Want a green lawn that needs no irrigation or mowing? That sounds ideal. As with most products that sound too good to be true, so it is with artificial turf. Modern artificial turf is not much like the Astroturf of old. Artificial grass blades are usually made of polyethylene, polypropylene or nylon, which create soft, harder or stiff blades respectively. These are anchored in an infill material that is usually a mixture of sand and ground up recycled automobile tires among other things. Utilizing recycled tires should give this product big bonus points; however, this material will leach heavy metals into the ground, contaminating the dirt for decades. When heated, the plastic and rubber will release toxins into the air as well.
Heat is the biggest problem with artificial turf, according to King Green. The infill made of plastic and rubber is a thermal mass: as it sits in the sun it absorbs and radiates heat. For example, at 6 pm, an hour before the Women’s World Cup in Canada began at the end of a nice 75 degree day, the artificial turf on which they were to play measured 120F. Where daytime temperatures rise to 100F, the turf could measure up to 180F. Having turf where children or animals play can cause burns.
Radiating heat from thermal mass such as hardscape (usually cements and asphalt), expanses of gravel, and especially artificial turf will heat up homes and is a contributor to more energy usage for air conditioners and fans. In arid areas there might not be much rainfall but there can be fog and ambient moisture that normally collects on leaves and drips as a form of irrigation. Good pollenization partially depends upon moist, still air because pollen dries rapidly. Radiating heat and reflected light (the albeido effect) from these surfaces help to dry out moist air and cause air movement as the heat rises. The more rising heat, the windier and drier the atmosphere becomes and the less fruit and vegetable set there is. As artificial turf heats up to a third again of the atmospheric temperature and continues to radiate into the evening it is even more damaging to atmospheric moisture than bright cement.
The claim that artificial turf greatly reduces the amount of toxins in the air that would be released from lawnmowers, and save thousands of gallons of water otherwise used to irrigate lawns is using select ideas while ignoring others. Artificial turf may not need mowing, but it needs leaf-vacuuming and hosing off, especially if there are animals using it. On soil bird, reptile and pet feces are part of the fertilization process and are quickly decomposed by microbes. On artificial turf the feces adhere to the plastic blades and are difficult to remove with even a power wash. Urine seeps into the rubber matting and cannot be completely removed, smelling strongly of urine for the life of the turf.
Native plants and grasses improve the soil, hold rainwater, moderate heat and wind, and offer habitat for hundreds of birds, mammals and insects. Areas that are covered in artificial turf are sterile, harmful to animals, people and the environment, and offer no educational value. Planted areas are magnets for wildlife that are starved – literally – for decent food, water and shelter.
The life of some artificial turf products is estimated to be 10 – 15 years, with a warranty usually for 8. If the grass is being heavily used the life is reduced. The turf doesn’t look new up until the warranty expires; the blades break off and the plastic and rubber slowly break down further been compressed, dried out and imbued with heavy metals.
The cost of installing artificial turf is heavy. It must be laid on scraped, level, rockless dirt, so there are earthworks involved. There are many types of artificial turf and they have a broad price range. A 12’ x 75’ strip of low-grade turf from a chain hardware store is currently over $1500.
What are the alternatives in this time of water scarcity? For areas that must have grass, tough native grass mixtures are a great alternative. See the selection that S&S Seeds has of native Californian grasses; they even offer sod. Lawns should be mowed higher and more frequently for best root growth, and the cuttings left to mulch in. For least evaporation and for pathogen control watering should be done between 3 AM and 9 AM. See this site for more lawn tips.
Stop using commercial fertilizers, which cause plants to need more water. Use actively aerated compost tea, which is easy and inexpensive to make, completely non-toxic and causes deeper root growth and therefore healthier, longer-lived and more resilient grass. Please explore the work of Dr. Elaine Ingham, soil microbiologist, who has perfected the use of AACT on properties worldwide. Instructions for making AACT can be found here.
For those who don’t need a lawn at all, native landscapes can be lush and beautiful and after being established dislike summer water. You can see what native and non-native plants are safe to plant near your house if you live in a fire zone with the County of San Diego’s Defensible Space Plant List. Please see the books The California Native Landscape by Greg Rubin and Lucy Warren, and California Native Plants for The Garden by Bornstein, Fross and O’Brien.
The secret to water storage in the soil for both lawns and plants is to dig in as much organic matter into the soil that you can. Artificial turf is also not permeable, so it channels rainwater rather than harvesting it. Old wood is best, but cuttings, organic fabric and paper can all be used to hold rainwater. One inch of rain on one acre in one hour is 27,154 gallons of water. The best place to hold that water for your plants –or to hold precious irrigation water – is in the soil. Wood in the soil along with top mulch will water and feed plants for months, as well as cleanse and build soil. This practice is called hugelkultur. Please research hugelkultur on the Internet for more information.
If you are considering purchasing artificial turf or gravel for your yard or common area, please think again. It is adding to the problem of global warming, it is an elimination of even more habitat – even the scarce habitat that a lawn can offer – and will become an expensive problem in a short time.
Here in Southern California, as in many other areas, we are finally legally recognizing the drought. There are rebates in place for those who take out their lawns, and here in Fallbrook there is a 36% water reduction goal. Many people just don’t know what to do with all that lawn. A very unfortunate continuing trend is to dump half a ton of colored gravel on it. Please! NO! First of all, once down gravel is nearly impossible to get out again. Gravel, like all rocks, is thermal mass. Instead of having a large rock heating up and radiating out heat, with gravel there are tens of thousands of surfaces radiating out heat and reflecting light and heat back up. It is the worst kind of hardscape. All that reflected heat and light heats up your home, making you use your air conditioner more frequently which is a waste of energy, and also dries out the air around your home. Desertification reflects light and heat to a point where moist air moving over a region dries up. There is less rain, or no rain. Most trees and plants trap humidity under their leaves. Gravel reflects light and heat back up under those leaves and dries them out, sickening your plants and trees. Pollen travels farther on humid air; it can dry out quickly. If you are relying on pollination for good fruit set between trees that are spaced far apart, then having some humidity will increase your chances of success.
