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.

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

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.

Pumpkins are for Relish, not Pies

When I was a little girl, my daddy told me that all the canned “pumpkin” sold in stores was not pumpkin, but butternut squash.  I spent many years growing  and sometimes buying pie pumpkins and making pies out of them, and very proud of their authenticity I was, though they were different from regular pumpkin pie: lighter colored and flavored, and coarse-textured.  Then I grew butternut squash, and I found that Dad was absolutely right; the baked squash was exactly like what was sold in the cans as “pumpkin” and it made a rich, deep colored, smooth-textured pie.  So now, of course, I use butternut squash for pies.

Our pilgrim forefathers may have baked pumpkin pies at the first Thanksgiving; certainly the traditions built up by advertising tell us so.  But there was an explosion of plant breeding in the 1800’s, and when butternut and other such rich baking squashes appeared, their marketers weren’t going to let little things like a name or a tradition get in the way of marketing superior squash for pies.

The best use I’ve found for pumpkins, be they pie or jack-o-lantern breed, is Pumpkin Relish.  Pumpkin’s light color and coarse grain are perfect for chopping and for carrying the other flavors in the relish without overwhelming them—much like the zucchini for which this recipe was originally made.  This recipe also works well for spaghetti squash, which is even lighter and coarser and chops better.  Other summer squashes can also be used. 

To make this recipe, it helps to have a food processor; otherwise you’ll spend way too much time chopping vegetables fine enough.  Remove the seeds and skin from mature squashes and use only the meat.  Immature zucchini or other summer squashes can be used with the seeds and skin.

Pumpkin Relish

Chop 8 cups raw pumpkin meat, relish fine.  Likewise chop 2-3 large red onions, 1 red bell pepper and 1 green bell pepper.  You may also add up to a dozen finely chopped jalapeños or other hot peppers if you want it spicy. 

Mix all vegetables and 5 tablespoons salt in a large bowl; allow to stand for 3 hours; rinse well and drain. 

In a large saucepan, mix 2 ½ cups cider vinegar; 3 cups sugar; 2 tablespoons cornstarch; 1 teaspoon mustard seed; 1 teaspoon turmeric; 1 tablespoon celery seed.  Bring to a boil; boil one minute.  Add rinsed and drained vegetables; bring back to a boil; simmer 20 minutes.  Fill sterilized canning jars with hot relish; seal and label.   Makes 7 to 8 pints.

This makes a really good side dish for many meats.  We’ve also baked chicken with carrots and potatoes smothered with it.  I used to eat it every day with wheat crackers for lunch.

December issue, at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com.

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

Gardening is easy, if you do it naturally.