Rhode Island Feeds

The back of the organic cotton T-Shirt

The front of the lawn sign

At long last, the “Kiss My Grass . . . It’s Organic” T-Shirts and “Safe to Play” lawn signs are back from the printer and available! Reflecting the winning choices from a slogan contest we ran throughout the summer, the items can be purchased on-line at http://www.safelawns.org/merch/.

The T-Shirts are premium 100 percent organic cotton light yellow, in women’s and men’s styles and in sizes Small, Medium, Large, Extra-Large and XXL. The cost is $24 for 1, or $40 for 2 and $18 apiece for three or more. They are printed front and back, with the SafeLawns Logo on the front and the Kiss My Grass artwork shoulder to shoulder on the back.

The Lawn Signs are also printed front and back in heavyweight vinyl measuring 8 inches by 6 inches and include a steel lawn stake. The cost is $12 for one, $20 for two and $8 each for three or more.

The secure site is managed through 1shoppingcart.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

Tomorrow night, Thursday, September 2nd, the Providence City Council will vote on an ordinance to permit residents to keep egg-laying hens in the city. Southside Community Land Trust stands behind this proposal to allow urban chicken-keeping in Providence, believing that access to fresh, locally-raised eggs is beneficial for nutrition, the environment, food safety, and economic self-reliance.

More broadly, SCLT believes that incorporating urban chicken farming into Providence’s local food movement—already strong thanks to thriving community gardens and farmer’s markets and a tradition of culinary arts—would further distinguish the city as both a center for urban food culture and a leader of green initiatives.

Some Providence residents have expressed legitimate concerns about the consequences of allowing their neighbors to raise backyard chickens. SCLT has offered to serve as a community resource on this subject, and we are committed to educating city residents about responsible chicken-rearing. With that in mind, here are some facts about chickens that will hopefully put a few common misconceptions to roost.

Myth: Chickens make noise.

Fact: While it’s true that roosters crow, hens are actually very quiet animals. They do not squawk unless they are afraid, and they go to sleep at night just like other household pets.

Myth: Chickens are dirty and spread disease.

Fact: This fear is understandable given the recent headlines about eggs contaminated with salmonella in the media. However, it is important to remember that those eggs came from an industrial-scale chicken farm. Confined animal feeding operations are much more likely to harbor diseases because they pack a large number of animals into a tight space (one that is often devoid of sunlight or grass). Home-raised eggs, on the other hand, are less likely to contain hazardous bacteria because individual backyard chicken coops with a limited number of hens are more protected from the spread of illness. Backyard chickens do not have to be dosed with antibiotics or synthetic hormones, and their eggs have also been shown to be naturally richer in omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin E than those from industrial settings.

Myth: Chickens are normally confined to rural areas.

Fact: In reality, more than 65 percent of major U.S. cities, including Portland, New York, Seattle, Denver, Madison, Baltimore, and New Haven have chicken-keeping ordinances on the books.

Myth: Chickens take up a lot of space and consume valuable resources.

Fact: Actually, chickens need surprisingly little room. Poultry associations designate that chickens require only 3 square feet of ranging area per bird. The initial cost of setting up a small coop and pen can be as low as $100, and hens cost very little to feed, especially if their diet is supplemented with weeds, grass clippings, bugs, and kitchen scraps. A single hen can lay about five eggs per week, saving families money on their food budget and providing a high-protein form of energy. The average American meal travels about 1500 miles to get from farm to plate; by raising chickens right here in Providence, citizens will be substantially reducing their carbon footprint.

Myth: Chicken waste is bad for the soil.

Fact: On the contrary! Chicken droppings are extremely high in nitrogen, an important nutrient for plant growth. They can even be added to compost, reducing the need to purchase chemical fertilizers for the lawn and garden.

Myth: Chickens attract pests and predators.

Fact: In point of fact, chickens are an excellent form of pest control. They will dine on cockroaches, tomato horn worms, aphids, grubs, and other unwanted insects. They will even eat small mice. And the presence of chickens does not attract predators any more than does the presence of other domestic animals such as rabbits and cats.