An area of Wildomar, surrounded by hillsides of chaparral that hasn’t been destroyed. These homes have mostly gravel yards and denuded, compacted backyards. Very little rain penetrates, and all the weeds that nature sends it to help repair this gash in the earth are promptly poisoned. This is death to us and our planet.
By laying gravel you are turning soil into rock-hard dirt, because microbial life cannot live closely under it. That robs any plants you have stuck into the gravel of the food they need from the soil, which is opened up through microbial activity. You are adding to the heat value of the hardscape around your house causing you to cook in the summer and use more air conditioning. You have reduced habitat to zero. You have added to global warming by reflecting more heat and light into the sky. Although gravel is permeable, usually the ground below it bakes so hard that rain doesn’t percolate. I’ve read sites that want to you increase the albedo effect by laying gravel. In the short term albedo helps cool the atmosphere, but as a result of too much reflected light dries everything out. Think of the dark coolness and dampness of forests… that are now bare ground.
What do you do with your lawn instead? There are many choices that are so much better for the earth and your quality of life. First step, cut swales on contour on any slopes for best rain harvesting. Flat lawn? Easier still. Turn your lawn into a beautifully landscaped lush native garden. I’m not talking about a cactus here and there, but a creation with the awesome native plants we have in Southern California. Some of them such as Fremontia can die with supplemental summer water!
A beautiful border and plantings of California natives. Very low water use here, and very high habitat!
There is a chocolate daisy that smells like chocolate. Oh yes. And how can you not want to plant something called Fairy Duster or Blue-Eyed Grass? A native landscape planted on soil that has been contoured to best catch and hold water, and amended with buried wet wood (hugelkultur), will give much-needed food, water and breeding grounds to countless birds, butterflies, native insects and honeybees.
Or put in a pond. Wait, a pond during a drought? Yes! Ninety-nine percent of California wetlands have been paved over, drained or are unusable. Where are all the animals drinking? Oh, wait, we are in the epicenter of extinction, mostly due to wetlands loss. There are very few animals left that need to drink. Those that are left have to take advantage of chlorinated water in bird baths and swimming pools. The microbially rich and diverse clean, natural water that fed and sustained life is just about gone. So what can you do? If you have a swimming pool, you can convert it either entirely to a pond, or into a natural swimming pool that is cleaned by plants.
A natural pool upgrades your pool to a lovely pond without the use of chemicals.
Suddenly instead of having this expensive eyesore that you use only a couple of months a year and pour chemicals into year-round, you have a lovely habitat that you want to sit and watch, and even better, swim in safely without turning your hair green or peeling your skin. You don’t need to clean the pool all the time, and you don’t need to put in chemicals. If you are in the San Diego or Los Angeles area, call Dr. Robert Lloyd of PuraVida Aquatics for a consultation and conversion. If you don’t have a pool, then build one that is cleaned by plants and fish. You don’t need a filtration or oxygenation system because the biology does it all. Where do you get the water from to top off your pond?
Connect your pond to a lovely, planted stream that is connected to your laundry water or graywater system. You are buying water every day, so why not compost your water through phytoremediation and have a pond full of great healthy chemical-free water that is wonderful to look at and is an oasis for thirsty animals and insects?
Or install a food forest. With good soil building and rain catchment first, and planting in guilds with sheet mulch around trees and on pathways, you will be using a fraction of the water you pour on your lawn and yet harvest lots of food. Too much food? Share it with a food pantry!
Or start a veggie garden without digging any sod.
Create a lasagna garden right on top of the lawn and start growing immediately.
Layer cardboard, sticks, grass, food scraps, leaves, more grass, more food scraps, more leaves and top it with about 8 inches of good soil, then plant right in it! That lovely standing compost heap will slowly turn into good soil while killing the grass beneath and growing crops for you immediately.
If ridding yourself of a lawn just breaks your heart, then substitute the high-water use grasses for a native grass mix that is comparable. Look at S&S Seeds for prices or for seed choices. Water a few times with Actively Aerated Compost Tea using any rainwater you may have caught in those 50-gallon containers and your grass roots will travel so deeply that they will find groundwater. Check up on the work of soil microbiologist Dr. Elaine Ingham and see how easy AACT is to make and use.
There are so many alternatives to using gravel that aren’t expensive, that are an investment in your property and in reclaiming habitat while beautifying your home and saving money. So please, just say, “NO,” to the gravel. Tell a friend!!
Which one of these would you rather live in? Which do you think is better for the earth and for the future generations?
Enjoy a talk in the shade of Finch Frolic Garden with Doctor of Microbiology Bob Lloyd.
Finch Frolic Garden’s Monthly Program in the Garden Series
Sunday, April 26, 2015, 2 – 4 pm. Want to learn how to save water, and get the most out of the water you already buy? How to improve your soil and how to grow food without chemicals…and why? How to raise compost worms successfully? DON’T MISS THIS CLASS!
