Stop Wasting Our Leaves on Jo Gro

Speech to the Grants Pass City Council, 10/17/12. 

       

Honorable Councilors, Mayor, Manager and Assistant Manager:

          I was walking down Brownell, north of the Water Reclamation Plant, and saw leaves and pine needles had been raked from under the trees.  Please stop that, and leave our leaves on the soil where they belong.

          Leaves must be cleaned off pavements and lawns, but they belong on soil.  They block germination of weed seeds; keep the soil moist; and feed the life of the soil, particularly worms.  These heavy evergreen photinia leaves and pine needles stick around for a year or more, protecting the soil.

          This city used to tell us to use our leaves in our yards for mulch.  Now it uses soil-killing fine bark for mulch, and takes our leaves to Jo Gro.  This is a waste of effort in cleaning leaves up from where they belong, and a waste of money and effort in spreading fine bark in their place.  That fine bark kills soil instead of feeding it, the soil compacts, doesn’t percolate well, and increases our stormwater runoff and pollution.

          Jo Gro has a reputation for being too hot, so much so that the State does not allow its use on its projects.  Adding leaves to the mix does not help; they are too rich.  To balance your hot sewage sludge, you need cool wood waste, not leaves.  Southern Oregon Compost once had straw in their cow manure; now they use sawdust to balance their compost.  Sawdust is a lot cheaper than fine bark; it would be better to buy sawdust for Jo Gro and use the city’s leaves on city properties to stop weeds and restore the health of the soil.

          Just outside the Greenwood entrance to the Water Reclamation plant, there is a giant black walnut tree.  Its leaves have started to fall and are filling the gutter around the circle at the end of the street.  Please do not send a street sweeper to sweep them up; send in a man with a blower to blow them across the sidewalk, onto the landscape.  Walnut leaves suppress weeds with a natural herbicide that stops germination of small seeds.

          While we have nuisance codes that forbid mature and seeding weeds and litter that the city has ignored since the 70’s, we have no nuisance code requiring cleaning of leaves from pavements.  When the weed code was written in the 60’s, apparently it went without saying that people would clean up leaves from pavements, but that is no longer the case.   We need a code forbidding leaves to lie on pavements, and we need to enforce our nuisance codes.

                   

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener       541-955-9040            rycke@gardener.com

County: Use Leaves to Stop Weeds

Comment to the Josephine County Commissioners, 9-26-12. 

Honorable Commissioners:

          Pine needles are falling, beginning the major leaf fall from which this season gets its name.  This is the time for the County to change its leaf management and start using our leaves on site as much as possible to suppress weeds in shrub and flower borders. 

          Schroeder Park is a case in point.  The junipers alongside the tennis courts at the upper end are full of wild lettuce and blackberries that need to be pulled and cut.  Leaves should be spread between the bushes to stop the lettuce from germinating next year, and to feed and soften the soil for taking out the blackberries and other weeds in the spring.

          Leaves must be removed from pavements and lawns, though there is no city code mandating it.  Apparently, when the City was concerned with landscape nuisances in the 60’s, it went without saying that people would pick up their leaves before the last one falls, especially from streets and sidewalks.  They smother grass and create safety hazards and eventually soil on pavements.  They should be left on bare soil, and more added from the lawns and pavements.

          Here around the courthouse, we have narrow, mounded beds with slopes.  But our locust trees have small leaflets that will cling to those beds, and they should be blown into them, not cleaned out of them.  Larger leaves will stay in the larger beds around the courthouse and library, and those beds should be fed and protected with the leaves that are readily available.

          Up on Dimmick, we have an abandoned hospital with trees, lawn, shrub borders, and a parking lot across the street that is full of wild lettuce and blackberries.  The lettuce needs to be pulled and the borders where it grows needs to be mulched with the leaves and needles in the lot, just as the hospital’s shrub borders need to be mulched with the leaves that fall nearby.

          Oak leaves, pine needles, sweet gum, locust, and other tough leaves are great for weed suppression because they stick around for a good year or more.  Walnut leaves, which are not tough, are even better because they suppress weed germination long after they are eaten by worms, due to the jugalone in them that stops germination of small seeds.  But even softer leaves that are eaten by midsummer are useful for stopping winter weed germination.  All leaves should be used, not wasted on Jo Gro.  Raking them out of beds is unnecessary labor and expense.

          (Since this speech, weeds were cut in the Dimmick parking lots.)       

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener         541-955-9040    rycke@gardener.com

Tolerating Neglect Slows Infill

Speech to the Grants Pass City Council, 9/19/12.  Video of the meeting is available at: http://www.grantspassoregon.gov/Index.aspx?page=1449

       

Honorable Councilors, Mayor, and Manager:

          This week, you and the County Commissioners planned to come to some agreement on expansion of the Urban Growth Boundary, or UGB.  Some have said that we shouldn’t expand it much or at all, with all the vacant businesses, homes, and lots all over town.  They fear further “sprawl,” which Senate Bill 100 was passed in 1971 to prevent.

          And yet, despite that tight boundary around our city, and the high land prices that tempted our City Council to buy 250 acres of farmland 2 miles outside the UGB, vacant lots all over the newer parts of town are still vacant.  They are apparently owned by people like Ward Ockenden, forever selling that corner lot between Mill, M and the Parkway, and never getting the price that he thinks he should get.  There is little cost for him to hold it as long as the City doesn’t enforce its code against weeds and litter, so he can keep dreaming of the fortune that he thinks he’s going to get someday.

          Likewise, the owner of the big lot at M and Milbank that is covered with goat heads, as well as a batch of other weeds, has had little incentive to take the market price for his lot.  Neither have the people who own the weedy, littered lots on F Street, on the East side of Agnes, and all along Redwood Avenue.

          Over the last 30 years, since I lived here in the 80’s, this city has doubled in population and tripled in size.  Sprawl, the bugaboo that SB 100 was written to stop, has not been stopped, because properties brought into the city have never had to be kept to city code.  Parts of the fire safety code were enforced by our firemen until Code Enforcement, now called Community Service, was formed, apparently to keep those pesky firemen from bothering Very Important People like Representative Ron Maurer, Councilor Tim Cummings, and Pacific Power.  So owners of vacant land brought into the city have not had to spend the money to keep the rest of us safe, and we have had grass, brush, and even forest fires in our city, in addition to the ugliness of weeds and the nuisance of their seeds spreading from one property to the next.

          Please eliminate our Community Service Officers, and order all police to enforce our nuisance and safety hazard codes against weeds and litter.  And please order all of our public servants to pick up litter from public properties within the city, for one-half hour per day.

                   

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener       541-955-9040            rycke@gardener.com

Neglect Helped the Bubble Grow

Comment to the Josephine County Commissioners and Grants Pass City Council, 9-14-12. 

Honorable Chosen Ones:

            The City of Grants Pass was represented on the KAJO talk show this month by several city councilors, among them Darin Fowler, running for mayor.  They were discussing the needed renovations to the water plant, and I called to point out that, if our police were allowed to enforce our nuisance weed code on sight, people would soon learn that damp ground is easier to weed than dry; they would start watering their lawns; and we would sell enough water to pay for the renovations without raising rates.

            No one bit on that one, so the host asked if I had a question.  I asked, “Why is Baker Park such a trash pit?”  Councilor Fowler bit on that one, saying that he had ridden his bike down the new trail into and through Baker Park, and he “didn’t see any big trash piles.”  And he later pointed out that, if police were to enforce our nuisance code on sight, we’d hear all kinds of complaints.

            Yes, indeed we would.  Last year, the City heard developer and ex-councilor Tim Cummings loud and clear when he came in and complained that he was going to have to cut his lot twice, because police were making him cut it too soon.  Suddenly, all code enforcement against vacant lots stopped.  I was forbidden to complain to the cops and given access only to our Assistant City Manager, through whom my complaints have been handled since.  Apparently, one complaint by a developer outweighs 140 complaints by a gardener.

