Clean Water Makes Cleaner Food

          On KAJO’s Tuesday talk show this week, one of the Councilors present replied to my proposal to change our water rates to promote irrigation that it is a shame that children in Africa don’t have access to clean water, while we are using it to water our yards.

          This reminds me of what we were told as children:  “Eat your dinner; there are starving people in China.”  A smart child would say, “Then send it to China.”  An American eating dinner couldn’t fill a Chinese stomach.  We can’t send any clean water that we don’t use to children in Africa.  The problem in Africa is a lack of water-cleaning equipment, such as the new “flash” distiller that the same Councilor was talking about a few minutes before, which the Navy is using to provide ship-board water.  He said that it can clean seawater faster than it can be pumped overboard.

          I get the same kind of response from Greens on Linked In: Look at all the fresh water shortages around the world!  We have to save it!

All fresh and clean water shortages are local.  Those with a lot of fresh, clean water cannot send it to those who don’t have enough and are far away.  Los Angeles has built giant pipelines to bring water to their overgrown city, but I don’t think you want to sell water to LA. 
 

We can, however, send it on the wind over the Cascades to the Klamath Basin, by using it for irrigation and letting it blow over the hill to them, while first making rain in Josephine and Jackson Counties.

          Still, some think that cleaned water is wasted if one throws it on plants.  The FDA and Department of Agriculture might differ.  There have been e-coli outbreaks caused by irrigating with dirty water.  The Grants Pass Water Quality Monitoring report for 2003-2005 prepared by Rogue Valley Council of Governments showed high E. coli levels for all streams except Jones Creek and the Rogue River and moderate levels in the Rogue.  By using city water on the food we grow, we avoid E. coli contamination.  This is also safer water to use in a mister or sprinkler for children to play in.  The actual cleaning of our water costs very little, but cleaned water is not wasted by using it for irrigation or cooling and cleaning our air. 

          If you want to help children in Africa, donate to a charity that builds water plants there.  We have poor children in Grants Pass that are growing up without green yards or growing their own food.  Poor families are paying more than they should for household water as well, subsidizing single seniors with much more money.  The City can give a discount to seniors who are using food stamps; the rest can pay their fair share for our water plant.

 

Gardening is easy, if you do it naturally.

The World’s Greatest Gardening Scissors

There is one brand of gardening scissors that can do a lot more than pruning, a lot better than any other brand I’ve seen.  It’s Kengyu.  Look it up on the web.  I found the manufacturer the other day.  Today, I can only find secondary suppliers.

http://www.environmentalgreenproducts.com/store/kengyu-brand-gardenman-cut-scissors-kg-4-pr-16236.html

They have red and white plastic-covered loop handles, soft on the outside, and easy to hold, unlike hand pruners, which have to be actively held.  With their short, thin, sharp blades, they fit into tiny spaces.  They were made for bonsai, but they can cut anything that hand pruners can cut, more easily.  Those blades are very sharp at the tip; they need a tool belt or holster to hold them safely.  I like a tool belt, which can also hold gloves and trash.

Only in the last couple of years have I found the other great use for them: as a weeding tool.  Faced with the problem of weeding goat heads and star thistle from dry ground, I found that I could cut them below their crowns and they would not grow back, being annuals in flower.  This just happens to be the point at which they violate our nuisance code and must be weeded lest they become a nuisance.

When an annual starts to flower, it puts all of its energy into that flower stalk; all of its energy is in the crown, where all the growth comes from, and above it.  Only scissors with Kengyu’s super-hard Japanese steel and thin, narrow shape can cut roots under the crown easily.  And they still stay sharp enough for most pruning jobs after cutting roots in a lot of dirt and gravel.

They really come into their own when weeding crabgrass, which tends to root deeply in well-watered ground, rooting additionally along the stem joints as they spread out from the clump.  One can slide them under the entire crown and cut off those wiry roots, which have no food and die.

They can also be used to push down alongside small dandelions to pull more of the root as one pulls the plant.  For bigger dandelions and dock, however, one will get better results by pushing a shovel or a weeding knife next to the plant, popping the root loose without pulling out the soil, and pulling the root out.

