Why you should worry about neonics

Disturbing news for people who eat.

U.S. drought continues to spread

Official news via US Department of Agriculture:
http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?navid=DISASTER_ASSISTANCE&parentnav=DISASTER_SAFETY 

and NOAA http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/drought/

Learn about sustainable agriculture from Heifer International

More on sustainable food & farming from Heifer.org:

You can join a group interactive program on sustainable farming and development at one of their farms in the USA, or join an international study tour.

The farm closest to Baltimore is in Sharpsburg, MD:

Heifer global village at Shepherd's Spring
www.heifer.org/shepherd

Another farm with a food course:
Overlook Farm in Rutland, Mass www.heifer.org/overlook  
Harvest Time:  Immerse yourself in this course on food systems, sustainable agriculture and self-reliance techniques.
October 9-12 (co-ed) or 13-16 (women only)


And here are some books on the topic of preserving produce...

Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving http://www.amazon.com/Ball-Complete-Book-Home-Preserving/dp/0778801314/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1309873375&sr=8-1

Canning for a New Generation... http://www.amazon.com/Canning-New-Generation-Flavors-Modern/dp/1584798645/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1309873395&sr=1-1

The Complete Book of Pickling http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Book-Pickling-Relishes-Chutneys/dp/0778802167/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309873419&sr=1-1

Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It... http://www.amazon.com/Jam-Pickle-Cure-Cooking-Projects/dp/1580089585/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309873440&sr=1-1

Wild Fermentation... http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Fermentation-Flavor-Nutrition-Live-Culture/dp/1931498237/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309873458&sr=1-1

Gardening goes corporate

Backyard gardens are getting so popular that they're even popping up at corporate offices, according to the NY Times.

This week we put in tomato and eggplant seedlings in my yard.  We're looking at a bumper crop of cilantro and mint already, and the strawberries are starting to blush.  Here's hoping for a better tomato summer than last year!

Putting up for winter

This weekend I made like a squirrel and stocked up for winter.

My friend MS and I chopped, peeled, and cooked about half a bushel of golden delicious apples into sauce one morning: no sugar required, even. The maiden voyage of my new canner went off without a hitch, but I have new respect for farm women who do this on a regular basis!

Later I worked on packing up the garden and took a critical look at the compost tumbler: too many food scraps and not enough dry brown stuff has resulted in a lumpy mass of dark slime. Eww. Luckily, there's a great supply of dry leaves on the ground right now to help remedy the situation. In fact, as I hiked around the neighborhood this afternoon I acquired a bunch of already-bagged leaves from neighbors - will keep these under the deck to feed the trash heap.

Incidentally, leaves make a great compost all by themselves: fallen leaves break down into what garden centers sell as leaf mold. It's easy to make (just abandon a pile of leaves for a year or two and they'll decompose) and rich in nutrients that benefit your garden soil.

Photo credit: an ode to Fraggle Rock.

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Packing up the garden

Autumn is a sad time for the backyard garden: the flowers are mostly spent, beans have gone bust, and any remaining tomatoes drop to the ground, forgotten.

This was a particularly bad year for tomatoes, thanks to the blight. My neighbors at the Rodgers Forge Farm Initiative blogged about it earlier this summer, citing the same NY Times article I'd stumbled upon while searching for an explanation for the withered leaves and sunscorched fruits in my yard. Confirming the blight: only the heirloom tomato plants I purchased were affected. Volunteer cherry tomato plants remained healthy.

Already I'm plotting my seed-starting operation for next spring... but first, I still have a few eggplants to pick, one lonely green pumpkin, and a mess of marigolds to clean up. The UMd home & garden center website has fall garden cleanup tips posted now.

Also thinking about canning some applesauce, since I never found the time to can more than one batch of salsa at a friend's house all summer. Apparently canning is trendy among backyard gardeners and urban homesteaders these days, but I wouldn't have guessed it by the blank looks I got at the supermarket when I asked where to find the canning jars.

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Sustainable charity on Oprah

In case you're looking for a good sustainble charity to support, or if you're planning ahead for Christmas gifts, or both - look no further!

Heifer International is a lovely charity that I've been supporting for years. Their projects help end hunger and save the Earth by teaching and empowering people around the world with initiatives in sustainable farming, animal management techniques, gender equality, HIV/AIDS, microenterprise, and urban agriculture.

As for the Christmas angle, you can choose items from their online gift catalog to send in honor of those hard-to-buy-for loved ones.

And right now there's a "double your gift" project for farmers in Honduras.

Charity Navigator gives Heifer International 3 of 4 stars.

Want more? Watch the Oprah Winrey show on Thursday October 1st, which was inspired by The New York Times best-selling book _Half the Sky_ by Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn.
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Why buy organic?

A recent study from the University of California at Davis found that organically grown tomatoes had higher amounts of two disease-fighting flavonoids than conventionally raised tomatoes. Plus, the levels of these two nutrients rose over the course of the 10-year project until they were 97 and 79 percent higher, respectively.

Why? Organic plants have to work harder than plants raised on chemical fertilizers to fight off infections and predators, and to extract nutrients from the soil. Because of this, they grow more slowly and have the time to produce more nutrients. There is also evidence that organic produce contains more antioxidants than conventionally-grown produce.

Need more incentive to buy organic? Consider the Bug Arms Race concept presented by Steven Hopp in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: evolution is based on survival of the strongest, the fittest, the most adaptable. Repeated spraying of pesticides by farmers is weeding out only the weaker bugs, while the stronger bugs develop resistance to pesticides in much the same way that some germs in humans are developing resistance to antibiotic medicines. These chemicals are also killing micronutrients in the soil that are essential to plant health, fertility, and resistance to diseases.

When pesticides were first introduced in 1948, farmers used about 50 millions pounds of them and suffered a 7 percent crop loss. Contrast that with year 2000: farmers used more like a billion pounds of pesticides and lost 13 percent of their crops.

Note that 20 percent of chemical pesticides are listed by the EPA as carcinogenic in humans.

(sources: Good Housekeeping, January 2008, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver)