County uses good mulch

Commentary to the Grants Pass City Council, 3-6-2013.  Not published on Yahoo Voices

I saw good mulch being spread on county property this week.  At the Dimmick hospital property, there were tree chips spread among the shrubs and a pile waiting to be spread as well.  ODOT has likewise been using tree chips around trees in the South Y intersection.

Our county officials have seen the light of using available mulch that is free or cheap and doesn’t kill soil.  They are talking about storing excess county leaves for use as mulch by the county and residents, as the City used to do before the Parkway eliminated our old Little League fields and the leaf dump next door.  I took many loads of half-composted leaves, full of worms, from that dump for my dad’s yard in the mid-1980s.  It will be good to have a leaf storage depot available again for my gardening business and home gardeners, as well as the County. 

Perhaps the City and County can share one, as the City should stop hauling bagged leaves to Jo Gro for free, and keep the trash out of its compost.  Leaves are far better used directly for mulch than mixed with sewage sludge and composted; they stop weeds as they decompose and feed the soil. 

Compost and barks, fine or coarse, make better weed seed beds than weed-stoppers.  In maintenance, I have moved to using leaves as much as I can to stop weeds; they work better than anything else.  Tree chips are a close second, are neater, and last longer, but I rarely use them.  But walk-on fir and nugget bark do not kill soil, retain moisture, look beautiful and last far longer than fine bark.

The City of Grants Pass, on the other hand seems set to renew its fine bark mulch, Red Death, around city hall and other city properties, as it has done regularly since I started telling you about fine bark killing soil 5 years ago. 

You just gave awards to various owners and builders of new buildings, most of which were surrounded by Red Death mulch.  I challenge these owners of new, award-winning landscaping to take a shovel to their soil under that bark and find any life at all.  The natural preservatives in the bark, grown to protect trees from insects, fungi and diseases, and freed by grinding it, have killed all non-plant life under it.  Weeds, however, are growing at the one I pass nearly every day; Red Death makes a great weed seed bed.

Please join the State and County in bringing our soil back to life, and stop spreading Red Death.

Changing public servants’ minds takes eloquence and numbers.

One eloquent person with numbers of people chiming in can work wonders.

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

Insurance Companies Sue Landowner

Speech to the Grants Pass City Council, 1/16/2013.  Video of the meeting is available at: http://www.grantspassoregon.gov/Index.aspx?page=1449

  

Honorable Councilors, Manager, and Staff:

          You might recall a fire in Ashland a few years ago, which was started by a transient camping in a grassy field and burned eleven homes.  Back in November, an article appeared in the Oregonian, telling us that several insurance companies have sued the owner of the vacant lot where the fire started for the $1.7 million they paid out in claims on 6 homes.

          The companies said that the property was in violation of state and local codes, and the owners allowed a "dangerous accumulation of waste and overgrown brush…that created an extreme fire hazard."  They say that the owners were warned by neighbors that vagrants were camping in the field. 

          Grants Pass is full of vacant properties that violate our city nuisance and safety hazard codes by allowing weeds to go to seed, noxious growth like blackberries and scotch broom, litter, and camping.  We had a forest fire just off of 7^th Street in fall of 2011, complete with water drops, from dry grass and flammable brush right behind Burger King.  And this city owns a piece of property that has a dangerous accumulation of blackberries, scotch broom, and grass beneath oak, pine, and madrone trees, on the hill above F Street west of the 1100 block, in the midst of new, expensive homes.

          We have better fire control outside the City than within it, thanks to federal grants to clear brush.  We have lately had a city “Firewise Coordinator” to help people in the city to clear brush and weeds as well, but few takers, possibly because the grants are a limited reimbursement—the same deal as in the country.  And our public safety department now wants to buy a “Wildfire Tactical Pumper” to handle wildfires in the City.

          I don’t see how any truck is going to help you if that F Street property catches fire; there is no road into the property.  It would again require helicopter drops to fight.  You have homes on the top of the hill next to your land, as well as below.  Teens party on the top of that hill, leaving litter.  It’s not as handy for vagrants as the private property below it on the lower side of F Street, where there is plentiful evidence of camping in the Scotch broom and blackberries near the railroad.

          We don’t need a wildfire tactical rig; we need to enforce and follow our nuisance codes.  If they were enforced, there would be no wildfire danger in this city, and fewer disorderly vagrants.

