You are Killing Your Garden...

The sodium in these products makes them toxic for your garden.

About forty miles north of here is a desert where little to no life can grown and even the weeds are overcome by toxic chemicals in the soil. If you scratch the white surface of the soil you will find a black goo that binds water to the soil in such a way that the water it contains can not be used by plants or even evaporated. The most surprising thing about this desert is that hundreds of home gardeners are trying to create the same landscape in their own back yards.

The desert is the Utah Salt Flats and the chemical that makes it toxic is sodium. You if you remember high school chemistry you know that sodium is contained in table salt and baking soda. And that is where the gardens come in.

There are now many recipes for weed and bug killers that contain one or both of these common substances. Home owner's look at either of these chemicals on their kitchen shelf and say, "These are familier and don't hurt me. They must be safe for my garden." And they are right about how safe they are in the kitchen. But they were meant for the kitchen and not the garden.

So do your garden and plants a favor, if you absolutely think you need to use a chemical, use one that is made for the job. And, that will break down into something that won't kill your entire garden.

Permaculture or just lazy?

These fruit tree trimmings are going to a
friend's house to be used for heating.

I know people who drop their garbage where ever they are. It doesn't matter if it is on the road, in the yard, or in their homes, they just drop it. Oddly enough, I have friends who leave garbage in their trees. Sick branches ooze plant puss, dead limbs block light and fresh air, and rubbing branches cause open wounds begging for disease and insects to come and partake.

All in all, it is as disgusting as six months of leftovers sitting on the floor.

The funny thing is, those branches could be doing something productive for tree owners if they just had the heart to cut them off. Large and medium limbs make good fuel for the stove or BBQ and are useable for building anything from fences to furniture. Smaller branches or larger pieces ground down make great mulch and all sizes of wood are game for making crafts.

Look around, turn your waste into a resource, and give the world a little more life.

How to Treat Trees

Trees don't heal...

My summer job of mowing foreclosed lawns has started up. It is not bad job; and I have lots of leeway to take on my more preferred work of designing and installing sustainable landscapes.

The mowing gives me a great chance to get out and see what the rest of the world is doing in their gardens, both the good and the bad. In the case of the poor tree in the photo above, it is definitely bad.

Most people don't think of anything of tying or wrapping something around a tree. They assume because the tree seems tough, it will take it without a problem. But as you see, that is not always the case. In fact, it is rarely true. Even a temporary string put around a tree can cause damage to a thin barked tree if there is any movement.

Lots of damage is done by things that are on the tree for more than a day or two. I can't count the number of times I have tried to pull tree variety tags off of a tree and found that the tree has already grown around the tag. I have no choice but to leave parts of the tags still stuck in the tree. I have had the same problem with professional grade tree ties. These two items are made to be used with trees for a limited period of time, but need to be removed when that time is up.

Now, I am sure there is someone out there that is worried that I am telling them to quit using their hammock between their two favorite trees. And I am not--as long as they have a system to prevent damage and the trees can handle the stress created. This also applies to tree houses.

I can't go into the details of each and every way to protect a tree because there are many systems that are marketed to prevent problems. But here are a list of things to pay attention to:

• If you are wrapping or tying something around the trunk or a limb, make sure it spreads the pressure across the widest area possible.
• Wraps and ties are for temporary use only, know when to take them off. The maximum time for any of them is one year, this includes ties for staking trees down. If you don't feel the tree is ready to take the tie off, call in a reliable tree professional to help.
• If you are going to drill into a tree or puncture its bark in any way, make sure you get something that has a long reputation for safe use with living trees.
• Be carful getting advice from your hardware store, lawn man, or nursery. Each of these is an expert in their own area, but rarely do they have the long term experience with old trees to give the best advice.
• The best place to start is with an ISA (International Society of Arboriculture) certified arborist. Unfortunately, not all of them are as reliable as they should be, so don't be afraid to ask several sources for help, even those outside of the ISA.

And lastly, remember that a good tree is likely to outlive you, so it deserves the same time, expertise, and money that you expect to give anything that is worth keeping for a long time.

Vegetables for the Novice Grower

Everyone is new to gardening at some point. So here are some common vegetables for the novice grower:

Beans
Beet
Carrot
Collards
Jerusalem Artichoke
Kale
Parsnip
Peas
Pumpkins
Squash
Swiss Chard
Turnips

Hard Core Walls

Nuform© walls/forms during installation.
Note the internal webbing showing on each
side of the door.

On my most recent deployment to Afghanistan I had the opportunity to observe the construction of a concrete building using the Nuform© system. Nuform© uses a vinyl form that is set in place, filled with concrete, and then left to become both interior and exterior surfaces. The first time I ran into this system is when I read Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, and Construction.

Alexander tackled the idea of concrete pored into stay-in-place forms in pattern number "218 Wall Membrane." (Alexander divided his chapters into "patterns" each pattern contained an idea, proofs for the idea, and conected patterns on both a larger and smaller scale.) His version used site constructed forms that would resemble conventional concrete forming, but with a material that would be suitable to leaving in place. Alexander recommended materials such as plywood, brick, and gypsum board as form/wall material. All of which I see as seriously flawed in this usage.

A soldier sliding a Nuform© section to extend a wall.

Additionally, Alexander advocated using chicken wire instead of rebar and lightweight concrete with wider walls to make up for the lower strength of the lighter concrete. In the Nuform© system it uses normal concrete on the runny side, rebar, and the vinyl of the forms creates an internal webbing that improves the bulging issues that are a construction nightmare on any concrete project.

I'm not saying that any of these points makes Nuform© a system I like. The 6 inch walls are just too narrow to get the concrete to settle. Even with the runniest concrete specifications allowed and dedicated beaters hitting the walls to shake the concrete down, empty spots were left in the forms when the concrete was cured. The echo in this building was the worst I have encountered in any construction project I have observed, the vinyl provided no noticeable sound dampening.

In either method, making the walls straight and avoiding bulges is difficult. The use of so much embedded energy with the concrete is also a concern, as is the potential for chemical burns on the workers skin from wet concrete being poured overhead. Especially low grade concrete from a developing nation. 

I wonder if the concept of a stay-in-place form would be better applied to a rammed earth building or even cob (although I can't see how a form could improve cob.) With both of these earth construction systems I would use even thicker walls than Alexander recommended. A form material would have to be found to work with the earthen materials, vinyl has a high energy footprint, just like the concrete. 

Any vertical use of concrete requires heavy support and
bracing until the concrete is set. The weight of the concrete
is enough to throw the whole project into a jumbled mess
without the extra help.

I'm not sure I will ever find solutions to the problems I am seeing, but by looking at them I become a better designer and a better problem solver. And if we are ever going to make the world a better place those are two things that all of us need.