All the Dirt on Gardening

Roger Doiron says that if ten percent of the lawn space in the US were converted to vegetable, fruit, herb and nectar plants, everyone in the country could have fresh local produce and by extension, perhaps, improved health. Dioron's site, Kitchen Gardens International at http://kgi.org/  provides ongoing conversations and help that could make it possible if more potential gardeners could be recruited. The Kitchen Gardening 101 tab under the Education drop down menu gives new gardeners enough information to get started. I wholeheartedly agree with the advice to start small and make a plan though I rarely plan anything myself. If you'd like to hear Dioron, his TED talk is at http://kgi.org/education  too. Definitely brows the Blog link http://kgi.org/blogs  for dozens of useful articles. The Deep Middle was all about converting lawn to garden this morning and is the source for my sending you to Kitchen Gardens International. http://deepmiddle.blogspot.com/201...

Benjamin Vogt at The Deep Middle (http://deepmiddle.blogspot.com) wrote about Molly Ginty's piece called "The Fall of the Monarchs". http://inthesetimes.com/article/14215/fall_of_the_monarchs#.UL9fqMupMBI.facebook Ginty writes, " Scientists say that the downfall has been caused in small part by environmental factors, but mostly by two types of human meddling: the use of herbicides that are killing off milkweed plants in the United States, and the illegal logging of the pine and fir trees on which the monarchs make their homes for five months of the winter in central Mexico." (By the way, not all scientists agree about Mexican logging being a contributing factor.) But this is interesting, "Monarch butterflies warn of what might lie ahead for other wild creatures affected by overfarming and deforestation,” says Chip Taylor, professor of insect ecology at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, who founded Monarch Watch in 1992. “It’s clear that this ye...

Do you want the state government to come onto your property and kill animals you consider harmless? Benjamin Vogt writes " In The Deep Middle ": The legislature of Nebraska in their infinite wisdom and control of all things, "passing a bill--LB473--that will allow the government to go on to private land and poison prairie dogs, which are being classified as noxious weeds (don't ask, you know how government works). If pdogs on your land spread to adjacent land, then the government has the right to go poison your animals and then bill you later. Not only is private property being disregarded, but more importantly, so is the health of a keystone Great Plains species. Desert  USA Prairie dogs once numbered 3-5 billion across the mixed and short grass prairies. One town in Texas was estimated to be 100 x 250 miles, or 16 million acres and 400 million pdogs. Meriwether Lewis called them barking squirrels."   "Prairie dogs are what biologists call a key...