They can also cut weeds out of cracks in pavements.  The sharp tips can reach down under the crown in most cases, and cut it off the root, where one would otherwise just pull the leaves off.

Yesterday, I used them for taking moss off my roof.  I was cleaning out the gutters for fall rains and noticed that the moss was dead and dry, easy to clean out of the gaps between the shingles with the tips of the scissors, and to brush it off the bottom edges.  It ended up taking the sharp tips off the scissors, making them safe for my grandson to use.  I rarely use the tips anyways, and this morning they were cutting goat heads out of Schroeder Dog Park just as well as ever.

 

Gardening is easy, if you do it naturally.

Showing Visitors Our Ugly

High water rates have caused the least among us, and the greatest, to neglect our properties.  Sometimes it’s the whole property.  Sometimes it’s just a portion.  That portion is all too often right along the street, and the street itself.  The ugliness and neglect, though not the reason for it, are all too obvious to visitors, who are not used to looking past it to what the residents allow themselves to see.

Residential properties along major roads, like Bridge Street, have lower property values because of the traffic, and are thus inhabited by poorer people.  Many of these cannot afford to water their properties at our high marginal rates that cost this gardener over $80 per month in the summer.  Many of them are dry all summer, and even if mowed, are ugly.  But since no one likes to maintain ugly, many of them are not mowed, and fill with weeds like false dandelion.

Some people disown a portion of their property, watering and mowing the part around the house, but do not weed or mow the rest.  Some do so explicitly, inexplicably thinking that the area along the street outside their fence belongs to the city because the city has a utility easement that restricts what they can do with it, and therefore the city must maintain it. 

The city apparently doesn’t hear about this and certainly doesn’t disabuse them of the notion by telling them to clean up their weeds and litter.  That would mean that the city would have to do the same on its property margins.  The City has acquired so much property that it has trouble maintaining it.

These property margins tend to fill up with wild lettuce, heron’s bill, and mare’s tails, cheat, foxtails, and blackberries, especially after someone tries to stop the weeds with Roundup, which fertilizes the next generation of annual and broadleaf weeds while killing the present one.  The County’s Fairgrounds is a case in point, with mare’s tails, cheat,  and blackberries dominating their frontage along their parking lot on Redwood Avenue.

Streets and sidewalks have crabgrass, wild lettuce, and even star thistle and goat heads growing in the cracks because people disown the public easement.  In reality, we own or rent property to the middle of the street; the city only has an easement.  And we, as residents and/or property owners, are Johnny-on-the-spot to keep that street and sidewalk clean.

But with the greatest and the least among us disowning portions of our properties, the middle follows the example of both.  Some don’t maintain their property at all.  One man said, “I have a business to run!” while he stood there with no business and a worker standing idle.  

Gardening is easy, if you do it naturally

Use Leaves; Don’t Lose Them

Black Walnut in a bank parking lot.  A good street tree, apart from its nuts, but they are better than plums.

The Grants Pass City Council has finally decided to get out of the cheap compost and wood waste disposal business and save about $200,000 a year.  Our sewage solids will be trucked to Dry Creek Landfill to become methane and make electricity.  The Jo Gro property will be leased to Republic Waste Services, where they will continue under that name, accepting wood waste and yard waste and making compost with the latter, but it will be without bio-solids or city subsidy, at prices Republic chooses.  This means that the City will also not be picking up bagged leaves for free this year.  It is unlikely that Republic will either, since they have to compete with Southern Oregon Compost, which certainly doesn’t pick stuff up for free.

Since the City will not be picking up leaves for free, this gardener will be not be either, but I will pick up loads for $1 per bag, 40 lbs or less, to use on my customers’ properties for weed control.  But I’d really rather that you use them on your own property to keep the weeds down.

Leaves make superior mulch for weed control because the top layers dry out quickly, and do not make a good seed bed until they become compost or worm castings.  Worms love leaves for food, and they and the soil are sheltered by them from freezing, drying, wind, and rain.  Two inches can stop most small plants and small seeds.  More can stop bigger plants and seeds.  But bulbs and established perennials will generally work their way through several inches of leaves. 