We hope this information is helpful in making up your mind on this issue. The City Council meeting begins at 7 p.m. tomorrow evening in the Council Chambers on the third floor of City Hall (located at 25 Dorrance Street). To identify your ward representative and express your opinion, visit www.providenceri.com/CityCouncil/council-find.php. If you have questions about the ordinance or about urban chicken-keeping, you can contact Leo Pollock, education director for SCLT, at education@southsideclt.org or (401) 273-9419 ext. 28.

You can also learn more about backyard chicken farming by attending “Raising Urban Chickens,” a free workshop offered as part of the “Plant Providence: Growing Food in the City” series. The workshop will be held on Saturday, November 13th at 1 p.m. at City Farm, SCLT’s three-quarter-acre urban farm at W. Clifford and Dudley Streets. SCLT will also be offering another “Raising Urban Chickens” workshop and a hands-on “Build an Inexpensive Chicken Coop” workshop in 2011.

It almost looks like we could ride this heat wave straight into fall. The Tupelo (Nyssa sylvatica) have been dropping bright red tokens since mid-July; the scent of ripe grapes hovers on whatever little breeze we can catch; the autumn crocus (Colchicum autumnale) are emerging from the ivy (a good 2 weeks earlier than last [...]

I like using soaker hoses in my vegetable garden. They deliver the water where it’s needed with minimal waste, and they don’t splash water on the leaves – an invitation to disease.  When we moved about a year ago, I brought my old soaker hoses with me, but alas, they were full of unwanted holes and I had to replace them. (I find these hoses break down in just a season or two. It must be the UV light.)

I set off to buy new soakers in the spring, but I guess I left it a bit late, because all any of our local stores had left were the flat, ribbon type hoses.

The Object of My Annoyance

These looked great to me, so I grabbed one and brought it home. I hoped it would lie flatter than my old round soaker, and be easier to place. I hate wrestling with the hose! So I began unraveling and installing the new soaker, and something terrible began to happen. As I flattened each section to the earth and held it down with a garden staple, the remaining hose began twisting and curling back on itself – like an annoying serpent. The more I tried to flatten it, the more it writhed. Once I finally got the last section all nice and flat, I would look up and the first part would be all twisted.

I ended up having to lay the entire thing  three times, and when at last I was done and had unclenched my jaw, I turned on the water to reap the rewards of my labor. The first section seemed to work fine, but the lower parts were not soaking at all, because, as I discovered, there were tiny kinks in the hose. The darned thing never did work properly, and I ended up using a watering wand instead. So if you see these in the store and they look tempting, my advice is to grab an old fashioned round soaker hose and run away! The flat ones – at least this one – will drive you crazy.

Fairy rings drive some lawn owners crazy. (University of Minnesota photo)

Mother Nature rarely offers up a mystery any more intriguing than the phenomenon known as fairy ring. One can only imagine what our ancestors must have conjured up as the reason for giant circles that seem to appear from nowhere in the middle of stands of grass in the summer.

At a recent consulting job in Maryland, the groundskeepers were perplexed about whether or not to take action. Their rings were more half moons, that presented as about a 20-foot arc of dark green grass. At another area of the property, the fairy rings appeared as a giant, almost perfect, circle of mushrooms.

In some cases fairy rings can be quite unsightly, but in most cases they’re a minor nuisance. In virtually all cases, the best advice is to leave well enough alone. They will eventually grow out and die off.

WHAT ARE THEY?

Fairy rings are a result of Saprophytic fungi that degrade organic matter, most often accumulated thatch, in lawns that have been treated with excessive fertilizers in an irrigated lawn. As the fungi grow in an outward direction, the leading edge of the fungi produces dark green grass because of all the nutrients that are being consumed and released by the fungi. That dark green color produces the visible fairy ring that, through the years, can become quite large.

One interesting note to me is that the mere existence of fairy rings is advertisement number one for how microscopic organisms like fungi process nutrients and allow grass to grow dark and green. All we’re doing in organic lawn care is trying to enhance that process. The only reason fairy rings are even a problem for some folks is that the fungi are working TOO well and therefore creating an unbalanced appearance in some areas of the lawn.

But I digress.

