All the Dirt on Gardening

Honey fences have been used to keep elephants out of small, home gardens in Kenya. Maybe they would work in residences to keep out intruders? We've heard of pollinator pathways and many of us have tried to contribute toward creating a path of pollen and nectar for butterflies and bees. The honey fences were invented by Lucy King, a zoologist. Elephants are terrified by the sound of bees and so are most humans who do not garden. King's honey fence is a line of hives that are suspended from a wire. When an elephant touches the wire, attempting to enter an area, the bees are disturbed and swarm. Now, an entire town is surrounded by honey fences and they sell the resulting honey, called Elephant Friendly Honey . Click over to the Elephants and Bees site to find out more. This story, written by Nicola Twilley, came to me via Edible Geography , a fascinating blog.

 Muriel Howorth, founder of the Atomic Gardening Society, was a woman we wish we had personally known. Now we know about her because of the efforts of the author of the blog, "Garden History Girl". You can enjoy the most recent post at   http://gardenhistorygirl.blogspot.com/2013/02/more-on-atomic-gardens.html Howorth is the subject of a new article in the British Journal of the History of Science that you can read at https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2mfa2lmy9ZERnVhU3hSbm1LUUk/edit?usp=sharing with the compliments of the Journal and the author, Paige Johnson (nanotechnology researcher at the University of Tulsa). Johnson's earlier writing about Howorth can be read at http://gardenhistorygirl.blogspot.com/2010/12/atomic-gardens.html Another article was written about atomic seeds last year, "Strange and Beautiful Seeds from the Atom" by Nicola Twilley in the online blog Edible Geography at http://www.ediblegeography.com/strange-and-beautiful-seeds-fr...