At first it even seemed as though it might be a small project. In fact it started with a single fruit; an Asian pear my wife had brought home from the local oriental store. After eating the fruit, I found 8 seeds that looked just like apple seeds inside. “I should plant these” I thought to myself, “I’ve never seen an Asian pear tree before, so I wonder what it looks like.”  Then I bought a couple of mangos, and decided to grow them as well.  Now I have grown mangos from seeds before, though they won’t overwinter outside here, they make good potted trees to bring in during the winter as long as you keep them pruned. So I knew it was not only possible, but fairly easy to grow at least some trees from seeds.

To get started I bought about $20 worth of potting soil from the store (I still have more than half left) as well as a bag of popsicle sticks from the craft store.  I used the popsicle sticks to mark what kind of seed was planted in each pot. For the pots, I punched a hole in the bottom of some yogurt cups I had been saving just for seed planting. So I got to reuse the yogurt cups, and I got to reuse what few popsicle sticks I got from the popsicles I ate this year.  The rest of the popsicle sticks cost me around $2.50 at the craft store for a pack of 200. Then I simply went to work filling the pots with soil and dropping a seed in each one.  I didn’t do anything special to prepare the seeds, though it should be noted that if you’re impatient and want them to grow quickly after planting them, there are some seeds that you’ll want to refrigerate for up to 60 days before planting. For my project however, I am content to wait until winter turns my garage into a natural refrigerator.

I started out planting just 8 seeds, but every day I added between 3 and 15 more and the project quickly grew into something much bigger than I ever anticipated. Today, six of the eight original Asian pear seeds have sprouted and there are an additional 200+ planted seeds in my garage that I’m just waiting to come up.  I only live on a third of an acre property, but I am constantly finding new ways to work more trees into my property. I already have 10 fruit trees on my little sliver of land, and I have got 5 more on order in the fall. That’s in addition to the large willow and Japanese maple trees already growing here. So I expect to be able to work in a few more before the property gets tree-crowded, but it goes without saying that I won’t have room for all 200 if they all come up.

Even after the trees that do germinate begin to grow, it will still be several years before they begin bearing fruit. Then there’s no guarantee that they will all bear good fruit. While some trees like peach trees will generally grow true to their parent from seed, other trees like apple trees do not grow true to the parent, so it’s a toss-up whether you’ll get good fruit from it or not. That’s ok though because even if most of the resulting trees don’t produce good fruit, they’ll still produce fruit that the local wildlife will thrive on. Furthermore whether or not the trees produce any fruit at all, they will still flower, which provides food for pollinating insects and birds.

Some of you might be wondering what I’m going to do with hundreds of fruit trees that may or may not produce good fruit. Well the first thing I’ll do is offer free trees to all my neighbors in the neighborhood. After that I’ll place an ad offering free trees to anyone living within my zip code. If I still have trees left after that I’ll plant them on some undeveloped property near me. The reason I want these trees near me is that they’ll provide food for my bees, food for local wildlife, pretty flowers in the springtime, and for those trees that do bear good fruit, they will reduce the carbon footprint of the local food economy by bringing the food source closer to home for the people who eat the fruit. They will also help cushion the area against the effects of possible food shortages in the future.

Sometime around planting the 150th tree seed I decided that this was a full-scale major project and therefore it deserved a proper name. I dubbed this ‘The John Chapman Project’ in honor of John Chapman whom you may better recognize as Johnny Appleseed. I thought it only fitting since he did much the same thing as he wandered the countryside planting apple seeds wherever he went and starting several hundred apple orchards and having planted literally millions of apple trees. Though my project seems minuscule compared to his, and I intend to plant fruit tree seeds of all types, I still thought it fitting to pay homage to such a man after my own heart. By the way, there is an apple tree known to have been planted by Johnny Appleseed that’s still alive in an Ohio orchard.  It’s getting close to being 200 years old.

