO 4 )and ammonium nitrate (NH 4)(NO3) are man-made fertilizers that supply ammonium (NH 4) for plant use, and for bacteria to convert to nitrate (NO3).

Nitrifying bacteria

Urea (NH 2)2(CO) converts quickly to ammonium, and then gradually converts to nitrate.

Organic nitrogens (from proteins and amino acids) are not immediately available to plants, and must be broken down by bacteria first into ammonium, and then to nitrate. This spreads the nitrogen distribution out over time creating a slow-release action. Plants use nitrogen in the creation and use of chlorophyll, and photosynthesis. Chlorophyll gives the leaves their green color. Too little, and the older leaves turn pale green, then yellow, then die. Too much, and the leaves turn dark green, stems turn rigid, and the plant will show signs of ill-health. They use more nitrogen in the vegetative growth phase, when photosynthesis activity is at its peak, but they do need some nitrogen throughout adult life since photosynthesis is always needed by the plant. 3 Condensed from Grubbycup’s Gardening Notes

gardenculture.net

BY EVEREST FERNANDEZ

“The kernel of naivety is one’s ignorance of it.”

What the

~ Everest Fernandez, 1993.

Chances are, you already know. We’re in the midst of a big, fat, global communications revolution. Really, it’s no wonder that you’re already so tired of hearing about it. And yet, while some novelty admittedly still lingers when I Skype my relatives on a Sunday afternoon, as far as the menu of potential wonders the Internet has in store for us all, we’ve barely even swallowed our first amuse-bouche. I sincerely hope you brought an appetite.

First, let’s talk about all the inforthe power of mental arithmetic, “IT HAS, TECHNICALLY AT mation. Consider where most of just as the iPhone reduced the LEAST, REMOVED THE AGE-OLD importance of information-recall us were just twenty years ago. MONOPOLY OVER KNOWLEDGE” from our old-fashioned grey Broadcast television had us all suckling eagerly from the same set matter. Consequently, a certain of teats for years. (Oh what Caesar would’ve done to secure epistemological smugness has taken root in our psyche—a such an awesome public opinion homogenization technology viscous, lazy lava of philosophical hubris slowly filling the void for his empire!) We all know that quaint 1950s footage of evacuated by our all-knowing smart phones. Young academics today have enjoyed a lifelong normalcy of World Wide American families arrayed in passive crescent moons around Web access, so who can blame these bright little twentybig wooden boxes and tiny fish bowl screens and how obesomethings if they labor under the misapprehension that they diently receptive they appear today. How easily pleased we were with a single channel! know it all or, at least, that everything is knowable? In light of the massive technological advancements witnessed during the decades since, the notion of us still languishing in the “digital dark ages” might seem a little ungenerous. Is it not delightful that we can now obtain our daily dose of mental milk in any flavor, pasteurized or raw, on-demand, downloaded, streamed, liked, and favorited via countless independent sources and online information-aggregators? And, of course, the electronic effluent now flows in all directions. Once we’re full up with news, novelty and fresh talking points, we can regurgitate our opinions and reactions ad nauseam via a stream of digital burps on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and that most esteemed haven of polite discourse and intellectual advancement, YouTube comments. While the unfathomably large scale of information available to us online may have fallen short of transforming us all into scholars, society at large has certainly changed—albeit on a more subtle level. The electronic calculator arguably devalued

Before I sound a little too wistful for the long lost past, I should give our brave new Internet its fair dues, for it has, technically at least, removed the age-old monopoly over knowledge that has pervaded mankind throughout the centuries. This monopoly was effectively enforced by an exclusive mastery over language skills, and access to books. Not even 200 years ago, bound volumes of any type remained unaffordable and inaccessible (literally) to all but a tiny fraction of the population. Only a privileged elite and associated top-tier institutions could even afford them, let alone read them. Yes, the proliferation of public libraries in the twentieth century certainly helped the willing and able but, these days, are you really going to make the trip to town just to confirm whether proper nouns are immutable when Googling it takes no more time than giving yourself a pat on the back? Didn’t think so. Some of you might be thinking that I’m describing a markedly different Internet to the one you already know so well.