Discover the world of the unseen! Sit in the shade at beautiful Finch Frolic Garden and enjoy a talk and demonstration with microbiologist and owner of PuraVida Aquatics Dr. Bob Lloyd (http://www.puravidaaquatic.com/). He’ll introduce you to the importance of soil microbes, water organisms, compost worms, and so much more! Using slides, videos, specimens and a microscope Dr. Lloyd will teach you a new way to look at healthy soil and water, and how to have both without chemicals. Each attendee will receive a sample either of compost worms or aquatic beneficials. We will, of course, offer homemade vegetarian refreshments. Cost is $25 per person, mailed ahead of time. Finch Frolic Garden is located at 390 Vista del Indio, Fallbrook. Please RSVP to dianeckennedy@prodigy.net . More information can be found at www.vegetariat.com. You’ll love what you learn!
Any vertical space – wire, nets, roofs, trellises – will catch water and allow it to drip.
Today, despite being April Fool’s Day, our California governor finally recognized our severe drought and ordered mandatory cutbacks. That is a whole other can of worms due to the corporations and large businesses which are using so much water, and I won’t get into it. However, much of the world is becoming a drier place, and it is happening quickly. How does that relate to permaculture?
We will receive rain. Not a lot, but it will come. Remember that 1 inch of water on 1 acre in 1 hour is 27,154 gallons of free neutral pH water. If you have runoff water flowing onto (and usually funneled off of) your property, then you have to opportunity to harvest hundreds of gallons more water. You need to do three things: Heavy mist over the pond.1. The best place to hold rainwater in in your soil. For that you need to dig simple or extensive swales (ditches with level bottoms), rain catchment ponds (holes like dry ponds) and even small fishscale swales above each plant. Catch water as high up on your property as you can, in the areas where water will naturally flow into. Holes, dry ponds and swales all passify the running water and allow it to sink into the soil rather than running off the top. Even if you have flat property, texturing your soil will allow water to percolate more quickly. Driveways, roads, sidewalks and paved pathways – called hardscape – all channel water. See where the water flows and catch it, or redirect it into swales where you want the water to go. The taller the tree, the higher the precipitation it can harvest.2. Heavy clay soil will percolate slowly and water can puddle up and even become anaerobic. Sandy soil will allow the water to drain very quickly. What you want is for the soil to hold the water for as long as possible without becoming anaerobic so that trees and plants can use it for months after it stops raining. The solution to both of these soils is to bury organic matter. Hugelkultur is the term used for layering dirt on wood or other organic matter. Old logs are perfect. Any clippings, old cotton bedding, clothing, pillows, branches, leaves, junk mail… anything that can be considered ‘brown’ (as opposed to ‘green’) waste, will work. Don’t heap debris in a hole and cover it up. Layer it with dirt and cover it over with mulch. Plant on your hugelbeds. Make your holes or beds perpendicular to water flow so that water hits them and infiltrates the mounds. The organic matter will become a sponge and hold that water in the dirt. As the topsoil dries out it will wick the moisture from the buried organic material. Meanwhile just by burying or stacking the organic material you will have made nutrient and oxygen channels available to roots, and as the wood decays it feeds the microbes and thus the plants. You are improving your soil for years to come, feeding your plants, catching and holding rainwater in your soil, recycling, and sequestering carbon that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere from the exposed dead wood. How great is that? You don’t have to use trees… if the labor isn’t for you then use a trowel and a piece of old untreated 2×4, nails and all, and make a fishscale swale and hugel above each plant. Also, fill your raised beds and pots half-way with layered wood and dirt, and you will be saving water and fertilizing your plants as well. Have established trees? Use a hose and a power nozzle (or just a sledge hammer if the ground is soft!) to drill holes vertically around the dripline and hammerwood down into the ground. You won’t be cutting through roots. Turn your alleys and foot paths into hugelswales by digging them down, laying a layer of wood, covering the wood over with dirt allowing the path to have a slightly concave shape that is level at the bottom. You can walk on it, it will catch and hold water that gravity will feed down to plants below rather than puddling up. Every time you plant, except for when planting desert plants, put old wood at the bottom of the planting hole. Soaking wood in actively aerated compost tea or worm casting tea first will really kick off the microbial activity. No wood? Cruise the neighborhood at trash day and see what is out there. Tunnel spider webs show how much moisture is dropping on this hugelbed.3. Cover your ground with mulch. Sheet mulch under your trees and along your pathways to lock in moisture and prevent rainfall from compacting your soil. It is always good to leave some bare ground – particularly by wet areas – bare for some insects to lay their eggs in. If you have bugs, then you have lizards, frogs and birds which will eat your problem insects (unless, of course, you have outdoor cats. They will kill all of your predators. Keep your cats confined!). If you don’t have bugs, you don’t have predators. Then when the bad bugs move in there won’t be anything to eat them. Dense bushes hold the moisture in. It sounded as if it was raining during this light fog.4. Plant a lot. That may sound opposite of what to do in a drought, but you need to plant drought tolerant canopy trees and bushes that will spread. Although we may not receive rainfall we will be receiving dew, mist and fog, and the more surfaces you have to catch it, the more water your yard will receive. Mist nets won’t work in Southern California very well because we don’t have a lot of heavy fog. However trees are made to catch water and gently deliver it to their leaf-covered roots. Shrubs are groundcover that produce leaf mulch and habitat for birds and lizards. They keep the moisture from being blown away during our Santa Anas. Trees are wind breaks which protect other trees and plants. Plant fast-growing drought tolerant trees on hugelbeds that are there to work for you: they passify the wind and catch precipitation, while dropping leaves for mulch and turning your dirt into soil. A 1/2 inch of cardboard or newspaper with mulch on top.PLEASE, do NOT spread gravel or small rock! All those little stones – which are virtually impossible to remove from your landscaping – are all thermal masses. They bake your soil, increase the temperature of your garden and reflect heat up onto your house and the underside of the leaves of whatever you may have planted. Gravel and stonescapes cook the planet because there are so many edges to heat up. With gravel yards there is nothing to allow water to percolate into the soil, there is no height to catch rain or passify winds. Stonescapes reflect light and heat back up into the air further drying the atmosphere, called the albeido effect..