For now I will keep plugging away planting seed after seed, and in the next few years I hope to convince at least a few teachers to try a project like this with their classrooms. It is an excellent learning opportunity where you can teach the kids about American history via Johnny Appleseed, about botany, and about the environment and the sun or rain cycles, even about nutrition. I can think of no other classroom projects that would cost a total of under $20 and would tie into so many different lessons. Plus there is a high likelihood that many of the tree seedlings going home with the children will get planted somewhere because how can a parent bring themselves to destroy something their kid brings home and is proud of completing.  Even if nothing else were to come from it, the trees will help remove at least some of the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Apple Tree that is 3 years old below:

Asian Pear Trees Below:

What? Farmland…what does that mean.? I don’t have any farmland! That is probably your reaction.  Well, not so fast.  What do developers want? Answer:  Flat, cleared land, close to a city with great transportation routes. Farmers and foresters are loosing.  Your suburban home is probably sitting on old farm land, an old orchard site or a once productive forest.

Recently Michael Pollan, the well know writer on food and environmental matters, said in an October 2008 New York Times Magazine article, “Farmer in Chief”, that here in the United States we are loosing nearly 3,000 acres a day and many times the land lost is some of the most fertile land we have for growing food.

Just think about that for a moment.  In just one week, we lost an area about the size of Manhattan forever, to development.  The land is lost to Walmarts, apartments, strip malls, new highways, and of course single family home suburban developments.  Making a comparison to Manhattan is interesting because just imagine if we lost our financial centers and our corporate headquarters located in Manhattan.  Our government, as we have seen recently, will spend untold amounts of money to protect those assets.  The same can not be said for lost farmland and forest land.

We really don’t have time for a pity party.  What is done is done.  You own your home with its beautiful green yard, ornamental trees and some pretty flowers.  Could you put your yard to better use?  Can you return at least a bit of your yard to agriculture via gardening?

Yes you can! You can grow just a bit of your own food or you can transform your yard from decoration for your home into a productive, decorative and attractive agricultural asset.

Even the smallest yard can provide food for the family.  Square foot gardening is a great way to start. Utilizing the techniques popularized by Mel Bartholomew in his series of books and television shows on Square Foot Gardening, you would be surprised at the amount of food which can be produced by a tiny 4 foot by 4 foot square foot garden.  Mel says you’ll need a minimum of 8 of these blocks to provide fresh vegetables for a family of 4. Folks that is 128 square feet! Do you have 128 square feet, 10 feet by 13 feet, that you could use for a vegetable garden?

Square foot gardening is just one opportunity for the suburbanite to return a bit of farmland back to producing something more than grass and flowers. As we discussed last week here at Green Earth Friend, a suburban hedge garden is an option for screening the view from nosy neighbors, providing a windbreak for your garden or utilizing that awkward narrow side yard. Just imagine elderberries, hazelnuts, blackberries or apples growing in living hedge. Your hedge garden will be ever changing with flowers in the spring, fruit in the summer and shelter for the wildlife in the winter…right outside your window.

The really ambitious suburbanite might want to try fish farming. Water features are all the rage. Why not make a water feature a productive part of your suburban food complex.  By combining hydroponics techniques with your water feature you can begin aquaponics which utilizes the waste from your fish to fertilize vegetables. The vegetables in turn help clean the water for the fish. While Koi are cool, fresh organic tilapia is well…delicious.

Do you compost?  Composting is very simple.   A person can fret over it and turn it and aerate it or just pile it up in a corner, behind the hedge garden, and one year later nice fresh compost will be ready for the garden. A more aggressive means of returning vegetable waste to the garden is a worm bin. Buy or make one of these. Once the red wiggler worms get going you will have a steady supply of worm castings which you can put right in your garden to enrich the soil.

Do you want cute and cuddly instead of wormy? Get a bunny or two.  No not for eating but for fertilizer.  Most HOAs will not be concerned about these quiet “pets”.  No need for them to know that you are using the cute and cuddly creatures to convert vegetable waste into the stuff which comes out of bunnies.  Unlike other manures you can apply rabbit manure directly in the garden without composting.  Rabbit manure is superb fertilizer.

So, my fellow suburbanite, are you ready to start tapping into the productivity of your fallow farmland? I hope so because while you read this little article a few more acres disappeared under asphalt….forever. Resurrect your farmland. Wouldn’t a fresh salad from your own organic garden be a nice change for the better?

