Hope, Despair and Garlic Mustard

Today was my first big garlic mustard pulling day of the season. Hopefully most of you are familiar with this European culinary plant gone nasty invasive species. If not, you can learn more about why it is important to remove garlic mustard from your property at
http://www.uwex.edu/ces/wihort/gardenfacts/XHT1081.pdf

Many municipalities actually have ordinances about removing it and other invasive species as well. In Hartland we are instructed to put in plastic bags to be picked up with the garbage. You don't want to compost it as the seeds don't die and then get spread around to make more garlic mustard!

HOPE

The first garlic mustard pulling day of the year brings out the optimist in me. I look out at the garlic mustard plants popping up over my 1.5 acres and actually believe that this year I will be one step closer to eradicating it. Without needing to look, my fingers find the bulge on the stem where the plant branches out. I grasp, wiggle and pull straight up. Pure satisfaction with every pull. This plant is so easy to remove that toddlers can help. I pull another, then another and pretty soon I am clearing a noticeable section of my treeline. As I pull I discover ferns, jack in the pulpit and wild ginger and I imagine that I am freeing these woodland flowers from a greedy captor. By this time I am hooked. I know I should get to my other tasks for the day, but, I tell myself (over and over), "I'll just finish this section, then I'll stop". I've read that if you pull all your garlic mustard for 7 years, you could actually eliminate it from your yard. This is because the seeds can stay dormant that long. This doesn't take into account seeds blowing in from your neighbors yard, but this morning I choose to ignore this. Every spring, I ask my family, "Doesn't it look like we have less this year?" They all know that I need to hear only one possible answer so they tell me "Yes, Mom", but I can see in my 11 year-old daughter's eyes that we are only staying slightly ahead.

DESPAIR

Later in the day I stopped by Courtney's house knowing that she might be able to relate to this insane spring optimism. Instead, I found her in a state of garden despair. She had been clearly working hard in her gardens and was defeated by the weeds that were spreading everywhere despite her annual attempts to rip them out. "I'm ready to sell my house and move to an apartment! What is the point?", she told me. I've been there. I've said the same to my family, although this despair usually doesn't hit until July. I'll walk out to my gardens and tell the weeds they've won and I just don't care- and for the most part I let them take the lead for the rest of the summer. It was a shock to face up to this possibility in April. Green gardening and lawn care really is more work. We need to give ourselves credit and some understanding for all those who reach for the Weed-be-gone. It certainly would be easier to squirt something toxic at those devil weeds rather than spend the afternoon on my knees with dirt under my fingernails. But, now that we know what we know about these chemicals in squirt bottles, we really have not other choice. So, at least for this month I push the possibility of despair aside and decide to make pizza.

PIZZA

Garlic mustard came to this country as an herb. When you pull it, you can certainly smell the garlicy aroma. I'd like to believe that those European settlers would have chosen to leave it behind if they knew what would have happened to our Wisconsin woodlands, but of course they just wanted dinner. In the spirit of the saying "If you can't beat them, join them" I decided to use this stuff for its intended purpose and made pesto. You can follow your favorite basil pesto recipe and substitute all or part of the basil with garlic mustard. If you don't have a recipe, check this one out from Monches Farm.http://www.monchesfarm.com/PESTO.htm

Last weekend I mixed some with cream cheese and made a yummy spread for crackers. Tonight we had garlic mustard pesto pizza. I know in my heart that I can't get rid of this stuff, but in the meantime I'll enjoy it!

If anyone else has good Garlic Mustard Recipes, please share!

My Little Green Machine

Today is the last day of our April Challenge to green our lawns, so I figured now would be the time to leave you with what I think is a huge piece to the green lawn puzzle: re-thinking how you mow your lawn. Three years ago after our hand-me-down electric mower started showing signs of revolt, we bought a Brill Luxus reel mower (pictured above). Since the cute little green machine has arrived in my life I have enjoyed quiet, gas-smell-free, fear-of-losing-a-limb-free mowing. Yes, it takes a bit of muscle power, but I can really use the exercise (seeing as how I don't exercise on purpose, like, ever). I'm sure you've all heard it before, that mowing with a gas mower for one hour produces as much pollution as driving a car for 200 miles. So, when I'm using my little reel mower I'm not only getting exercise and listening to the birds sing, I am also feeling smug about my eco-saintliness at that moment.

That's a wrap for my two cents on the April Challenge. We hope you will join us during the month of May when we sort out the eco-logic of laundry. As laundry is hands down my favorite chore (would I even call it a chore?) I am quite looking forward to the month of May. Now I'm off to mow the lawn. With my cute little mower :)

My Soil Test

"You are what you eat". I remember that health message being taught to me back in elementary school and find myself repeating it to my own kids now. Of course, the same goes for all living things, including grass. A plant will be as good as what it gets from the soil in which it grows. I know this in my vegetable and flower gardens. I spend a large percentage of my gardening efforts enriching the soil by composting my kitchen and lawn scraps, adding wood ash, coffee grounds and other treats for my green friends. I know that a healthy soil is one that is alive and dynamic; full of micrororganisms, worms and other critters. Over the years, I have watched my veggies grow better and bigger as my soil has improved. So why have I been so resistant to paying attention to the soil in my lawn? This month's challenge has lead me to examine my feelings about fertilizer. 