INTERNET I GARDEN CULTURE

INTERNET did…

Perhaps to you it’s just Gmail, a few spooky ads, Facebook, and the proverbial dancing cats. Maybe the Internet is simply a closed communications tool—a cheaper way of irritating friends and family? Or you could be more excited by its potential for helping you to discover strangers—particularly those who share your more quirky penchants? Perhaps the role of “internet brave” is the most enticing? I.e. Deliberately trespassing on the digital territories of folks who hold opposing opinions to your own (Creationists vs. Darwinists, Beliebers vs. Non Beliebers) and hounding them relentlessly with devilishly eloquent chastisements—or photos of goats.

“EVERY THING IS K N OWA B L E” Whatever your bag of Internet tricks may contain—indulging your inner sadist troll, sheeple-rustling, researching the antiquity of the new world order, profiting from the de-centralized TOR network to altruistically host random fragments of child pornography and step-by-step bomb-building instructions on your home computer (all in the name of liberty, of course) or maybe binging on an entire season of Toddlers and Tiaras just because you can, there is a veritable universe of information at our fingertips. Okay, got all that? Good—now, what else?

AND WHAT IT'S GOING TO DO...

Well, what about services—you know, real stuff like shopping? Amazon. Need to sell that stuff you bought but don’t actually need? eBay. House-swap? Homeexchange.com. Venturing outside? Yelp! Maybe you just need a couch for the night? Google “I need a couch for the night” for crying out loud—do I have to

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INTERNET I GARDEN CULTURE

prospect at all. Our current monetary system is already electronic, just zeros and ones, held together by vast, heavily fortified server farms across the globe, and endless miles of optical fiber. The problem is it’s based on debt and issued by strange, non-productive institutions called banks. Countless YouTube videos have probably already told you that virtually all money is loaned into existence, interest is attached to it, and somehow we must pay back the prinOf course, these websites, apps, ciple and the interest from an in“THE PROBLEM IS IT’S BASED ON widgets, call them what you sufficient money supply—making DEBT AND ISSUED BY STRANGE, will, find popularity because it artificially scarce. As the total NON-PRODUCTIVE INSTITUTIONS” money supply inevitably increases they meet a real need. In other “OUR HURDLE IS NOT due to more debt-based money words, their time has come. TECHNOLOGICAL, BUT The aforementioned BlaBlaCar being pumped into the system just PSYCHOLOGICAL” was going nowhere until a wellto pay the interest on preexisting timed press release coincided debts, so our individual “share” with a series of national strikes that had paralyzed the French of symbolic global wealth, along with our purchasing power, transport system. Suddenly people woke up to an alternative shrivels to nothing. In short, our current monetary system is way of doing things—a better way—a cheaper way! Change nothing short of modified slavery—it’s just that most of us don’t know anything different or better. is invariably borne out of necessity. spell everything out for you? Forgot to buy your train ticket? Even the French are getting in on the Internet act (it took them a while) with BlaBlaCar.com. It’s now such a successful car-share website that even the French national rail system recently declared it as an official competitor. Better yet, you can even specify the “chattiness” of the people you want to share a vehicle with. (No wonder I don’t get any lifts.)

This brings us, somewhat predictably I know, I know, to Bitcoin. Oh God, do we have to discuss Bitcoin? Perhaps, like me, you’re still more than a little gutted that you didn’t stuff your digital wallet to bursting point when they were being traded at less than 10 pence each. Why didn’t I throw a speculative £296 at the fledgling digital currency project back in 2009—you know, just to help it get off the ground? Oh cursed hindsight! I could be blogging incessantly about my rocky adjustment to life as a millionaire instead of having to charge per word for my lamentations. Actually, it turns out that Bitcoin is more harbinger than savior—a mental preparatory exercise to help us get to grips with the breaking of another longstanding monopoly. No biggie—just the monopoly over our time, energy, and resources. Yes, I’m talking about money. That stuff we spend our lives chasing. Centrally controlled, bank-issued fiat currency. Bitcoin offers us an alternative payment media. With the swipe of a mobile phone, or the tap of a few keys, we can make a payment that has nothing to do with a central bank, PayPal, or any government. This is a quantum leap forward, but it’s only just the beginning. Money is the grandest monopoly of them all, so don’t think for a moment that it won’t go down without a temper tantrum or two. Our future isn’t to be found in gold or silver, it’s in digital money—a scary prospect for some but, actually, it’s not a

