Rant readers, please welcome Dr. John Reganold of Washington State University, who has done groundbreaking work demonstrating the value of organic agriculture, including studies that show a correlation between the quality of the soil and the quality of the food it produces. In the wake of the recent furor over a Stanford University review study [...]
Read more in: Eat This, Ministry of Controversy, Science Says
Posted by
Michele Owens on September 14, 2012 at 4:31 pm This post has 21 responses.
We reported in January that Scotts Miracle-Gro had entered a guilty plea for knowingly selling bird food they’d poisoned with a pesticide (to prolong its shelf life) and was slapped with a $4.5 million fine. “Too low!” some critics cried. Well, turns out it’s $12.5 mil, with more legal...
Read more in: Ministry of Controversy, Taking Your Gardening Dollar
Posted by
Susan Harris on September 11, 2012 at 8:50 am This post has 10 responses.
As you know, we carry a bunch of feeds from other sites that might be of interest to you all. The ScienceDaily posts are the most frequent, and I usually can’t keep up with them. Their headline about organic food having “little evidence of health benefits” did grab my attention however. The...
Read more in: Eat This, Ministry of Controversy
Posted by
Elizabeth Licata on September 10, 2012 at 7:40 am This post has 46 responses.
Trademark image from Shutterstock Does anyone remember when we posted about the “You Can Grow That!” campaign started by garden writer C.L. Fornari? Her perfectly nice, well-intentioned idea was to start a social media campaign to encourage non-gardeners to garden, or to encourage all of us to grow new...
Read more in: Ministry of Controversy, Uncategorized
Posted by
Amy Stewart on September 5, 2012 at 4:36 am This post has 47 responses.
For those of you who haven’t had a chance to visit the High Line yet, I’m sorry to have to tell you that it’s over. Already. At least according to a New York Times op-ed by Jeremiah Moss, in which the writer condemns the West Side elevated park succinctly:...
Read more in: Ministry of Controversy, Real Gardens
Posted by
Elizabeth Licata on August 27, 2012 at 7:58 am This post has 18 responses.
East Pond, at Gateway National Refuge Area. Photo courtesy of NPS. U.S. athletes triumphed during the recent Olympiad—loved watching it! I wish I could say the same about our triumphant leadership in other fields, especially when it comes to breaking away from dependence on fossil fuels. Where I live,...
Read more in: Gardening on the Planet, Ministry of Controversy
Posted by
Elizabeth Licata on August 13, 2012 at 9:03 am This post has 14 responses.
Heronswood, the revered botanical garden created in Kingston, Washington by plant collector Dan Hinkley and his partner, architect Robert Jones, as an adjunct to the nursery they founded in 1987, was put up for a sealed bid auction last month by its owner of the last 12 years, W....
Read more in: Ministry of Controversy, Taking Your Gardening Dollar, Unusually Clever People
Posted by
Michele Owens on July 27, 2012 at 1:29 pm This post has 15 responses.
We’ve always said here that gardening is political, a way of opting out of a culture that pushes us to live lives powered entirely by fossil fuels and processed substances that bear only the slightest relationship to actual food. Food is political, as Michael Pollan has been telling us...
Read more in: Ministry of Controversy, Unusually Clever People
Posted by
Michele Owens on July 13, 2012 at 1:16 pm This post has 9 responses.
Guest Rant by Mary McAllister When I retired, a daily walk in the park became the high point of every day. Soon I began to notice that trees in my local park in the San Francisco Bay Area were “disappearing.” For the first time in my adult life I...
Read more in: Guest Rants, Ministry of Controversy
Posted by
Garden Rant on July 12, 2012 at 7:06 am This post has 111 responses.
It’s garden walk time in Western New York, where it’s hot, but not too hot to snoop around in other people’s backyards. We have three or four different garden walks in various neighborhoods/suburbs every weekend, culminating in the big Buffalo one at the end of this month. Yesterday, I...
Read more in: It's the Plants, Darling, Ministry of Controversy
Posted by
Elizabeth Licata on July 9, 2012 at 7:00 am This post has 10 responses.
