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Indicator Plants

What started out as a post on garlic rust a few days ago, has turned into a fascinating discussion on soil deficiencies and indicator plants.

Søren just made a great post on determining things about your soil health by looking at the weeds in your garden.  This is based on the idea that some weeds prefer nutrient imbalances or other conditions, so by looking at what’s growing in your garden you can get clues as to what problems you may have.

While Søren’s post focuses on weeds commonly found in Denmark, Chris pointed out a book on ‘weed reading’ that’s probably more general in scope.

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Hawaii Proposes Aspartame Ban

Following a 2006/2007 attempt in New Mexico, a bill to ban aspartame is being proposed in Hawaii.

Regular readers of this blog know that while aspartame sweetener itself does not contain any GM material, it is made with the assistance of genetically modified microorganisms and the expired patent was formally owned by Monsanto.

Aspartame is metabolized by the body into products known to be carcinogenic and neurotoxins; it has no discernable health benefits, and is known to make you crave carbohydrates possibly leading to weight gain; it is known to destabilize diabetes and other medical conditions.

Aspartame is very important economically because it is sold at the same or higher price than sugar, but manufacturing and distribution costs are a tiny fraction compared to sugar. Advertising campaigns are amazingly similar to tobacco, with names like zero, diet, light and sugar-free, often displaying athletes or other healthy or attractive people, suggesting health benefits without making any direct health claims.

The failed attempt in New Mexico came in the wake of massive corporate lobbying from all directions, from soft drink giants to food and chemical giants.

A number of prominent health professionals in New Mexico made compelling public statements supporting the proposal, like HJ Roberts, Internist; Russell Blaylock, Neurosurgeon; and Ralph Walton, Psychiatry. Details can be found by entering these names into an Internet search engine such as Google or Yahoo.

The battle in Hawaii looks set to be a fierce one, and unfortunately the local press seems to be ignoring it. Most of the attention has been from New Mexico’s press. The stakes are high for all of us, and after all the issue is not making aspartame products unavailable, because they could still be imported informally from other states or prescribed by doctors. What’s at stake is the freedom of choice, because passage of this bill would mean alternatives to aspartame would be more readily available to Hawaiians.

This is a battle we should all be watching and supporting. If you have contact with friends, media or health professionals in Hawaii, please ask them to help. Success or failure in Hawaii could could have ramifications felt all over the world. Even if the bill in Hawaii doesn’t pass, benefits can be had if world attention is drawn to the debate, so be sure to spread the word.

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Chlorine in the Garden

Kelly of Future House recently did a great series of posts about the rain water collection system they built. He mentioned he used PVC pipes to build the system, which is what gave me the idea for this post.

Two Kinds of Chlorine

There are two kinds of chlorine, and the difference between them is very important.

The first kind is ordinary pure chlorine, sometimes called household chlorine, and is what common bleach is made from. This is also sometimes used in swimming pools, or added to drinking water. While there can be health issues with this type of chlorine, in particular both high concentrations and chlorine gas can be toxic and some people can have allergies to it, but overall it is considered very safe both for people and the environment. This type of chlorine occurs naturally in the environment, so moderate use is generally considered to be 100% biodegradable.

The other kind of chlorine is what is used in manufacturing processes. This is also sometimes called elemental chlorine, and this is what happens when atoms of chlorine are combined with other elements. One of the most important characteristics of these compounds is they are usually very long lived in the environment, and sometimes very toxic. Some common examples we are probably all familiar with are ozone depleting CFCs, PCBs which are very toxic, DDT as well as a number of other pesticides that have now been mostly banned (these are sometimes referred to as POPs or Persistent Organic Pesticides) and also PVC plastic.

These chlorine based compounds are so damaging to the environment, they have frequently been the focus of Greenpeace actions. Together with nuclear waste and heavy metals, chlorine compounds are some of the most serious environmental contaminants in the world now.

The Good

Household bleach really has many uses in the garden as well as in the house. Many people think of it as a harsh cleaner, because it smells so strong, but this is not actually the case. It’s a great environmentally friendly cleaner to use for the toilet, and is perfectly safe for septic tanks or for grey water collection systems to be used for plant irrigation. It is a much better alternative to bathroom scrubbing powders or creams, which are mostly very bad for the environment.

While you should never apply it in any way to plants or your garden, it’s very useful to clean greenhouses, tools, pots, seed trays and so on. It’s a very good disinfectant and can be very important in preventing the spreading of plant diseases. When you are done using it, it can be poured down the drain or on an unused spot in the garden. Within 48 hours it will completely break down into the environment.

The Not So Good

Most of us have something made from PVC plastic in the garden. Plastic coated fence or tools, maybe irrigation pipes. It can be really great stuff because, by design, it really does stand up to sunlight and last forever.

If you ever look into alternatives, you will see there aren’t many. Galvanized steel is sometimes used, but it contains trace amounts of heavy metals that will stay in your garden after the original material decomposes.