If globalist politicians and banks have their way, we will march towards a single, world currency. No doubt it will be hailed as the “urgent solution” to all the perceived evils in the world: wealth inequality, environmental destruction, food commodity speculation, corporate tax avoidance, you name it. The coming global financial collapse is as much a mathematical inevitability as a political opportunity—just another instantiation of the age-old maxim: problem, reaction, solution. I earnestly hope that the Internet will not only do its job in alerting us to the highly preferable alternatives to a global currency, but it will actually be the infrastructure for realizing a new, equitable system of money. So what’s stopping us? As usual, our hurdle is not technological, but psychological. If I ask you how much a Bitcoin is worth today no doubt you will answer in terms of US dollars, pounds, euros, yen, or some other geopolitical, centralized, fiat currency. And there’s the rub. We are tethered to our cherished, familiar currencies—conditioned from birth to regard them simultaneously as both a means of exchange and a scale of value, despite the fact that the purchasing power of these currency units is permanently being ebbed away. A global scale of value—just as we have inches to measure length, and Fahrenheit to gauge temperature—is the key to this whole conundrum. I don’t care what you call it, just don’t be hoodwinked into thinking that a global currency and a glob-

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INTERNET I GARDEN CULTURE

al scale of value are one and the same thing. They are not. The scale is just that. A scale. It starts at zero and ends somewhere near infinity. It’s the virtual yardstick upon which the price for everything on the planet could be measured. A Lamborghini will probably still cost more than ten Fiats. But at least nobody owns or manipulates the unit of account. It just is what it is. Instead of being reliant on banks for loans, corporations can issue themselves with credit—based on a promise of future delivery of whatever it is they do. They effectively become their own minting machine. A hairdresser promises future haircuts. A garlic grower promises future garlic. An energy supplier promises electricity. A burger joint owner promises … well, you get the picture. The notion of corporations having access to their own electronic printing press may well cause you to shudder. (But this is precisely what one particular type of corporation, banks, do every day.) You may wonder— what if these corporations go crazy and flood the market with their “funny money”? I.e. what’s preventing them from issuing credits well in excess of their capacity to fulfill the promises backing them, a bit like a rogue seller on eBay claiming he has 100 (non-existent) iPads for sale just before the holiday season. Well, similar to the seller’s soon-to-plummet eBay rating, the value of a corporation’s credit token can be instantly evaluated online by comparing the offers to buy vs. the offers to sell their token. I.e. do they really deliver? If I issue myself with twice as many credits as my productive capacity, the value of my tokens automatically halves, driving them back towards parity. Can you imagine a self-correcting monetary system that penalizes rather than rewards greed?

“C HANGE IS INVARIABLY BORNE OUT OF NEC ESSIT Y” mons—it represents real things that normal people actually need, not usurious treasury bonds that collateralize us all. This new system of money based on self-issued credit is actually nothing new. It’s just that the Internet can make it happen on a global scale. Not only do we decouple the money power from the state and the banks, it can also imbue us with the power to boycott a particular corporation’s credit token if we don’t, say, like their weed killer or moral track record. What’s more, there’s no inflation imperative, because money no longer has interest attached to it. In this scenario there would be millions of currencies to choose from, but just one global scale to value them all against. Remember that image of the 1950s family glued to their mono-channel television set? Well, guess what? They just got cable.

“IM AGINE A SELF- CORREC TING MONETARY SYSTEM THAT PENALIZES GREED”

Eventually—after being involved in a series of trades around the world that probably have nothing to do with the original issuer—the token finds its way back home. I.e. somebody wants to buy garlic from the garlic grower using the garlic grower’s own token. When this happens, not only does the buyer enjoy a modest bonus upon redemption (an incentive for completing the token’s lifecycle), but the token vanishes. After all, it doesn’t represent anything anymore—its promise has been fulfilled. Moreover, money at large has been returned to the com-

This liberation won’t come easy. Perhaps enslavement under an opaque, global, centralized currency is a necessary hardship, the butterfly’s cocoon—just as long as we caterpillars don’t surrender the Internet in the process. After the money power is returned to the people, what remains to be liberated? The human mind? Both ironic and telling, is it not, that no technology is required. 3

For more information on self-issued credit, go to YouTube—of course. Search for: Digital Coin—An Introduction The Essence of Money Further reading: www.newapproachtofreedom.info www.moneyasdebt.net

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