How do you reduce your domestic water use? Cut in in half by flushing the toilet every other time (or less). See how fast you can take a shower. Fill a glass with water every morning and use only its contents to rinse your toothbrush or your mouth during the day (if there is any left, drink it or pour it into the back of your toilet tank). Use a pan of water to wash dishes instead of running water. Irrigate only when it is dark, after 3 am. That allows the least evaporation with the least insect problems. Don’t use overhead irrigation. If you are on a well, don’t think that you have an unlimited supply of water – don’t spray water around pastures at noon. Water is precious and needs to be cherished. See how many uses you can get out of water that you buy – wash water can go into the toilet or onto plants. Investigate greywater. Use your laundry water right into your landscape (use safe soaps). Get as many uses out of your clothes before you wash them. Look at your monthly water usage on your bill and challenge your family to reduce it by half, with a family reward (movie? Local restaurant?) when you succeed.
Saving water can be done. It MUST be done. We are used to water security and now we have to change our ways, while the changing is still easy.
Footpaths and/or vehicle access paths are absolutely necessary for any yard. Unfortunately, weeds love growing in them. Worse, the pressure from footfalls, wheelbarrows and vehicles compress and compact the soil, pressing the soil grains together so tightly that oxygen – and therefore life – can’t exist often up to several inches or more deep. Any life, that is, except for the grasses and other weeds that nature sends in to help repair the soil. Bare ground will be greatly compacted by rainfall, which will then erode paths as it runs, unable to soak through that spaceless ground. Once wet bare pathways are often unwalkable until they dry out, and have to be resmoothed. In our hot, dry areas, bare earth or graveled pathways reflect heat and light back up. That reflected heat and light dries out the underside of plant leaves, where species such as Live Oaks have over the millennium developed leaves that curl to expose less surface to the hot sun and to gather moisture underneath. Reflected heat and light dries out the air as well, and any hope of slight humidity to help water plants through months of dry heat is gone. If you have open-pollinated vegetables that rely on breeze for pollination, all that open pathway actually decreases your germination because pollen – such as from corn – will dry out in arid conditions. Humidity that you can keep in your garden will keep pollen more viable longer.
A wealth of freshly chipped wood – two dump-trucks full! The challenge: to spread it all in a week before our first tour. Yikes!
What to do? Covering pathways with gravel is a common solution. I hate gravel. It heats up and becomes a thermal mass in the summer, further cooking your soil and air. It doesn’t suppress weeds and weed-whipping becomes an exercise in avoiding shrapnel. You can never get it out of the ground once you apply it, and chunks of gravel don’t do soil much good for planting. If you trip and fall on gravel it does terrible things to your knees – I had a piece lodged in my kneecap after a stumble some years ago (sorry for that cringe-worthy item).
A 1/2 inch of cardboard or newspaper with mulch on top.
Covering the soil is better, but not best. Bark will help rain bounce and then percolate, is dark so it won’t reflect light and heat as gravel does, and it decomposes. It is also expensive to buy, and because it decomposes you have to re-buy it every couple of years. Decomposing bark may be adding elements to your soil that you don’t want depending upon the source.
More progress as the afternoon wears on.
I have experienced all the options above. The best method of countering all these issues that I have found also repurposes and recycles. Sheet mulch. Yep. You’ve heard it from me before and it proves itself every year. There is more to it, though.
I disturbed a couple of nesting mice in one of the unused Kenya bee hives.
First of all, please, please, please never use plastic. You can read about white pollution and the layers of plastic merging with topsoil in China and cringe. Plastic will not last. It will always be around in pieces. You will be poisoning your soil.
At the most basic, you can cover your pathways with 1/2″ of cardboard and newspaper, and top it with wood chips. I obtain my wood chips from arborists who save paying a dump fee by dumping it in my yard. If you’d rather have a more uniform look then purchase your bark. Either way the cardboard and newspaper will make the chips last years longer. More importantly the cardboard and newspaper form a protective, absorbent layer that protects the soil from compaction. Have you looked under a log or sheet of abandoned plywood in awhile? All the white tendrils of fungus, insects, worms, lizards and roots are thriving there along with billions of soil microbes all because they have that protective layer that keeps moisture in and compaction out. That microclimate is what you are forming with cardboard and mulch pathways. Since microbes free up the nutrients in the soil from which plants feed, you are creating more food sources for your plants. Tree and plant roots don’t end at the dripline, they reach out towards whatever source of water and nutrition they can find. If you are top-watering rather than deep-watering, then roots are abundant closer to the topsoil. By sheet mulching pathways you are extending food sources for your plants and trees, which now can stretch underneath the paths, link together with other roots through fungal networks, and become stronger and healthier. You also are creating habitat which is a food source for the entire food chain. Cooler, humid areas are better for bees and insects that pollinate, and the predators that feed upon them such as lizards, toads, frogs and birds. Just by sheet-mulching your pathways you are improving your environment as a whole. How can you NOT want to do this?
Sheet mulching around trees is much the same, except you add a little manure or compost tea if you have it.
Sheet mulched pathways hold moisture and create some humidity which allows for better pollination and helps keep your plants from scorching in arid areas. If you live in a wet area or very humid area, use thicker layers of cardboard and mulch, which will help absorb moisture from the air and deliver it to the ground. Decomposition is quicker in wet areas, so using several inches of cardboard with mulch will last much longer and will again keep down compaction. Compaction in rainy areas is just as bad as in arid areas because of the erosion and flooding it causes.