For more information on gardening on your suburban lot, please visit the backyard food production complex section of our forum.

Here are some internet websites which you may find useful in your upcoming gardening adventure:

Square foot gardening:

squarefootgardening.com

forums.gardenweb.com/forums/sqfoot

Urban Aquaculture:

webofcreation.org/BuildingGr … Chap1.html

How to make a worm bin:

whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/compost/Easywormbin.htm

A rather humorous article on manure:

plantea.com/manure.htm

Since most of us do not have a forest or an estate in the country, a Suburban Hedge Garden provides many of us with an environmentally sustainable option, to maximize the capabilities of our suburban property, to provide food and shelter for wildlife, food for the table and even sequester a bit of carbon from the atmosphere for centuries (some hedges in the UK and Europe are thought to be centuries old).  A Suburban Hedge Garden is a term I recently coined which is based on some of the ideas in Harvey Ussery’s recent article in Mother News titled “Plant an Edible Forest Garden” and Anna Pavord’s popular book titled “The New Kitchen Garden.”
A hedge formed using a single species of shrub or tree can be beneficial but a hedge like the one Anna Pavord describes in the section of her book titled, “A Rustic Mixed Hedge”, is much more vibrant and inviting to both animals and humans. Just imagine a hedge providing elderberries, paw paws, blackberries, hazelnuts, and blueberries for your table and all sorts of different seeds for wildlife.

Unlike its cousin, the English Rustic Mixed Hedge, the Suburban Hedge Garden is planted for the wide variety of conditions found here in the US and around the world. My Suburban Hedge Garden is currently planted with wax myrtle, bald cypress, red bay, apple, eastern red cedar, and thornless black berries. Over the next year or so I will be incorporating blueberries, Chinese chestnuts, and Japanese sour oranges, paw paw, quince and dogwood into the hedge. Quite a departure from a hedge which might be found in Europe or bordering a formal garden. That is the beauty of the Suburban Hedge Garden, it can be tailored to your climate and soil conditions. For example, someone living in Miami Florida might plant guava, oranges, limes and maybe bananas in their hedge while someone in Minnesota might plant black berries, blueberries, raspberries and cherries in theirs.

On the sunny spots at the base of the hedge I plan to plant strawberries. I plan to use the native evergreen red bay tree and wax myrtle shrub to produce a continuously shaded micro climate suitable for edible mushrooms. Yes, mushrooms. The shade provided by the hedge will encourage mushroom growth both in the ground and on inoculated logs.

Consider planting a Suburban Hedge Garden. Not only will you provide your yard with privacy but you will also experience the continual changes of the plants with the seasons, visits by grateful wildlife, food for your table and maybe centuries from now someone will still be enjoying a hedge you planted with your own two hands.

For more information on gardening on your suburban lot,  please visit the backyard food production complex section of our forum.

Here are some things that you and your kids can get started with:

Recycling involves processing used materials into new products in order to prevent the waste of potentially useful materials, reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, reduce energy usage, reduce air pollution and water pollution.

Recyclable materials include many kinds of glass, paper, metal, plastics, textiles, and electronics. Although similar in effect, the composting or other reuse of biodegradable waste, (such as food or garden waste) is not typically considered recycling. Materials to be recycled are either brought to a collection center or picked up from the curbside, then sorted, cleaned, and reprocessed into new materials bound for manufacturing.

A fun way to recycle at home is to have different colored recycle bins for each category of recycling and make it into a fun game for the kids to guess which color bin the recycled material belongs in and why. Prizes or special outings could be a reward for the most correct answers.

Composting is simply managing the natural process of decomposition for our benefit. Natural bacteria, worms, fungi, and a variety of invertebrates help turn food and yard waste into compost. The larger decomposers (some insects and some earth worms) process material physically by tearing or breaking it apart. The smaller or microscopic organisms process material chemically. It is the chemical decomposers that release nutrients in a form that plants can absorb. They work together, feeding in your pile (and on each other), to break down materials. They need a moist environment to thrive. Some of these organisms feed directly on the waste, while others feed on the bacteria in the pile. As they feed on the compost pile, they generate a lot of heat, which helps the material decompose. The internal temperature is dependent upon the microbial activity, not heat of the sun. What belongs in my compost pile? The goal is to create favorable conditions for beneficial microorganisms to grow and do their work of decomposing vegetable and fruit scraps and yard waste.