UPDATE: See comments for a response from Plantagon Community Director Thomas Selig. Drumroll, please. I present to you the latest development in urban agriculture: a futuristic vertical greenhouse that—making use of integrated solutions for energy, excess heat, waste, CO2 and water—will be the latest methodology for providing fresh food...
Read more in: Gardening on the Planet, Ministry of Controversy, Uncategorized
Posted by
Elizabeth Licata on June 25, 2012 at 12:49 pm This post has 20 responses.
UPDATE: Thanks to our alert readers for pointing out this Change.org petition you can sign. Meet Denise Morrison, a Tulsa gardener who carefully read the city code and followed it, planting nothing in her front yard that exceeded 12 inches in height unless it was edible. She grew an...
Read more in: Eat This, Feed Me, Ministry of Controversy
Posted by
Amy Stewart on June 19, 2012 at 3:56 am This post has 33 responses.
There’s no doubt that independent garden centers and nurseries—like many businesses—have been seeing their sales decline over the last few years. The percentage dips have been in as much as the double digits, depending on where you are in the U.S. Many nurseries and IGCs have been forced to...
Read more in: Ministry of Controversy, Unusually Clever People
Posted by
Elizabeth Licata on May 25, 2012 at 5:14 am This post has 25 responses.
I was pretty excited to report on new guidelines for sustainable federal properties, but wondered how enforceable these guidelines are and promised to try to find out more. I did. It's a bit discouraging. I talked with Ray Mims, the point guy on pulling together input from 31 agencies...
Read more in: Green the Grounds
Posted by
Susan Harris on March 27, 2012 at 5:56 am This post has 7 responses.
“Without the proper pussy willows, who knows. Marriages might not happen. Relationships could fall apart,”—Eddy Dobosiewicz, Dyngus Day Buffalo co-founder Those of you who are wondering what the hell Dyngus Day is and why pussy willows are involved should not feel ill-informed. Celebrated the Monday following Easter Sunday, Dyngus...
Read more in: Ministry of Controversy
Posted by
Elizabeth Licata on March 26, 2012 at 4:57 am This post has 8 responses.
Sigh. So here's a perfectly smart and sensible bill that's going nowhere. Has anyone been following the Highways BEE Act? It is a revenue-neutral bill (should actually save money) that directs the Secretary of Transportation to use already existing resources and programs to work with the state highway departments,...
Read more in: Ministry of Controversy
Posted by
Amy Stewart on February 23, 2012 at 6:29 am This post has 27 responses.
For Valentine's Day, Timber Books has invited some bloggers to write anti-valentines to lawns, to help spread the word about Beautiful No-Mow Yards. (Click here to see the anti-Valentines of my blogging buddies.) I'll start with a photo that shows lawn at its most perfect and ridiculous. Next, here...
Read more in: Lawn Reform
Posted by
Susan Harris on February 14, 2012 at 4:30 am This post has 18 responses.
Issues related to money and nonprofit organizations are popping up all over the place – whether it's politicizing their grant-making or taking money from unsavory corporations. In that latter category and receiving almost no attention in the mainstream media (with one exception) is the National Wildlife Federation's partnership with...
Read more in: Ministry of Controversy
Posted by
Susan Harris on February 7, 2012 at 6:01 am This post has 14 responses.
photo: Garden Conservancy In other bad news, UCLA is putting its Hannah Center Japanese Garden up for sale. That's right: if you have a few million bucks, you can actually own this place. The university needs the money, and they decided they couldn't continue to spend $140,000 per year...
Read more in: Ministry of Controversy
Posted by
Amy Stewart on January 25, 2012 at 10:29 am This post has 9 responses.
The San Francisco Chronicle has reported that the City of San Francisco is working through a process of notifying residents that the street trees next to their property are now their responsibility. Each tree is individually assessed and a notice is posted and sent to the property owner when...
Read more in: Ministry of Controversy
Posted by
Amy Stewart on January 25, 2012 at 5:28 am This post has 12 responses.