Some people have the urge to dig out the soil in the area of the fairy ring and start over. But with all the time and effort that would take — not to mention how bad the area would look before the new grass took hold and blended in with the existing lawn — you should avoid that urge. Fungicides rarely work, either, and the chemical ones are toxic as heck.

In general, don’t overwater and overfertilize your lawn and you won’t have a problem. If fairy rings do appear, aerate the ring to allow water to penetrate the heavy fungal layer. You can also apply a surfactant (or wetting agent) to the area to increase water flow. Here’s a link to a good one: http://www.poulengerusa.com/ called SeaSafe. Allow the grass to grow tall during the appearance of the fairy ring to mask it from the surrounding area.

If you do get a fairy ring in a lawn that is otherwise pale green, one strategy is to take a soil test of the surrounding area so that you can fertilize and adjust the pH as necessary to maximize the green color of the overall lawn. That, too, will mask the fairy ring problem.

One final note about the mushrooms that accompany fairy ring: if you have children, rake up the mushrooms. As a father of a 1-year-old, I know how everything winds up in her mouth. Unless your an expert on edible fungi, then ASSUME the mushrooms are poisonous and get rid of them.

Here’s a good fact sheet from Cornell on fairy ring: http://plantclinic.cornell.edu/FactSheets/fairyring/fairyring.htm.

Layanee DeMerchant

Aaron Robbs (from the RISE web site)

The lawn and garden pesticide industry will soon have a new front man to claim its products are safe. Aaron Hobbs is slated to replace Allen James as the head of the propaganda organization known as The Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment effective tomorrow, Sept. 1.

Announced in a press release published today by the trade journal Lawn & Landscape magazine, Hobbs appeared to be well versed in swaying the opinion of elected officials while he served as director of the National Assembly of Sportsmen’s Caucuses for the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation, an organization that prides itself in identifying politicians who are sympathetic to its cause. According to the press release, Hobbs has also served in past positions as an international trade economist and presidential management fellow with the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Foreign Agriculture Service, and as a resource economist with USDA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service.

The chemical fertilizer and pesticide industry is clearly hoping that Hobbs can reverse an overwhelming tide of legislative and public relations losses that occurred on James’ watch. James, who ran a college fraternity organization and a sanitary supply group prior to 1991, has been the only leader in the 20-year-history of RISE, which is supported by manufacturers and distributors of fertilizers, weed killers, insecticides and fungicides among other toxic substances — many of which are now banned in Canada and at the municipal level in various communities in the U.S.

James sounded defeated, yet defiant, in his final keynote address at the annual RISE meeting.

“We have reached the tipping point with respect to activism targeting our industry, emboldened by Presidential and Congressional leadership favorable to their views,” he said. “They call our scientific basis into question.”

To James, a proper man who was rarely seen in public without a suit and tie, any of us who questioned the safety of lawn and garden pesticides were un-American.

“There is a tremendous divide between the beliefs of the majority of our nation and the voice of the few well-funded activist/detractors of our industry and critics of our standard of living,” he said. “The activists opposing our industry are one-and-the-same as those opposing the progress of our great nation. That point we need to understand clearly. And, if we do not stand firmly against these groups, we will surely be torn apart by them.”

It’s somewhat remarkable to me that in 17 years as an outspoken activist, I’ve never had an actual conversation with James. He wrote to me on at least three occasions while I served as Editor of People, Places & Plants magazine, each time taking me to task for my pro-organic and anti-pesticide positions. I knew for certain that I was getting under his skin when he appeared in person at our SafeLawns.org kickoff rally on the Washington Mall on April 4, 2007. How did I know? He immediately went back to his office and issued this press release that is still parked three and a half years later on the RISE web site: http://pestfacts.org/media/newsheadlines/dynamic.aspx?pageID=4&contentID=18.

In that release he rather infamously equated the arrival of spring with the availability of pesticides, as if one wouldn’t happen without the other. Appearing as dour as he was dapper, his cameo at the rally made him literally the classic villain in the film, A Chemical Reaction.