         

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

City Makes Trashy Compost

Speech to the Grants Pass City Council, 12/5/12.  Video of the meeting is available at: http://www.grantspassoregon.gov/Index.aspx?page=1449

   

Honorable Councilors, Manager, and Staff:

          As leaves began falling in early October, I begged you to stop sending our leaves to Jo Gro.   Since then, we’ve been picking up bags of leaves for me and my customers from the curb as often as we can. 

          In many of those bags I found litter.  In one load, a person had dumped ashtrays in two bags, and a dozen or so plastic bottle caps in another.  The butts might have come out of the grinding and composting process black, but the caps would have been broken and spread through the compost.

          I’ve noticed and picked out such trash in your compost that is spread behind the wastewater treatment plant.  It has three sources: people who dump leaves at Jo Gro; bags of leaves from the curbs; and your street sweeper.

          At Southern Oregon Compost some landscape maintenance people were not careful to keep litter out of their leaves, but that problem seems to be getting better as management keeps a closer eye on the dumpers.  You probably get the same problem at Jo Gro from both maintenance workers and residents.

          Your street sweeper also sweeps up the litter along with the leaves.  I’m pretty sure the workers don’t sort out the trash when they dump at Jo Gro.

          It doesn’t even do a good job of cleaning the streets, leaving a lot of small crud, sand, and rocks that would be cleaned much more thoroughly with blowers, especially if residents were encouraged to use leaves for mulch wherever they don’t have pavement or lawn, and therefore would be blowing the crud up on their property.

          It also doesn’t normally sweep sidewalks, but still causes many residents, even on streets where it never goes, to ignore their sidewalk along with the street, allowing their leaves to create a hazard for walkers and bike riders.  But the other day I noticed that, along Brownell next to the wastewater treatment plant, it had run on the sidewalks and neglected the gutter.  A while later, I saw that it had repeatedly been run up on the grass north of the tennis courts in the Reinhart Volunteer Park to pick up the leaves from beneath the maple trees there.  Both incidents were apparently in response to my specific requests to our Assistant Manager to have city workers blow the leaves onto soil and move them from grass to soil.

          The sweeper makes both city workers and residents lazy, and does a bad job of cleaning streets.  Please get rid of it.

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

Unattended Trash Cans Cause Litter

Comment to the Josephine County Commissioners, 11-28-12. 

Honorable Commissioners:

          A few weeks ago, Carl Wilson of KAJO radio gave me a puzzle:  The New York City subway system hauls about 14,000 tons of garbage out of the subway system every year.  They did an experiment and removed all trash cans from two platforms.  They stayed much cleaner.  They will be removing cans from 8 more platforms this year.

          I thought about that for two days before I figured out why.  It is because the trash cans are unattended, and people are careless.  They don’t always make sure that the litter they throw at the can gets in it.

A trash can in Baker Park by the boat landing.  Ironically, it is one of the cleaner places in that park.

 

          One of the iron rules of littering is that one piece of litter on the ground, no matter how small, gives people subconscious permission to drop more.  Any trash anywhere, even in the can, gives permission to leave trash in that place.  If the can is full, that’s even more permission, and one feels righteously angry at the owner of the can as one adds one’s trash consciously to the pile around it.

          The trash can in front of the courthouse is a case in point.  I requested it several years ago because of the trash that gathered on the steps.  It still gathers there; the can makes no difference.  Some people sit on the steps, eating, drinking, and smoking, and leave litter anyways.  The can merely makes it more convenient to pick it up and throw it away, but few people are willing to do that, and we who do tend to come equipped with bags because we don’t expect nearby trash cans.  If I happen to be without a bag and pick some litter up, I carry it until I find a can indoors, if necessary. 

          If people don’t find a trash can as they are walking downtown eating or drinking, some will drop litter, but most will carry it, to their car or house, if necessary.  The few who habitually drop it will do so regardless.  But those who are careless about putting it in cans will have no opportunity for such carelessness.

          Please remove the can in front of the Anne Basker, and the ones by the doors of the courthouse.  People going in the courthouse can find a can inside; cans by the door are not convenient for anyone else.  It may be that the trash gathers around the stone tables outside because of the presence of that can, inconveniently out of reach, but giving permission to leave trash.  It is unlikely that putting the can near the tables will get the kind of people who leave trash lying around to use it.  So get rid of it, and all other such unattended outdoor cans, and save the county some money.

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

http://www.worldmag.com/2012/09/quick_takes_0