More progress as the afternoon wears on.
To catch rainwater and allow it to percolate into the soil rather than erode away topsoil, you dig rain catchment basins or swales. Swales are ditches with level bottoms, and can be a foot long (fishscale swales) or the length of your property. Swales should be positioned perpendicular to the flow of water. You can create swales across pathways, fill them with mulch, top them with cardboard or old plywood, and mulch on top to match the rest of the pathway. Water will be caught in the swales and won’t wash out paths on hillsides.
MIranda working on a large pathway near our large hugelbed.
Going a step farther, you can ‘hugel swale’. Hugelkultur is layering woody material with dirt. This introduces organic material, oxygen and nutrient pathways into the soil and holds moisture into the dry season. You can dig deeply in your pathways, layer old wood (sticks, branches, logs, whatever you have) with the dirt, up to soil level, then sheet mulch. Your pathways are now waterharvesting alleys that you can walk on, and which will really feed your plants. And you just repurposed old woody cuttings.
This mulch will greatly help the Asian pears and cherries which struggle with the dry heat of the summer. The ground will be kept moist and reduce evaporation, holding in humidity. We’ll be planting more heavily in this area, too.
In very dry areas plants and trees do better in sunken beds, especially those that require a long chill time. Cold settles in holes. Moisture runs downhill, therefore dew will accumulate at the bottom of holes. You can either plant in holes and have your pathways higher, or if you have an established garden (such as I do) you can build up your pathways so that they become slightly higher than your trees and planting areas. We are working on that at Finch Frolic Garden, here in drought-stricken San Diego county.
So before I launch into yet another long lecture, the idea for pathways is simple: sheet mulch with cardboard and wood chips. If you live in a wet area, use several inches of both. If you live in a dry area, use no more than 1/2 inch of cardboard (or else it will absorb moisture from the soil) topped by at least an inch of mulch (no limit there!). If you want make super pathways, bury woody material before you sheet mulch. If you live in a dry area, raise your pathways above your planting beds. If you live in a wet area, lower your pathways so water can drain away from your plants (unless they love wet feet). Never use plastic, and please rethink gravel.
Then sit back and enjoy your yard and all the food and nutrients and abundance you have set the stage for, all using recycled materials that will last for years. Congratulations!
Finch Frolic Garden is located in Fallbrook,CA, in sunny San Diego’s North County. Dry and hot conditions are the norm, with temperatures rising above 100 in the summer,and an occasional frost in the winter.
This is a prime Southern California winter scene: palm trees and red tile roofs – and traffic – with snow on the mountains. The peaks are usually only dusted in snow in Jan. or Feb.
A rain around Thanksgiving means lawnmowers are humming around New Years. This past year, 2014, has experienced strange weather as has the rest of the world. We had back-to back Santa Anas (hot, dry, high winds from off the desert) in May, which caused many trees and plants to drop flowers. The lack of food and water induced many animals to not reproduce, which affected the rest of the food chain. Then we had fire season in May as well. Unfortunately arson was the cause of some of the fires, but many homes were lost as well as hundreds of acres of our precious endangered chaparral and the baby animals that lived there.
These mountains are northwest of us – they never get snow!
Our heat wave came in June, and our ‘June gloom’ – a marine cloud cover – came in July. We had several significant rain events in late Fall, and then on New Year’s eve, it snowed.
The pathway down to the Mock Pavilion.
So many of you who live in snowy areas are saying, “Who cares?” The last snowfall in our inland valley area was in the late 60’s when I was probably 8 or 9 years old. I lived with my sister and parents in Carlsbad, a town west of here. All I remember about it is that my dad made a snowball and froze it, and in the summer threw it at the neighbor.
On the 30th we received an inch and a quarter of cold, Canadian rain overnight. The rain came in heavy showers and swales we’d created had filled and prevented flooding. In the morning I looked out on a white garden.
Kitchen garden in snow.
Not everyone in the area received snow this week, but streets were icy, nearby Temecula was covered as were all the mountains even those west of here.
Good-bye ’till next year, apple mint!
The landscape looked like a large powdered sugar shaker had been at work overnight.
Perhaps this year we can have bees again. Last year they all died – someone spraying in the neighborhood is my guess.
Again about 10:30 in the morning snowflakes fell and strangers grinned at each other in delight.
Creeping red fescue, which is an excellent soil holder and groundcover here, just laughed at the cold.
Not so the growers of frost-intolerant plants such as avocados, citrus, succulents and tropicals. After the snow we have had clear, frosty nights which have done more damage than the snow had.
These are now ripening in the house.
I don’t expect overwintering tomatoes this year, and we’ve been harvesting the last of our zucchino rampicante, eggplant, jalapenos and tomatoes, and marking where the sweet potatoes lie underground.
Poor little frosty zucchinos.
Our hens aren’t happy about the weather change. We hung towels and tacked up cardboard in their coop for insulation, although now it looks like a cheap harem. Today I bought a heat lamp to keep them warmer.
Buddha’s Finger citron and snow. I candied the citron this year and used it in holiday bread. Wonderful!
Most of them are done molting except, of course, the Turken or naked-neck. Besides having a naturally bare neck, poor Malika has dropped over half of her feathers and has no insulation at all. Its a good thing that days aren’t frozen, too.
Poor Malika! An unfortunate molt.
By Monday daytime temperatures will be in the low 70’s again, and I’ll be worrying about planting spring crops already; despite the snow, there really isn’t a winter here. However, I thought I’d share some New Year’s eve photos of Finch Frolic Garden in the snow – not something I’d ever thought I’d see.
Rain compacts bare soil, and in this case making clay soil slick. No percolation is happening here!