“Allen believes what he believes and he will never, ever change his mind,” said his arch nemesis, Jay Feldman, who has debated James on numerous occasions as the head of Beyond Pesticides. “Whether he believes it because he’s paid to believe it, or because he really believes it, you were never going to change Allen James’s mind or get him to admit that pesticides were dangerous.”

I won’t ever forget the two men going head to head on CNN in 2003 when the original West Nile virus scare was breaking nationally. To Allen James, only one solution existed: “The only way to reduce adult mosquitoes is to use adulticide insecticides.”

When Jay pointed out that those pesticides “are chemicals that have been linked to cancer, birth defects, neurological conditions, respiratory effects,” Allen James called him a liar right there on the air.

It was a classic case for agnotologists to study years from now. As we discussed in our Monday blog, agnotology studies the manufacturing of doubt. By calling Jay Feldman a liar in that moment, and sounding convincing in the process, Allen James had created the doubt he was looking for — and probably won the debate despite Jay being the more informed, accurate and reasonable man.

It’s tempting to celebrate James’s departure as a victory. Though the chemical industry now has an award in his name, and it’s trotting out all sorts of tributes about how he persevered against all odds, James is clearly leaving office utterly defeated. The truth is he spent tens of millions of dollars to convince people to spread as many poisons as possible on their lawns, and yet his industry lost an entire nation of Canada and will eventually lose this one, too.

But as Dr. June Irwin predicted in our film, A Chemical Reaction, the chemical industry will never, ever give up. They’ve trotted out a new, younger villain. This one doesn’t wear a suit quite as well, but reportedly works a congressional caucus like nobody’s business. Aaron Hobbs has vastly more experience as a lobbyist as he takes this job than James probably ever acquired and he’ll hit the ground running tomorrow with an energy that can never be dismissed.

He is, in other words, going to be a formidable opponent. When you wake up tomorrow, you need to renew your resolve to spread the word about the organic alternatives.

Considered to be one of the “greenest places to live in America” by numerous publications, the city of Boulder appears poised to live up to its reputation with garden to lawn care.

“It’s exciting out there, it really is,” said nationally recognized organic turf expert Chip Osborne of Osborne Organics of Marblehead, Mass., after his recent visit as a consultant to the city of about 90,000.

In September, I’ll be heading out as a guest of EcoLogical Lawn Care, the newest SafeLawns Approved organic lawn care company — the first from Colorado. The date is Sept. 23 at 6 p.m., although venue details are still being finalized.

“The desire is out here, but we customers still need to understand the process,” said John DiFilippi, who launched into organic lawn care after concerns about safety issues associated with traditional chemical treatments.

If you’re interested in bringing the message of SafeLawns to your community, email Paul@SafeLawns.org. For information about the Boulder event, email: john@ecologicallawncare.com.

Thanks to everyone who came out on Saturday to enjoy sunshine, garden visits, and good food at the second annual Open Garden Day and Harvest Potluck! Over 100 people attended the event, which was put together by the Providence Community Gardens Network and Southside Community Land Trust and featured six local gardens spread out across the south side of the city.

The event was a chance to celebrate the harvest of Providence’s community gardens and get a peek inside several of them. The six gardens ranged from recently excavated lawns to gorgeous  green spaces that have been growing strong for 30 years! The tour was come-as-you-please, and several garden coordinators and members were on hand to answer questions about their work. Most people walked from garden to garden, but several came on wheels: new this year was the addition of a riding tour led by Recycle-a-Bike, a local non-profit.

Across the street from the garden at the corner of Peace and Plenty streets, the What Cheer? Brigade and AS220 Youth Studio’s ZuCrewe entertained members of the community from 3-5 p.m. with their brass band and free ice cream. The band eventually moved into the garden and continued the performance there! We are grateful to Community Works Rhode Island and the City of Providence Neighborhood Performing Arts series for sharing their summer celebration with us.

At 5 p.m., people gathered in Potters Avenue Park to eat homemade dishes, sip ginger beer and lemonade, and listen to Liberian songs and the tror sao (a traditional Cambodian instrument) under the shade of the trees. It was a great end to the day. Thanks again to everyone who participated and helped to make the event a success!