            Land prices got so high during the last 40 years at least partly because our police stopped enforcing our nuisance codes as Nixon declared War on Drugs in the ‘70s; Reagan ramped it up in the ‘80s; and drug users got blamed for all the ills of society.  Over the last couple decades, police have stopped enforcing the hazard codes against large landowners as well.  Real estate became thought of as a financial asset with no liability apart from property taxes and debt, one that made a profit because its price was rising faster than inflation. 

           Cities like ours bought more land for parks than we could control, letting portions be taken over by blackberries and weeds.  Developers and speculators bought land and held it while spending less and less on maintenance.  Vacant land holders have tried to control weeds with Roundup and mowing, which has only killed good perennial grasses and fertilized and spread windblown weeds, oats, crabgrass, star thistle and goat heads.

            Meanwhile, we have paid the price for their neglect in higher land prices; brush and grass fires in a city that, by our code, should not have any; brown lawns with weeds spreading from our neighbors’ yards to ours; litter throughout our city; and noxious weeds like star thistle and goat heads sticking our legs and puncturing our bike tires. 

Our economy has crashed, not because of these nuisances and hazards, but because the land bubble was financially unsustainable.  But neglect of nuisances helped the bubble grow.  We don’t need a booster who sees no evil for mayor.  We need a mayor who can see litter on the ground.

         

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener         541-955-9040    rycke@gardener.com

City Police are Demoralized

Speech to the Grants Pass City Council, 9/5/12.  

       

Honorable Councilors, Mayor, and Manager:

          I went to Baker Park to see if that trash pit had been cleaned at all since I complained two weeks ago.  It was still a trash pit.  I watched a woman come and clean the bathrooms and leave.  Two weeks ago, I watched 4 men in an Aspire truck empty two trash cans.  Apparently, that’s all the city does in that park, while the trash and weeds pile up in and around it. 

                                Baker Park, litter in the parking lot

                  

          A police officer rode in on his motorcycle.  I had to ask him if he was there in response to the litter compliant I’d called in.  Of course not, but he said that he had complained numerous times about the trash himself.  He said that he’d talked every year to Parks about thinning out the weeds so police could see people camping.  He was down there to see who he could cite for disorderly conduct offenses.  We had a nice chat, commiserating about the mess.

                                       Baker Park, weeds

          I call this man a police officer for good reason; he is one who actually tries to keep public order, for which he is widely hated among the disorderly poor.  Unfortunately, he is not allowed to cite richer people or organizations for letting their property become disorderly, like Baker Park. 

That power was taken away under Manager David Frasher after police and firemen were combined and called Public Safety, when Code Enforcement was created and later called Community Service Officers, or CSOs.  Public Safety officers are not allowed to notice and cite weeds and litter, and even CSOs work only by citizen or supervisor complaint.  A year or so ago, when I tried to get a passing CSO to look at a problem, he said that I had to call it in, and then he would be told to look at it.

With supervisors who pick and choose what will be looked at and who do their best to discourage citizen complaints, powerful landowners have become safe from citation for allowing their properties to become disorderly nuisances.  A few properties get abated, but one can complain about others repeatedly and nothing is done.

          And now, as he pointed out, he can cite, but the disorderly poor mostly don’t care, because we have no jail space for disorderly conduct or failures to appear for it.  He seemed to be thoroughly demoralized, as others must be also.  They signed up to police, not just enforce state laws.  Please eliminate the CSO department and ask all of your officers to read our nuisance code and enforce it on sight.  

How to Kill Goatheads and Star Thistle

Comment to the Josephine County Commissioners and Grants Pass City Council, 8-30-12

There are two noxious weeds that are growing throughout our town: goatheads, AKA puncture vine, tack vine, bullthorns and caltrops; and star thistle, a thistle that has thorns only on its flower buds.  They are both weeds of non-residential commercial and public landscapes, because most people don’t tolerate them where they live, even if they put up with all kinds of other weeds.  In 12 years of professional gardening, I have seen them at exactly one residence.  Working there made me get a flat-free wheelbarrow tire.

 

                                         Goathead flower

Meanwhile, I have watched bullheads move onto downtown properties like the three across F Street from the Growers’ Market parking lot, and star thistle taking over vacant lots and the underused edges of public properties.  They are mostly weeds of organizations that do not love their neighbours by obeying our city’s nuisance codes.