A successful compost pile has three basic needs:

1. Air Circulation Microbes require air, otherwise the anaerobic microbes will take over, and they are stinky! Air can be incorporated into the pile by turning the pile with a shovel or hoe, or adding bulky, oddly shaped material to make little spaces.

2. Consistent Moisture Level Microbes also require moisture. The microbes live in the thin sheath of water that coats the organic material in the compost pile. If there is no water, the microbes will dehydrate and die. But too much water will displace all of the air space causing anaerobic conditions. In general, the mixture should feel about as damp as a wrung-out sponge. Pick up a handful of the mixture and squeeze: if water drips out – that’s too much, if the material falls to pieces as soon as you open your hand – that’s too dry, if the mixture stays in a clump for a few seconds before breaking apart – that’s just right.

3. The right ingredients –The bulk of the organic matter should be carbon with just enough nitrogen to aid the decomposition process. The ratio should be roughly 30 parts carbon to 1 part nitrogen (30:1) by weight. Adding 3-4 pounds of nitrogen material for every 100 pounds of carbon should be satisfactory for efficient and rapid composting.  Nitrogen rich “greens” include: green leaves, coffee grounds, tea bags, plant trimmings, fruit and vegetable scraps, fresh grass clippings. Carbon rich “browns”: dried grasses, leaves, straw, wood chips, twigs, sawdust, shredded newspaper, dead plants.

What does NOT belong in my compost pile? Food with meat, dairy, or oils Pet feces Diseased plants Weeds gone to seed Ash from charcoal or coal Bones Grease Branches and wood chunks

How do I use my finished compost? Mix compost in with your soil to improve quality. Use it to fill in low spots in your yard. Use it as mulch for landscaping and garden plants. Mix compost in the soil for potted plants. Top dress your lawn to retain moisture.

Reducing Waste or the zero-waste strategy is to turn the outputs from every resource-use into the input for another use, or in other words outputs become inputs. An example of this might be the cycle of a glass milk bottle. The primary input (or resource) is silica-sand, which is formed into glass and formed into a bottle. The bottle is filled with milk and distributed to the consumer. At this point normal waste methods would see the bottle disposed in a landfill or similar, but with a zero-waste method the bottle can be saddled with a deposit, at the time of sale, which is redeemed to the bearer upon return. The bottle is then washed, refilled, and re-sold. The only material waste is the wash-water, and energy loss has been minimized. Zero waste actually can sometimes make financial sense as well. The bottle shape accounts for 98 percent of the value of the item, as a lump of glass the ‘bottle’ is worth only the final 2 percent of its value. In this sense a minimal resource (the glass) can be resold many times over at 1000 percent of its value each time.

Tree Hugger is a term often used for people who respect and love nature and are environmentally aware of their impact on this Earth. Teach your kids to also respect and love nature and take them to see some of the wonderful big old Trees on our planet and give them a hug! Take a picture and share this Green bonding experience with others.

]]> http://www.greenearthfriend.com/2008/10/educating-green-kids/feed/ 0 http://www.greenearthfriend.com/2008/10/sustainable-living-in-devon-england/ http://www.greenearthfriend.com/2008/10/sustainable-living-in-devon-england/#comments Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:58:58 +0000 admin http://www.greenearthfriend.com/?p=72 A group of people in Devon, England have gone back to nature and are using a few solar panels. The people are practicing permaculture which maximizes soil use and reduces ecological damage. Permaculture is where you basically blend in with nature and you are linked in with perennial agriculture. They are living as close to nature as the animals in that area.

They are growing plants that are mutually beneficial to the other plants they are growing. It takes about ten people to make the system work and a lot of water. There is no electricity other than solar panels and windmills. They claim that they have reduced there footprint to 33% of the national average and are shooting for 20%.

Their neighbors however are up in arms over the makeshift eco shacks. They built them without planning permission. They have been in court fighting to continue their plight and the court has given them 3 years to prove themselves or get out. They were hoping for 5 years.