Citing data that shows a 17 percent reduction in phosphorus runoff in a local river, a University of Michigan professor told SafeLawns.org that three years of studies indicate a ban on phosphorus in lawn fertilizers is working as intended.

Bans of phosphorus in lawn fertilizer have become hugely controversial across the United States in the past four years. Opponents of the bans say that the major sources of phosphorus in lakes, rivers and streams do not come from lawns, but rather from leaves, pollen, agricultural runoff and housing developments among others.

Phosphorus in fresh water bodies is of major concern because the nutrient encourages blooms of algae, which sucks up oxygen and other resources and makes life otherwise difficult for marine life.

Professor John Lehman, who had been studying nutrient concentrations in Huron River for several years prior to the city of Ann Arbor enacting a phosphorus ban in fertilizers in 2007, issued a landmark study a year ago that gave the nation its first true data points about whether or not bans of phosphorus in lawn fertilizer affect runoff into bodies of water. Because he held the data prior to the ban, he was in a unique position to conduct the study.

Although the third-year numbers have not been published, he told us: “Year 3 results (2010) to date remain consistent with the hypothesis that river phosphorus is lower in the part of the catchment affected by the ban.”

In a report that Lehman submitted to the city of Ann Arbor, obtained by SafeLawns, he concluded that at the control site of his experiment — upstream from the phosphorus ban — no reduction in phosphorus was seen in the water. That led to the conclusion that the reduction in phosphorus levels in the area impacted by the ban was due to the legislation.

Several media outlets in New York and New Jersey have contacted us in the past month since legislation in both of those states has addressed the phosphorus issue. Based on Lehman’s ongoing three-year study, a phosphorus reduction in lawn fertilizers does appear to be justified.

That would leave two primary questions: 1) What will be the impact on the lack of phosphorus in lawn fertilizers on the health of lawns?; and 2) Should that matter either way? One could easily argue that the health of a lake or river is far more important than the collective health of lawns.

Opponents of the no-phosphorus bills will argue that phosphorus is necessary for lawns to be healthy and that is true. They’ll also point out that a lush lawn reduces soil erosion and therefore keeps phosphorus out of water, which is also true.

But the reality is that lawns are not likely to die outright if phosphorus is taken out of the fertilizers. If data shows, down the road, that the impact on overall lawn health is unreasonable, then perhaps a compromise can be struck that allows some small percentage of phosphorus to be added back into the bags.

In the meantime, we need to rely on the science and stand in favor of reasonable phosphorus restrictions.

Pardon me for my ignorance and excitement, but today I’m newly enthralled with a word that I’m sure some of you have heard before: agnotology. Not yet recognized by my spell-check, agnotology is defined by Wikipedia as “the study of culturally-induced ignorance or doubt.”

Now, one might ask at first blush: Why on earth would anyone want to study that? In this age of enlightenment, of the Internet, there ought to be oodles of real knowledge everywhere. And yet, as the universe’s leading expert on the subject has pointed out, “the conscious creation of ignorance is rampant.”

Stanford University scholar Dr. Robert N. Proctor even wrote a book about his word: http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?book_id=5652%205901 and I ordered it today. The chapters treat examples from the realms of global climate change, military secrecy, female orgasm, environmental denialism, Native American paleontology, theoretical archaeology and racial ignorance. The primary focus of Proctor’s work, however, has been to call out the cigarette industry for its decades of misleading information.

The manufacturers and marketers of your grandfather’s Marlboros, as is now so widely known, consciously conspired to conceal information from the masses so that they’d keep lighting up. Today, even though some folks know butts are bad for them, they still smoke. Companies are allowed to make them and sell them and, well, it’s anyone’s right to increase their risk of lung cancer if they want to, right?

Though I’ve not yet had time to study this, I’m sure that agnotologists have unearthed myriad recurring patterns, or tactics, whether you’re talking about cigarettes, or lead in paints, or climate change and, to be sure, lawn chemicals. The folks agnotology would really appear to be studying are the lobbyists who are paid to change public opinion in a facts-be-damned recklessness that leaves planetary and human health in its wake.