Unlike windblown weeds, these do not travel far or fast.  Goathead seeds spread on bike tires, wheelbarrows, and riding mowers; high speed travel apparently crushes them, and few people or dogs carry them far on their feet.  One would think that star thistle would spread on the wind, like other thistles, but they don’t.  They cling to the plant and are picked up on clothing and spread by mowers as well.

                                 goathead seeds

This year, I am getting a lot of practice killing these two weeds on the City’s Water Reclamation Plant property at the end of Greenwood, in preparation for the dog park that the City, at my suggestion, wants to build east of the walking path to the Reinhart Volunteer Park.  I spend about 20 minutes a day on the task, before and while I walk my dog.  The ground is very dry and hard, and they don’t pull, my normal weeding method, so I have been cutting them under the crown, which appears to work well.

 

  Star Thistle:  http://cameronkopf.blogspot.com/2011_09_01_archive.html

Annual weeds like goatheads and star thistle build up food in their roots until they flower, and then move that energy into their crowns and tops as they flower and seed.  Cutting to two inches high, the height at which most people mow and whack weeds, only slows down flowering above mower height, and doesn’t touch flowers below that point.  The tall ones like star thistle grow right back above it; the crawlers like goatheads are not affected, except that mowers spread their seed.  Cutting annuals below the crown takes out the source of flowers, and the roots cannot recover.

   Young star thistle (http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au/agriculture/pests-diseases-and-weeds/weeds/other-declared-weeds/star-thistle)

Whacking either weed all the way to the ground can take out most of the crowns, but spreads any ripe goathead seeds.  Pruning scissors are more effective; allow one to pick up the ripe goatheads; and may even be faster, though one has to stoop to do the work, because it takes a lot of whacking to kill a crown or cut below it.  Star thistles have tough stems, but their crowns are often 2 inches or more off the ground, and are readily cut even with dull scissors, which they will be after much cutting in the dirt.

         

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener         541-955-9040    rycke@gardener.com

Fairgrounds Weeds Are Prospering

Speech to the Josephine County Commissioners, 8-29-12

Honorable Commissioners:

          I was catching up on Couriers that I had missed over the last few weeks, and found a Guest Opinion from August 10^th by our Fair Manager, headlined “By every measure, fairgrounds prospering.”  This was taken from his own words, “By every measuring stick, the fairgrounds is prospering.” 

Certainly the weeds along the western end are prospering; many of the newest windblown nuisance in our area are a good yard tall and about to bloom.  This particular weed is not as ugly as wild lettuce, but it spreads the same way, on the wind, and is probably even more of a fire hazard.  Certainly, it does its share of collecting and holding litter for all to see.  The blackberries growing down the fence and slowly taking over the parking lot are also prospering. This is the end where all visitors to the Fair were sent to park and walk in, the only open entrance.  It is not a good introduction to the Fair or to Redwood Avenue, where it sets the tone for the entire street.

Just before the Fair, a woman came to speak for the horse owners and told the Board that she was collecting petition signatures of people who have no confidence in Wes Brown.  One of her complaints was a lack of maintenance of facilities, including not cleaning restrooms or emptying trash cans.  I signed it because he is doing nothing to maintain the landscape to city code: to love our neighbours by controlling our weeds and to present a neat appearance to visitors and residents alike.  He ignored the single e-mail I sent him on the subject, so I talk to you, his bosses.

In his article, he complains twice that he doesn’t understand why some people have a problem with his management, calling us “short-sighted and ignorant at the outpouring of public support for the fairgrounds” in the first instance, and “sceptical” of his “accomplishments” in the second.  But he doesn’t address any of our complaints, just like he ignored my e-mail.

Being a Fairgrounds Manager is more than putting on events and ignoring the condition of the facilities where they take place.  It includes cleaning and maintenance.  He touts the fact that the Fair finished its fiscal year in the black.  This was at the expense of our facilities: the land and the buildings.  Deferred maintenance does not go away; it becomes more expensive.  He manages at the expense of his neighbours and county taxpayers.  We are not “sceptical.”  We are angry at his short-sighted ignorance of our concerns.