Cooking with seasonal ingredients helps me feel like I’m getting the most out of what the Earth has to offer, and cooking with invasive ingredients helps me feel like I’m doing some good to balance the scales. After a few years of talking about it, I tried my first garlic mustard recipe, which I enjoyed while pairing with some other flavors of May.
During our time in Japan, we had the opportunity to meet with government officials, reporters, and residents of Tokyo, all of whom are responding to climate change in different ways. Because Japan has the ability to mitigate its emissions but also must adapt to more severe weather, it was interesting to explore what has been effective (or not) from the standpoint of shifting a hard-to-shift culture.
While the Spotted Lanternfly is on the rise in Pittsburgh, I was surprised to find very few back east when I was visiting my dad this summer. Thanks to ongoing research from academics and vigilance from the agricultural industry, we’re learning more about where they pose the most risk and what methods are – and aren’t – successful at keeping them at bay.
Gardening teaches patience, persistence, and flexibility. The “Capital G” Garden will never be done, since it is in a constant state of becoming, but necessary tasks just haven’t gotten done during what has been a busy and challenging year. I did what I could to at least spend some time enjoying my happy place – and I hope you can too through this post.
Last year a friend told me he was very excited now that he knew he could take his hard-to-recycle plastic to our local recycling company. I bit my tongue, knowing that it was probably too good to be true. At best, those plastics would end up in a landfill, but I had also heard that chemical recycling might be even worse for the environment.
Monarch butterflies continue to be at risk from habitat loss. One of the most effective things we can do in North America is create safe spaces for them along their migration paths. It has taken me several years to grow milkweed from seed and get it to thrive, but I am finally ready to formally register my garden as a Monarch Waystation.
Years of backyard composting has biased me toward aerobic compost, so when I had the opportunity to tour an anaerobic digester, I jumped at the chance. I knew very little about the process other than the fact that it created a lot of methane, which was a concern of mine. Fortunately, the team at Ecotone Renewables was patient with my multiple questions on the tour.
Since I had purchased far too many plants to get in the ground before leaving town for a few weeks, I turned to a tool that might help me work smarter, not harder: the garden auger. As long as your garden’s soil is reasonably conditioned (i.e. not solid clay), using an auger is an excellent way to move your gardening project forward faster than ever.
I thought I was mostly done with the garden for the year, but then I had one more opportunity to visit my favorite native plant nursery while they’re open. I came back with a carload full of plants – many of them because they looked interesting. Among those impulse purchases were a couple native cultivars, which are a point of contention in the native gardening community.
Many people are wrapping up their garden work for the year, but it’s never too early to plan for the spring! If you’ve been putting off planting a pollinator garden for want of ideas on how to start, the Missouri Prairie Foundation has put together sample garden plans for people with sun, shade, and even picky neighbors. If you don’t know where to start, you should start here.