Green Living

Chemical-free ways to win the war on weeds

I’m waiting for the kettle to whistle. After I steep my tea, the remainder of the boiling water will go on the dandelions in my herb beds. I’ll pour it on their roots and watch as they shrivel up like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Not that I have anything against dandelions. They have free rein-along with the clover, violets, and wild strawberries-on my lawn. (I think they’re pretty, plus, the rabbits love them and stay away from the vegetables.) And they’re a nutritious green to cook in the spring while still tender.

But I want my food-producing areas to grow without competition. So, death to the dandelions.

Many of my neighbors use conventional herbicide sprays and treatments. But the synthetics in these chemicals-many petroleum-based-can kill beneficial organisms in the soil, including the garden’s best friend: worms. They release pollutants into air and water sources-and our bodies. Many require or lead to the use of more water. So even if they turn the lawn into an emerald-velvet carpet, I see nothing green about their results.

A couple of great resources are www.beyondpesticides.org and www.greengardenista.com. They offer other tips for terminating weeds, from drowning them in vinegar to smothering them with plastic.

Making the best choices in the supermarket

Grocery shopping has become an agony for me — I can spend 15 minutes on yogurt alone. I go for the largest size, so as to cut down on packaging. But that one comes from Greece, so not very energy-wise with all the travel. Then I decide to use organic as my criterion, until I see that they’re in small, single-serve sizes, and still traveled far to get here.

Then I remember that a local award-winning dairy produces an organic yogurt, sold in large, recyclable glass bottles. Perfect! But it’s not carried here — so I’d have to make another, longer fossil-fuel-consuming trip.

By now I’m paralyzed in the dairy section.

Good news: With every trip to the supermarket, we have an opportunity to vote “sustainable” with our dollars. Bad news: So many factors weigh into “sustainable,” it’s hard to know the best choice.

I like the hierarchy that friends Neal and Morgan follow. First comes humane and ethical operating practices (fair-trade chocolate, for example). Local is the next priority (conventionally grown lettuce from nearby generates less petroleum consumption than the organic from four states away. Next, they seek out the product with the least packaging (buying in bulk, whenever possible) and — finally — organic.

They also use a few Web sites for more information. I’m going to get their list — and share it soon.

The “perfect” lawn is anything but green

“How dumb is that?” is a game we played during dinner last week at Bill’s house. We took turns pointing out some of the craziest, most unsustainable practices we’ve observed.  Like packaging prunes in individual wrappers. Buying water in bottles at prices that make gasoline look like a bargain. Designing our communities for cars rather than people.

But one topic set us off on a riff of escalating outrage: the American lawn. Neal speculated that shaking off the ideal of the immaculate grass lawn could take a huge bite out of energy use, water abuse, toxic refuse, and landfill bloat.

It made me think: We plant something that has no nutritional or medicinal value (unlike clover or dandelions) and calls for constant vigilance. We put down petroleum-based poisons to kill everything around it. We spread more chemical-based fertilizers to stimulate fast growth and divert vast amounts of water to keep it green — so we can cut it short with a gas mower: in high season, as much as twice a week. Then when a free compostable material (leaves) covers the ground in fall, we power up the leaf-blower, gather them up in plastic nondegradable bags and send them off to a landfill.

Really, how dumb is that?

The no-sweat way to turn kitchen waste into black gold

My friend Bill is a composter extraordinaire. He has no less than four steaming heaps of decomposing kitchen scraps working at any given time, generating enough fertile output to produce a cornucopia of vegetables throughout the growing season.

Me, I’d always been totally intimidated by the thought of overseeing something that had to “cook.” I mean, Bill’s a chemist: He understands the complex alchemy for building a pile of waste that can heat itself up to 140 degrees or more. (more…)