The main problem with using PVC in the garden is that it will be around long after you throw it away. It’s a very difficult plastic to recycle, if it’s incinerated or heated to a high temperature it will decompose into PCBs and if it is put into a landfill it will stay a very, very long time. While other kinds of plastics may be around for decades or maybe even centuries, PVC will likely be around a lot longer. When you think it will probably stay in your garden for 10-20 years, that’s a small percentage of it’s total lifespan.

Kelly of Future House asked the question if there were environmental problems with the manufacture of PVC. As far as I’m aware, there is no harmful waste created in the manufacture of it, but this is only half the equation! You should consider how what you buy will be disposed of, and if there are more environmentally friendly alternatives. Until now we have all been taught not to worry about what you throw away, and that what can be disposed of now can be dealt with by some future technology that will be soon developed. Not all of these technologies are emerging, and toxic waste and landfill space are already becoming serious problems.

Specifically addressing Kelly’s rain harvester system, what they might have used instead of PVC were metal fittings connected with rubber or plastic hose. Yes, it almost certainly would have leaked from time to time, and not worked as well, but it would have been easier to dispose of or recycle the individual components. It may also be possible to design a system where a single leak wouldn’t be as catastrophic as it would be in their system, perhaps top filling the barrels and having a separate tap on each one, maybe connecting the barrels in pairs or groups instead of all together. Another possibility might have been to try to use second hand PVC fittings, but I guess this would have been very difficult to do.

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Reading Material

Thank you everyone who left comments on my Free Gardening Books post from several days ago mentioning books. A few that stood out for me were:

Fukuoka, Masanobu; The One-Straw Revolution (1978): This is a very famous book among natural/organic gardeners. Translated from Japanese, it is Fukuoka’s account of how he changed the way people looked at agriculture in Japan and developed his own very clever no-till methods that can be adapted and used by anyone anywhere in the world. This is a very short book, and doesn’t take long to read, which is handy for an e-book you are trying to read on a computer screen.

Burr, Fearing; The Field and Garden Vegetables of America (1863): This is a great historic account of the edible plants cultivated in the US in 1863. A complete manual for the vegetable gardener. The book discusses the pros and cons of different varieties available at the time, as well as offering advice on cultivation. It’s great fun to read the old style English language and word choices used in the book. It’s interesting as well to look at the Latin names assigned to the different plants at the time and compare them to modern Latin names, because they’ve changed quite a bit.

Søren pointed out this book to me:

Krasil’nikov, N.A. Soil Microorganisms and Higher Plants: The Soil and Health library in Tasmania, Australia describes this as one of the most important in it’s collection. Written by a Soviet scientist, it is a detailed text of soil sciences as they were seen in the time. While the west was busy developing new plant varieties and agricultural chemicals, this book describes the approach that was taken in at least part of the Soviet Union to boost it’s agricultural yields.

Lieven also pointed me to a UK Soil Association publication, and with a little browsing on their website I see they have quite a few interesting things available for download. They seem to regularly regenerate the links on their website which makes it impossible to link to any of them here, because the links would stop working by the time I posted them. They have no reuse policy or Creative Commons style licensing that I can see so I sent them an email asking for permission to make some of their publications available for download here, but they didn’t reply, so I don’t have permission to do that.

What kind of organization goes to such trouble to make reading material available to the public, but then makes it impossible to reuse?

Anyway, if you care to, you can go to the UK soil association website and use their search engine to find some of their publications. A few I would recommend are:

SilentInvasionEXECSUMMlores
one planet agriculture

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No to GMOs in Europe

The European Union is in the final throws of approving commercial planting of GM crops, the result of pressure from the US, Canada and Argentina. Enough is enough! Europe does not need GM products.

GM crops do not offer any benefit to the consumer or farmer. There is no evidence that any claims of disease resistance, insect resistance or increased yields made by the manufacturers are true in the long term. The only benefit is for the seed companies, so they can own the rights to the food we eat, and spread that ownership by contaminating the environment and our food with their genetic material.

No to GM in Our Food

0.9% GM material is currently allowed, even in certified organic foods. Just who thought of this limit anyway! This limit should be 0%. There is currently no formal or mandatory testing. Testing should be mandatory, and when food is found above legal limits it should be promptly removed from the market.

No GM for Livestock

Most meat and dairy products in Europe are produced with GM animal feed. There is no reason for this, and it should be stopped at once.

Certified organic animals are not allowed to be fed GM feed, but there is no formal testing for this. Random informal testing suggests 20% of supposed GM-free animal feed in fact contains more than the allowed 0.9% level of GM materials. Mandatory testing and enforcement of these limits should be put in place.

No More Trials

For years now permission has been given for trial plantings of GM crops in Europe.

These trials should stop.  We don’t need any GM crops grown here.

No to Products Made from GM Organisms

Many common products such as rennet used in hard cheeses, vitamins and food supplements, aspartame sweetener and pharmaceuticals are made with the assistance of genetically modified bacteria, yeasts or other microorganisms. There are many suspected or known health problems associated with these products, many very serious and life threatening.

Some of these are certifiable organic ingredients and can be in organic foods!

Those products which can be replaced with alternatives and products which have no true clinical value should be removed from the market, and those remaining should be clearly labelled for what they are.