None of this is new, of course. Politicians and preachers have been leveraging doubt to sway public opinion since the beginning of time. Whenever something can’t be explained empirically — and it so rarely can — it leaves an opening for ignorance to creep in. In that case, a made-up answer is every bit as valid as the truth in most people’s minds. Just deliver the load of bull with confidence and you’re likely to find a receptive audience.

And I’m not sure why the discovery of this word is so exciting. Applying a name to the study of corporate deception won’t stop the lies, after all.

But I, for one, would prefer to believe in collective and collected human intelligence. Perhaps agnotologists will one day be able to make the successful case that second-hand cigarette smoke wafting through a room is fundamentally no different than second-hand lawn chemicals drifting through a neighborhood, or that the people now denouncing global warming came from ancestors who thought dumping open sewage into lakes and rivers was just fine.

Maybe, just maybe, we’ll wake up before it’s too late. We need to at least hope.

To say that I have felt left out is a bit of an understatement. Other gardeners have posted about their monarch caterpillars, their delicate chrysalis, and the subsequent emergence of the beautiful monarch butterfly. Not here. For the past five... Layanee DeMerchant

Those of us who preach organic gardening and farming in religious tones almost always buck up against science, which has forever struggled to explain what we accept as innate understanding. In other words, the scientists usually denounce what they can’t prove beyond a shadow of a doubt.

That’s why the study out of the University of Michigan last week set the Internet abuzz. Titled “Ecological Complexity and Pest Control in Organic Coffee Production: Uncovering an Autonomous Ecosystem Service,” the study went a long way toward explaining why organic systems really are more disease free. The study was published in the journal BioScience and reported broadly at BeyondPesticides.org and elsewhere, including this piece: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100826122620.htm

Excerpt from the full article:

A heirloom tomato (called a heritage tomato in the UK) is an open-pollinated (non-hybrid) cultivated variety of tomato that can be grown from seed. Conventional hybrid tomatoes bought from your local grocery store, however, cannot be grown from the seeds you would save from them.

I figure, what’s the point of paying for and supporting parts of the food chain that are not self sustainable? Besides, heirloom tomatoes are very tasty fruits that are easy to grow and it’s free to save the seeds for the next growing season.

An article today from an Indiana newspaper is worthy reading for anyone in any states where lakes and ponds are a factor. The article doesn’t deal specifically with fertilizer runoff from lawns, but it does specifically cite phosphorus as the major culprit in the death of a major lake: http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20100829/EDIT10/308299957/1021/EDIT

Chocolate Cherry on the vine

I am evaluating the tomatoes I grew this year, and having already gushed about “Orange Russian” in a previous post, I will now turn my critical eye toward two more cultivars. Both of these are new to my garden. One is performing magnificently and the other is a disappointment. The cultural conditions are the same for both, in fact, they are growing next to each other.

Chocolate Cherry:

This is a well-known heirloom, and I am happily surprised by its vigor and the proliferation and taste of the fruits. Of course, they do not taste like actual chocolate cherries, but they are definitely dark and sweet. They are also quite a bit larger than other cherry types I have grown – about 1 inch or even more in diameter. All in all, I found this to be a productive and trouble free tomato – and the fruits are delicious.

Milano:

I decided to try this plum type tomato after reading a glowing review in a seed catalog – one I trust. The seed is imported from Italy, and the fruits are supposed to be ideal for sauces and sun drying. I am also growing San Marzanos and I have already harvested two batches and made sauce. The Milanos, on the other hand, are sort of languishing. I haven’t picked a single one yet. Maybe I’m doing something wrong with these, but all the others are doing great, so I don’t think that’s the problem. I won’t bother growing these next year.

http://www.wcsh6.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=125722&catid=2

This hybrid stonecrop is new to me. It is the latest member of the sedums in my garden. 8.27.10 Like all sedums, the leaves are characteristically succulent and fleshy, but these are smaller with a tinge of reddish purple. The...

The label that accompanied 'Dragon's Blood Tricolor' Stonecrop, Sedum spurium read, "Fleshy leaves have bright variegation. Rosy-pink flowers.". 7.29.10 I found this plant in a small (3-inch) pot back in late May or early June and planted it by the...