A foot of leaves will decompose more quickly when covered with an inch of compost, and allow vegetable seeds that are sprinkled or poked into the compost to grow into huge plants.

There are no leaves in this area that are not good for mulch.  The ones that people question, oak, pine and black walnut, are the best for weed control. 

Oak and pine are said to be too acid, but they are not acid themselves; they just take a full year to decompose.  Shade and summer watering cause acid soil by leaching away calcium; evaporation brings calcium back to the surface.  These leaves shade the soil longer than most other leaves.  But when they are piled deep, the worms eat them and sweeten the soil with their castings, resulting in good soil.

Walnut leaves, especially black walnut, are said to be herbicidal and kill plants.  But they are actually a pre-emergent herbicide that stops any seed smaller than a nut from coming up.  Starts and established plants are not affected.  Black walnut leaves are quickly eaten by worms and are generally gone by the end of spring, except for their long petioles.  But their pre-emergent effect sticks around all season.  To sprout seeds on black walnut soil, lay down an inch of compost and sprinkle them on.   To sprout larger seeds, spread another inch of compost on top of them.

9/20/2013  Published in News-You-Can-Use-by-Rycke.blogspot.com, and GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com.

 Join Garden Grants Pass in free gardening classes at Greenwood and Schroeder Dog Parks; contact 

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

Gardening is easy, if you do it naturally.

Petition to the Grants Pass City Council: Change our water rate structure to promote irrigation.

A major goal of the City of Grants Pass is to “be a city that looks safe and is safe.”  Well-watered, well-maintained properties are pleasing to the eye and orderly, which looks safe.  Watered yards, plants, and misters also cool and humidify the area, and feed the water cycle through evaporation and transpiration, causing rain.

Unwatered yards are ugly even when mowed, and they too often are not mowed, because no one likes to maintain ugly.  They encourage litter, vandalism, and other crime.  They are hot and dusty in summer.  They are often a fire hazard as well.

Grants Pass once had unmetered water, and nearly everyone watered their yards and maintained them.  But now we have meters and tiered water rates that discourage water use, charging little per unit for a very low base and more per unit for greater use, in several tiers.  This has discouraged watering and gardening of residential, commercial, and public landscapes, and has likewise discouraged landscape maintenance. 

The vast majority of the cost of providing clean water is overhead in plant and people; very little of it is unit cost for cleaning and pumping.  Discouraging watering of yards has made the City raise rates several times to cover the loss of income from lower water use; the last time the city raised rates, you raised the base rate to stop making the water plant’s bad financial situation worse.

Gardening in Grants Pass has become a privilege of the middle class, the rich, and those willing to bear the cost of the water plant, which is borne by fewer people as more people stop watering their yards.  One can tell now, as we could not before, who is poor or cheap.

          Many poor people, especially our elderly poor, would like to better care for their yards, but it is hard to maintain a dry yard, even for those who know how, and even harder to make it pretty.  All of us would also like predictable, even monthly billing for water.

          THEREFORE, we, the undersigned voters of Grants Pass, respectfully request that the Grants Pass City Council change our water rate structure: Charge each household a flat rate based on the average household’s winter water use, sufficient to cover Water Department overhead; price the second tier at a lower unit cost sufficient to cover the City’s unit costs of providing water; and provide the third and top tier, presumed to be used for irrigation, cooling, and washing, at no cost.  Charge businesses an individual base rate based on each business’ average winter water use, as you do for sewer, accounting for much greater size differences and water use.

This is an advisory petition

You may sign this petition on Saturday at the Growers Market between 10:00 and 1:00 PM or contact:

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

Worse than Competition

I knew gardening was in real trouble when the Mayor proclaimed National Garden Week, to honor gardening.  It’s like a week to honor housekeeping.  But housekeeping is harder to do without.

There is a worse thing than a lot of competition: not enough competition.  It shows in our local gardening business.  There are not enough people willing to pull weeds for other people for money.  There are so few of them that most landscape maintenance companies cannot find them and have stopped looking. 