World-wide we have a fresh water shortage, and the seas are rising. Erosion is cutting into our fields and washing our precious topsoil into waterways, causing them to silt up and die. In some areas of the US, unprecedented flooding from rain is occurring, while out West drought is drying up wells. The reasons for these happenings have to do with our farming techniques to begin with. How to fix the problems all boils down to some very simple methods that everyone can do – that everyone needs to do. It all comes down to making level-bottomed swales, and rain-catchment basins, to make the water penetrate the soil rather than roll over it. Rain compacts soil more than a tractor does – when it falls on bare ground. We have been trained to rake up leaves and burn them or send them to the dump. Leaves, dead vines and other organic matter cushions the rain and keeps the soil from being compacted. That organic matter also feeds the soil microorganisms that make soil hold manage rainwater. With the lack of organic matter, and the use of herbicides to kill off all vegetation, and the proliferation of huge swaths of lawn that is treated routinely with chemicals and therefore make the ground hard, rain rolls across the landscape taking topsoil with it.
Raised mounds on the downside of swales keep rainwater by plant roots.
Many neighborhoods have large culverts through their properties – mine included – where runoff from properties above is purposely channeled through and away from homes. All that precious water is wasted. The same happens in areas where rain is abundant. Rainwater is directed away from properties and into storm drains that fill and overflow, or it puddles in low spots because it has nowhere to go.
A rainwater and silt basin at the end of a series of rain catchment basins, has turned into a permanent pond.
By creating regular level-bottomed swales perpendicular to the flow of water, beginning as high up the landscape as possible, rain will be caught before its momentum running downhill becomes destructive. The water in the swales percolate into the landscape, reestablishing water tables and re-energizing wells and streambeds. Swales should be level at the bottom, dug on contour if large, and have a dedicated overflow into another swale, rain catchment basin or dam. Small property? Dig a small fishscale-shaped swale with a trowel above each of your small trees and plants, perpendicular to the flow of water. Filling these small swales with coarse mulch such as woodchips will keep them moist and weed-free.
With 97% of California wetlands gone, animals have no place to drink. Help them!
If your property is the recipient of water from uphill, then talk to all your neighbors above you and convince them to dig swales as well (neighborhood swale-digging party??). The amount of water raging down the hill will become insignificant, and everyone’s trees and plants will flourish due to the water being caught in the soil. The plume of water slowly moving through the landscape encourages tree and plant roots to grow deeper. The roots break through hardpan, produce sugars and proteins and carbohydrates to attract microbes, and create good soil for you.
A hugelkultur bed is made from layering wood with dirt and organic materials. It will absorb rainwater and release it slowly as the ground around it dries, while improving the soil.
So dig swales and rain catchment basins to passify and hold rainwater. Leave your leaves to prevent compaction and to feed your soil microbes. Enjoy having healthier plants, soil and waterways while helping to put the brakes on global warming.
The ponds at Finch Frolic Garden are cleaned by fish and plants, with no chemicals, algaecide, artificial aeration or filtration. Well-balanced water allows wildlife to thrive.
I should have more accurately called this post, Saving All the Insects, or even Saving the Wildlife, because the answer to saving one is the answer to saving them all. We’ve been inundated for years – my whole lifetime, in fact, – with pleas to save our environment, stop whale slaughter, stop polluting, etc. I remember winning a poster contest in fifth grade on the subject of curtailing littering. Since Rachel Carson’s books woke people up to the hazards of DDT and how chemicals have many deadly side effects there has been a grassroots effort to stop the pollution. Since Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth came out the push for environmentally friendly lights, cars, LEED-certified buildings and many more positive anti-climate-change actions have grown furiously. Too bad no one listened to him decades before. A drop in the economy and the radical change in weather patterns have people exploring organics, making their own clothes and foods, changing their shopping habits and thinking about what they are bringing into their homes. However, this week the World Wildlife Fund released the staggering results of a study that states that between the years 1970 and 2010, 52% of the world’s animal populations are gone. Over half. Gone. On our watch. In my lifetime. I am stunned with shame. So what about the next 40 years? Over 97% of California wetlands are already gone. There are only 3% left in Los Angeles. The Colorado River hasn’t met the ocean for decades, except briefly last year due to major earthworks. We are pumping all that water overland, open to the sun for evaporation, to treatment plants that fill it with chlorine and other chemicals, then sell it to us to spray over lawns and flush down the toilet or let run down the drain while the water heats up. It is madness. All the wildlife that depended upon the Colorado River along that stretch are gone. All the insects, the frogs, lizards, birds, mammals, etc. that need a clean drink of water no longer have access to it. The only water they can drink is usually chlorinated domestic water in ponds and bird baths. Too often this water is treated with algaecide, which claims it doesn’t hurt frogs but it does kill what the frogs feed upon. We are killing our animals with poisoned domestic water.
One of the largest reasons we have extinctions in North America is mismanagement of rainwater in drylands (other than polluting the waters. Poaching, over-fishing, destruction of habitat and climate change are the main reasons). We have cleared and flattened the ground, and channel rainwater off into the ocean. Look around at your streets and houses. Are they harvesting water or channeling it? Any property that is slanted is channeling water away. Any property that is level – like the bottom of swales – is harvesting water. So many properties are inundated with annual rains because there is no water harvesting above them. When you harvest water, it runs into rain catchment basins and swales instead of roaring down the hillside taking all the topsoil with it. Water becomes passive and percolates down deeply into the soil. That deep saturation draws tree roots down into the ground. The roots break up hardpan, make oxygen and nutrient channels into the dirt and produce exudates (sugars, carbohydrates and starches) through their roots to attract and feed the billions of microbes that turn your dirt into rain-holding soil. That underground plume of rainwater then slowly passes through your soil, re-enervating subterranean waterways, refilling your wells and bringing long-dry streambeds back to life. We must harvest rainwater to save our animals and plants, and consequently ourselves. We must reestablish sources of clean, unpolluted chemical-free water for animals to eat and from which to drink.
