“It sounds dumb, but sometimes I think that I garden just so that I can compost. It’s actually really interesting and fun to see a bunch of dead junk turn into pure black gold.”
—
If you watch 1 gardening video all year, make it this one!
A complete guide to soil microbiology.
“For nearly as long as they’ve been popular, lawns have served as a totem of middle-class vulgarity, conformity, and excess. In her landmark 1962 book Silent Spring, Rachel Carson denounced the wanton use of lawn pesticides. Carson’s contemporary, activist Lorrie Otto, condemned yards as ‘sterile’ and ‘flagrantly wasteful.’ Polemics as cutting as a mower’s blade have proliferated in the decades since, but lawns abide. Spivak and her team come not to bury them, but to adapt them to the insects vital to the entire ecosystem—and our food supply.”
— Tom Philpott,
“Your Perfect Green Lawn Is a Buzz Kill.”
Mother Jones, May 7, 2020
Continue reading “It’s time to change the standard for American lawns”
“If your plan is for one year, plant rice.
If your plan is for ten years, plant trees.
If your plan is for one hundred years, educate children.”
“Don’t decide to grow a garden. Decide to become a gardener. Just go ahead and sign up for the long haul. This is something that you’re going to do, year after year. You’re never going to arrive, you’re going to keep learning.”
Jessica Sowards, Roots and Refuge Farm
Imperfect gardens feed you too.
“You can only learn so much from a book and from a video. You have to get your hands dirty.”
–Stefan Sobkowiak
“THE KEY to YOUR Permaculture Orchard or Fruit Planting is… ‘JUST START’”
Continue reading “Education is good, but practical experience helps you learn more directly”
“And many times during that first year, I was discouraged and impatient. Yet each surviving plant, tree and shrub—every new blossom—was the gift of motivation.”
–Lori Silvia
The Challenges and Complexities of Ecological Gardens (2020) Continue reading “A quote I think many can identify with while on their path to learning.”
“A bumblebee can only fly for about 40 minutes between feeding. But we’ve lost 97% of our wildflower meadows. So please plant at least one nectar-rich flower in your garden or community this year. Your one flower could be the pit stop that saves a bee”
~ Little Green Spaces Tweet Continue reading “Save a bee–plant a bee pit stop”
“Our children don’t inherit the land from us,
we borrow it from them.”
–Native American Proverb
“The mere fact of the variability of the seasons should be sufficient to convince the most doubting that what may be right one year may be wrong next. If a calendar of garden events is kept it will be readily seen by reference what a difference there can be in annual happenings.”
— Harry Pierce and Alec Mawson Shrubs 1935