They mulch, spray, mow, hedge, and blow, but don’t pull weeds.  They plant color annuals in blocks of potting soil and boxes.  Some spread “weed barrier” cloth and cover it with bark or rocks, in a vain attempt to stop weeds from growing.  It doesn’t work very long, and the cloth eventually shows and is ugly.  They mow over goatheads with riding mowers, spreading them from one property to the next on their tires.

When a necessary service is hard to find and expensive when one finds it, then people start to think of it as a luxury.  After all, few of one’s neighbors are gardening, and good weeding is definitely more expensive when you find someone willing to do it, being detail work that takes more time than whacking weeds. 

But God is in the details, and the Devil lies in ignoring those details.  Expensive lawns fill with weeds like nutsedge, which can only be controlled by pulling.  Proper maintenance is always better than the alternative.  But if one can’t find the workers, one can’t do it.

Nor does a business necessarily want to stand out from the norm.  When government and most businesses are content with mediocrity or even downright ugliness, it is safer to blend in.  People might look on a beautifully maintained landscape as conspicuous consumption.  Nor do most businesses want to spend more money than they have to.

Likewise, large, out of town corporations find it safer and cheaper to blend in to local mediocrity, and do not budget for full maintenance, or in many cases, any maintenance.  This happened to Cascade Block when they were bought out by Willamette Graystone. 

Banks don’t do any maintenance on foreclosed properties that the police don’t make them do.  The police cannot demand that which the City does not do itself, though our code demands gardening every square foot of the City, since it forbids mature and seeding weeds.  But it can’t be done if the City can’t find enough workers willing to do it on a regular basis.

In the face of all this, gardening is endangered, and a gardener has a hard time finding people willing to pay for proper landscape maintenance, because one does not have enough competition.

When the Poor Can’t Garden

It has been difficult to hire real gardeners in Grants Pass, and throughout the dry interior of the West, for more than a decade.  There are many people who will mow, hedge, spray and blow, but few willing to pull weeds.  That’s because the cities have cut off the supply of poor gardeners who are not intimidated by weeds and weeding, who know the work from their youth up.
 

My favorite kind of sprinkler, a copper water spinner.  The blue tubes are misters.

They didn’t do it on purpose; they were trying to save water.  In Grants Pass, they were probably trying to not have to build a new water plant, not trying to save water for the fish in the river, which are not endangered in our river.  Oregon mandated metered water, and Grants Pass and many other cities went further, charging higher rates for higher tiers of use, with the lowest rate covering just enough water for one person’s household use, which made the rates lowest for single people on small lots.

This is hardest on poor working families, who have to live several or more to a house, and have to pay higher rates for household use with each additional person in the household.  When people have to spend every dollar carefully, they prioritize their spending to the things that matter the most to them, and the yard that they spend relatively little time in is the first casualty.  That saves, not only the cost of the water, but the time it takes to use it, and the time one would spend mowing the grass that stops growing without watering.

That last bit of saving time and energy is temporary; in a dry climate, dry land weeds move in and take over the yard within a few years, and one has to mow even more frequently to keep the weeds down. 

A dry lawn is ugly, and no one likes to maintain ugly, so many dry lawns do not get mowed at all after a while, and send their weed seeds around the neighborhood.  Many back yards are not maintained at all; some people also disown the areas outside their fences, or areas that can’t be mowed, leaving the rest to be a nuisance to the neighbors.

This has been going on for decades.  After a generation, we no longer have many youngsters among the poor who have gardened and are not afraid to pull and dig weeds for money.  Most landscape maintenance companies don’t employ them because they cannot find them.  The notable exceptions are Mexicans who pull every plant that is not a tree or shrub.  I’ve been hearing this from customers and seeing this for the 13 years I have been gardening in this town.

To turn this around, we have to change our water rates to promote, not discourage, irrigation.  And then we have to enforce our weed and litter nuisance codes, which essentially mandate gardening, forbidding litter and mature and seeding weeds.  With a little nudging from our public nags, police and firemen, all of our residents will again learn to garden, and retirees and businesses will have once again have gardeners to pull their weeds.