Healthy pond water is off-color due to tannins, and is filled with tiny creatures. Some such as daphnia are visible, but just like soil microbes, many aquatic creatures are microscopic. Fish and frogs feast from this level of the food chain, and these creatures make the water balanced. They eat mosquito eggs. They clean up algae. They are as vitally important as soil microbes. Oh, and 83% of the frogs are gone.
I spoke with Quentin Alexander from HiveSavers today; he performs humane bee rescue around the San Diego area and has been trying to re-queen Africanized hives with calmer European queens which will breed nicer behavior back into the bees rather than having to kill the entire hive. He has had no luck in the past two years with European queens, even those bred in California. With very little wetlands left, and those often sprayed with DEET by Vector Control, or polluted with chemical fertilizers and oils washed out of front yards, streets and driveways, these insects must resort to drinking from swimming pools and bird baths. Again, these contain highly chlorinated water. Animals are being forced to drink poison, or not drink at all.
We MUST stop using chemicals on our properties, and we MUST harvest rainwater. We MUST stop spraying well water into the air but irrigate with it in dripper form under mulch so that it is cycled back into the ground rather than evaporated. One inch of rain on one acre in one hour is 27,154 gallons of water! It is so easy to harvest rainwater – dig level-bottomed swales! Dig small ones with a trowel. Fire up the tractor and turn road ways into swales, or cross-cut vertical paths with swales that have dedicated overflows. Dig rain catchment basins to catch a flow of water. Catch water as high up on your property as you can. If you have level soil, fantastic! You have it so easy! Make gentle swales, rain gardens, rain catchment areas and sunken gardens to catch and percolate the water. Bury old wood perpendicular to water flow – its called hugelkultur.
Please watch this six-minute video by Geoff Lawton of the Permaculture Design Institute of Australia. You need to type in your name and email, but they don’t sell your information nor do they bug you with lots of emails. Here is the link. The title is Finding An Oasis in the American Desert, and it is about the Roosevelt swales dug during the dust bowl in the desert. If nothing that I say, nor anyone else says can convince you, then please watch this and see the effectiveness of rain harvesting. We MUST do this, and now before the rains come is the time. Catch all the water that falls on your property in the soil, and try to catch the water that runs into it. If there are flood waters channeled through your property, see if you can talk to the people who own land above you about harvesting water up there. It will reduce the flooding, save topsoil and benefit everyone’s property. Work towards keeping rainwater in your soil, reducing your domestic water, and making what streambeds are left come back to life. Keep our old trees from dying by watering deeply through rain catchment. If you have a pond or swimming pool and treat it with harsh chemicals and algaecides, seek out a natural pond professional. In the San Diego – Los Angeles region there is Bob Lloyd of PuraVida Aquatics, or Jacob Hatch of Hatch Aquatics. Jacob builds natural ponds and maintains large natural waterways. Bob maintains chemical-free backyard and display ponds that are full of wildlife. He can convert your pool into a clean swimming pond where the water is filtered by plants and thus is lovely year-round, provides abundant habitat and doesn’t need chemical treatments. No chlorine to burn your skin and eyes. How great is that? He can also create a constructed wetland that cleans your greywater with plants.
There are so many simple and inexpensive ways to harvest rainwater rather than allow it to flow into the salty ocean without penetrating the soil. Please, please, please do them, and if you already have THANK YOU and gently encourage your neighbors to do the same. We must stop the habitat destruction and start to rebuild what is gone.
A Permaculturalist’s Explanation of How Life Works
Want to understand the microbial life in compost, in ponds and in our bodies? This lecture by microbiologist Dr. Robert Lloyd will provide you with a basic understanding of how microbes work and what they do. Fascinating and comprehensible for the layman, this talk is essential for those who want to understand more about how life works, in or out of the garden and pond.
This lecture will take place on Saturday, October 11,
4 PM – 6 PM, at beautiful Finch Frolic Garden in Fallbrook. Light homemade refreshments will be served. The fee for the lecture is $20. Please RSVP to dianeckennedy@prodigy.net. The fee can be sent to Finch Frolic Garden, 390 Vista del Indio, Fallbrook, CA 92028 (also the location of the talk).
Dr. Robert Lloyd is owner of PuraVida Aquatic.He has maintained chemical-free ponds and aquariums for 20 years. He also can convert chlorinated swimming pools to chemical-free, naturally balanced, swimmable and healthy ecosystems. (www.puravidaaquatic.com)
Please bring soil, water, or any sample you would like to examine under a microscope!
Just when I was mourning the fact that our household didn’t create enough food waste to generate lots of compost, I received an email from a former visitor to Finch Frolic Garden. She volunteers at the Fallbrook Food Pantry, where they distribute balanced food supplements to over 800 families a week who earn less than the US poverty limit. They receive raw, outdated fruit and vegetables from grocery stores and other sources, sort through it and have to discard what isn’t safe to hand out. The volunteer knew that I composted and wondered if I’d like to pick up the residue so that they wouldn’t have to throw it out. She and the director had been taking it home, but it was too much for them. Four times a week I’ve been picking up buckets of smuck, or what I call the rotting fruit and vegetables, and often its too much for me as well.
Boxes of mixed smuck were difficult to pick up and very, very juicy. Buckets are better.