The usual way to give nutrients to a lawn is to by a bag of standard fertilizer and apply it seasonally according to a prescribed schedule. I have been resistant to do this for a number of reasons.  A trip to Pewaukee beach in July to see the neon green algae bloom is all the evidence I need to know that too much of this stuff is ending up in our waterways.  It turns out that algae loves phosphorous too. Since the lakes in our area are such an important ecological and recreational asset, I have a hard time justifying my lawn at their expense. Some lake communities (town of Oconomowoc is one) have banned the use of phosphorous based fertilizers for that reason. 

The second reason is my aversion to chemicals in general. This isn't really fair when it comes to fertilizer. Natural or organic fertilizer can be just as harmful if applied incorrectly or in excess. All fertilizer is more likely to wash away into our waterways if applied just before a rain. This goes for synthetic chemical fertilizer, the trendy corn gluten, and good old cow manure on a farm field. Once it gets into the lake, the algae enjoy it just the same, gobbling up the oxygen in the water as they grow.

The third reason that I have been fertilizer resistant is that I like to believe that I can create a closed ecosystem-that if I do it right, I shouldn't need outside help. I know that grass clippings are a good nitrogen source for the soil so we mulch them back into the lawn as we mow. I'd like to believe that if I keep my grass healthy by mowing high and watering deep, it won't even need extra fertilizer like all those "drug addicted" lawns down the street. However, I am beginning to think that grass is a bit greedier and demanding than I thought. The weeds that are moving in are more flexible and are willing to put up with a more meager diet. My picky grass is getting run out of town as it waits for its gourmet meal. That does raise the question of whether or not I want such a snooty guest in my backyard, but for now I've chosen to keep at least some of him around. 

I have been hearing more and more about "Responsible Lawn Care". Can I use soil additives (and, gasp, maybe even chemicals) in targeted, small amounts? The first step is the soil test. 

What does my soil offer? Since I know that soil is the foundation to plant growth, its time to find out. If there are deficiencies, I am willing to fill in the gaps. 

Today I went outside and collected four samples of soil from my yard. The soil is mixed together and after a little air dry, will be sent off in a little bag with $15 to the Waukesha County UW Cooperative Extension for the test. In 2-3 weeks, I'll report back on the state of my soil. Will I learn that I have been withholding important nutrients from my lawn? Or will I learn that my grass has all that it needs and should stop letting all those dandelions push him around? I am hoping that it is the first since the second possibility implies that the weeds may need to be dealt with by other means, and I am just not ready to go there. 

To request your own soil test kit, call 262-548-7775 or http:uwlab.soils.wisc.edu

Safe Lawns on WI Public Radio

On my way to work this morning, I caught the last minute (as usual) of another potentially interesting segment on WPR. A representative from Safe Lawns http://www.safelawns.org/ was on with Joy Cardin discussing how we can take care of our lawns in an environmentally safe way. He also said he was going to be giving a seminar in Madison in August (check website with upcoming details). I haven't listened to it yet, but I plan to. If you weren't listening to the radio at 6am, check it out athttp://www.wpr.org/webcasting/audioarchives_display.cfm?Code=jca

Great paper source

In my quest to find cool paper envelopes for an upcoming project I stumbled upon this amazing web store (which, while on the internet, is located in Sun Prairie, just outside of Madison), called The Paper Mill Store.  They have any kind of paper you could possibly imagine, but the great thing is you can search by environmental attributes, like recycled content, tree-free paper, FSC certified, non-chlorine whatever.  But then it gets even cooler.  After I ordered my cool envelopes I got this e-mail from them:

"Your order will be processed and shipped... using 100% renewable energy through our purchase of wind power credits.  Our use of wind power avoids introducing 341,445 lbs of CO2 into the atmosphere each year.  We also offset 100% of the CO2 produced by shipping to your location, avoiding an additional 230,000 lbs of CO2 into the atmosphere each year.  As well, your order will be shipped to you in our 50% recycled shipping boxes, which we have specially made to reduce our use of energy, natural resources and to provide a sturdy box. "

Amazing!  And this is a paper company!!  

This makes me very happy and cheery.  Usually on Earth Day I get bummed and gripe about how people get all jazzed for one day and then forget about the environment for the other 364 days.  But today, and mostly because of the above e-mail I think that maybe, just maybe, things are really changing.  Maybe businesses are getting the picture.  Maybe.

Cool reusable bags for bulk items

I came across these cool bags on the Craftzine blog today.  What a fun way to load up on bulk foods (flour, oats, nuts, etc) without also loading up on plastic bags.  Plus, they are made by an artist in British Columbia... not in some sweatshop overseas.   (For some reason the photo won't post, so follow the 'cool bags' link to see the bags.)

Forsythia is in bloom! That means it's time for corn gluten meal!

Last year my sister gave me a bag of corn gluten meal since she had ordered too much for her lawn. So, I applied it last fall to my lawn, and, according to the bag, now that the forsythia is blooming it is time for the spring application. Corn gluten meal is an alternative to nasty pesticides for reducing the amount of weeds in your lawn. It only works on seeds, not on established weed plants, but it is supposed to slow the spread of weeds throughout your lawn. I try not to stress about my lawn, but I'll admit that for a couple weeks in May when dandelions are running riot across my front yard I feel like a "bad homeowner". Which is annoying because our standard of "good homeowner" seems to be a surreal green lawn, weed-free thanks to annual applications of toxic herbicides. Anyway, the corn gluten meal is my small attempt in trying to curb the dandelion's quest for total lawn domination. If you want to read more about the stuff, click here.