There has been a grace period where my daughter and I nearly broke our backs picking up cardboard boxes sodden with fruit juice that stained our clothes and our car, and spent lots of time cutting produce out of plastic bags and containers, but the Food Pantry staff have been wonderful about usually opening the packages and using only old pool buckets.
One drawback is that very little of the smuck is organic. We are constantly amazed at how fruit and vegetables remain hard on the outside while rot on the inside. These peppers were hybridized to be solid enough to ship without bruising, at the expense of flavor and nutrition.
My back, my clothes and my car thank them. Fortunately others have been picking some smuck up. The man in my life happily takes lots of it to feed to his compost worms. We’re a great match.
My daughter and I empty the buckets into the chicken coop.
Charlotte, Bodicea and Esther/Myrtle with a new batch of smuck, heavy on the bananas.
The girls love it. I make sure they eat lay crumble and calcium as well to keep laying, but with the smuck they’ve reduced their intake of crumble and hence have lowered my expense.
The girls going after the smuck.
I pitchfork straw and weeds over the top and within a few days most of it except some citrus and a coconut or two is pretty much gone. There is a fly problem, but with the flies there have come more flycatchers and lizards, and the hens eat the insect larvae that emerges in the compost.
This is Agatha, named after a favorite mystery writer. She’s here just because she’s so lovely.
The picking up of smuck, hauling it down the hill and into the coop, de-packaging, cleaning buckets and fighting flies and ants, three – to -four times a week has been a time-consuming and very, very icky job, but the thought of all that free waste going into the dumpster keeps me at it. This is bacteria-heavy compost material, which is excellent for growing non-woody herbaceous plants such as our own vegetables and herbs.
I’ve also layered the smuck with cardboard, paper waste from the house (tissues, paper towels, cotton balls, Q-tips, junk mail, shredded paper, etc.) under the bananas.
A pile of fruit, veggies and cardboard, partially covered with clippings, at the food of our big banana. A citrus to the side likes it, too.
Bananas love lots of food in the form of moist compost around their roots; in fact, they are commonly planted in banana circles with understory plants and the center of the circle is a place for waste products to deteriorate. In our dry San Diego climate we don’t have that kind of tropical moisture to help it rot, but the compost does become a sheet mulch and really helps create soil.
Miranda adds a melon to the banana circle smuck.
One inch of compost reduces watering needs by ten percent, so a pile of wet smuck layered with carbon items such as dry cuttings and cardboard is excellent. I throw cuttings and pine needles over the top to keep down the rotty fruit smell, which doesn’t last long anyway.
Sugar cane and passionfruit enjoy the smuck layers under the banana – kind of a banana semi-circle.
When creating new impromptu trellises for melons and squash in unimproved soil, Miranda and I dug trenches, threw in wet wood and dumped buckets of smuck right on top then covered the trench with dirt. We planted seeds in handfuls of good compost and away they went. We also used some of the mostly composted soil from the Fowl Fortress directly into the kitchen garden .
We augmented the kitchen garden soil with nearly-composted smuck dirt.
Due to the wide variety of fruit and vegetables in the smuck buckets we’ve had some interesting volunteer plants. Tiny tear-shaped tomatoes that had been sold in plastic containers for natural snacks, a sweet potato, other tomatoes, and melons. At least we thought they were melons.
Melon vines taking over the kitchen garden… but not the melons we expected!
Miranda was wondering about pulling them out of the kitchen garden because they were taking over without apparently producing a flower. A couple of days ago she investigated further and found a real surprise. We have about thirty kiwanos growing under the foliage!
Kiwanos with lots of blooms lurking beneath the foliage.
I’ve never eaten a kiwano. Wikipedia says: Cucumis metuliferus, horned melon or kiwano, also African horned cucumber or melon, jelly melon, hedged gourd, melano, in the southeastern United States, blowfish fruit, is an annual vine in the cucumber and melon family, Cucurbitaceae. I’ve seen them in the smuck buckets, and it just figures that of all the green melons and orange melons that we’ve thrown in there, something like these would grow! None have ripened to the light orange color as yet, which is good because it gives us time to figure out what to do with them.
When they turn orange they’ll really look like blowfish fruit!
Here in Southern California, as in many other areas, we are finally legally recognizing the drought. There are rebates in place for those who take out their lawns, and here in Fallbrook there is a 36% water reduction goal. Many people just don’t know what to do with all that lawn. A very unfortunate continuing trend is to dump half a ton of colored gravel on it. Please! NO! First of all, once down gravel is nearly impossible to get out again. Gravel, like all rocks, is thermal mass. Instead of having a large rock heating up and radiating out heat, with gravel there are tens of thousands of surfaces radiating out heat and reflecting light and heat back up. It is the worst kind of hardscape. All that reflected heat and light heats up your home, making you use your air conditioner more frequently which is a waste of energy, and also dries out the air around your home. Desertification reflects light and heat to a point where moist air moving over a region dries up. There is less rain, or no rain. Most trees and plants trap humidity under their leaves. Gravel reflects light and heat back up under those leaves and dries them out, sickening your plants and trees. Pollen travels farther on humid air; it can dry out quickly. If you are relying on pollination for good fruit set between trees that are spaced far apart, then having some humidity will increase your chances of success.
However, I thought I’d share some New Year’s eve photos of Finch Frolic Garden in the snow – not something I’d ever thought I’d see.
![dry_colorado_new[1]](http://www.vegetariat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/dry_colorado_new1-613x321.jpg)
Make gentle swales, rain gardens, rain catchment areas and sunken gardens to catch and percolate the water. Bury old wood perpendicular to water flow – its called hugelkultur.
A Permaculturalist’s Explanation of How Life Works
![dry_colorado_new[1]](http://www.vegetariat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/dry_colorado_new1.jpg)
