Clean Air Gardening Blog — Gardening tips and advice.

Hot Weather Flowers

by blair on October 28, 2009

prickly pear morguefile

If you live in a hot, arid environment and don’t want to lavish water on your outdoor plants, your best bet is to try xeriscaping—that is, to plant heat- and drought-adapted plants in your yard and garden. That doesn’t mean that you have to depend completely on cacti and similar succulents, though they can be extremely attractive. In fact, the flowers of some species, such as prickly pear, are vibrantly colored. You can also eat the fruit and even the large cactus leaves, or “pads,” if you dare.

You can actually get your hands on some lovely true flowers that thrive in hot, dry environments. A good example is the daisy-like perennial flower called the Gazania or Treasure Flower, which is native to southern Africa. Bluestar (Amsonia), a perennial native to the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas that offers clusters of blue-gray flowers, is similarly drought- and heat-tolerant. Other heat-tolerant flowers include bearded iris, heliopsis, Oriental lilies, and purple salvia.

zinnias morguefile

On the annuals side of the scale, vinca (a.k.a. periwinkle in some circles) is an easy flower to grow even in hot weather. Blue salvia, dusty millers, zinnias, sunflowers (of course), ageratum, cleome, and wax begonias also work well in hot climates, as do lantanas. Be cautious with the lantanas if you live in an area with warm winters; given enough water and warm weather, they can grow into tough shrubs that’ll try to take over your garden. On the plus side, their berries are edible when ripe (if a bit toxic when green), and the wood makes excellent wickerwork.

Incidentally, if your goal is mainly to add color besides green and gray to your xeriscape, consider using colorful grasses as well. For example, there are several red switchgrasses that are tinged with a delightful burgundy hue from mid-summer on.

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Green Cooking: Reducing Your Carbon Footprint in the Kitchen

by blair on October 26, 2009

cooking morguefile

While we’re mostly beyond the practice of grilling game over a fire (with the notable exception of special events like the Fourth of July) modern-day cooking still results in the emission of an alarming amount of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas. Gas ovens vent CO2 directly into the atmosphere, along with water vapor—another greenhouse gas, though a less worrisome one than CO2. A meal that takes an hour to cook in an electric oven may seem cleaner, but in reality about 2.7 pounds of CO2 are produced to generate the necessary electricity.

Luckily, there are plenty of ways to decrease your culinary carbon footprint without resorting to raw food. If you happen to have a solar cooker lying around, then the CO2 production will be nil, with the exception of a tiny amount that may be released from your food as it cooks. A toaster oven costs only 1.3 pounds of CO2 for 50 minutes of use, and a microwave oven just 0.5 pounds for 15 minutes or so. If you’re willing to wait a bit, a slow cooker or crock pot is also a great deal, costing just under a pound of CO2 over the course of about seven hours. Minute per minute, the slow cooker class wins hands down when it comes to CO2 production.

Don’t miss our green cookware! Check out our ceramic non-stick pots.

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Aphid Midges to the Rescue: Beneficial Gardening Insects

by blair on October 23, 2009

Photo courtesy of Benimoto at Flickr.com.

If your flowers or vegetables are suffering from an attack of aphids, consider adding aphid midges to your garden’s beneficial insect mix. The larvae of these tiny, nocturnal cecidomyiid flies (Aphidoletes aphidimyza) chow down heartily on more than 60 species of aphids, hence their nickname. They especially love potato plants and cole crops (cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, etc.), but will happily haunt orchards, ornamental backyard gardens, and even greenhouses. In fact, they’re very important as a control species in organic greenhouse cultivation.

These little mosquito-like mites, which might measure about 1/16 of an inch across on a good day, are extremely effective at zeroing in on aphid colonies and zapping the nasty little critters: a single aphid midge larva needs at least seven aphids to complete its larval cycle of 1-2 weeks, but may consume 80 or more—and they tend to kill more bugs than they actually eat, which adds to their allure.

Photo courtesy of ((brian)) at Flickr.com.

It’s possible to attract aphid midges to an American yard or garden by planting their favorite crops, as they’re native to most of the continent and common throughout their range. Particular favorites include sweet clover, sweet alyssum, yarrow, and mustard, and they’re also partial to herbs like dill, parsley, and cilantro. But attracting aphid midges can be a hit or miss process, so it’s usually much easier to simply buy some from a supplier of beneficial organisms. They’ll be shipped to you as larvae in a bedding of moist material such as fine sand or vermiculite, which you should spread around the bases of your plants as soon as you receive it.

Adult midges will require a source of honeydew (preferably the flowers mentioned above, though some trees might do in a pinch), and will start laying eggs within a few days of maturity; the eggs will hatch within 2-4 days. You’ll know the larvae are in action when you start finding aphid mummies (tiny blackened aphid husks) clinging to your plant leaves—and, of course, fewer aphids all around.

One note of caution: be extremely careful with pesticide sprays in your garden if you’re using midges to control your aphids, because the adult midges are quite susceptible to most sprays, even those made with organic ingredients. If you manage your aphid midges carefully, they’ll produce about six generations a year, and will overwinter in your garden to appear the next spring.

Don’t miss our store section on beneficial gardening insects!

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Green Wedding Ideas

by blair on October 21, 2009

Photo courtesy of Ha-Wee at Flickr.com.

If you’re considering tying the knot or renewing your vows anytime soon, have we got a green idea for you! Green weddings are all the rage these days, and they’re simple enough, really — though they may require a bit of ingenuity. Making a wedding green can be as easy as recycling wedding and bridesmaids dresses, or asking for donations to your favorite eco-friendly charities rather than wedding gifts. Some couples are compensating for the pollution costs of their traditional weddings by purchasing carbon offsets and planting trees in their guests’ honor. In some cases, eco-conscious couples have even made the paper for their own invitations, and served their guests locally-grown organic food on bamboo plates.

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Hoof and Horn Meal: An Excellent Soil Amendment

by blair on October 19, 2009

Like blood meal and bone meal, hoof and horn meal is a by-product of the meat processing industry. As such it may not be for the squeamish, but it does make an excellent soil amendment. In fact, it’s one of the better organic nitrogen sources available and, with a 12-2-0 NPK rating, it also adds a nice dash of phosphorous to the mix. It’s also alkaline in nature, so it’s a good choice for sweetening acidic soils; even better, the nitrogen locked inside the meal is released slowly, so that it won’t burn your plants.

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A Bit More About Solar Cooking and Solar Ovens

by blair on October 16, 2009

Photo courtesy of nmfbihop at Flickr.com.

Assuming you can get the bugs to buzz off, cooking in the great outdoors can be a wonderful experience, combining culinary expertise with that classic American hankering after our roots. But if you’ve had it up to here with all the smoke, that distinctive tang of charcoal starter in your food, and the obscene price of propane, there’s an easier way: use a solar cooker. Millions of people all over the world benefit from solar cooking on a daily basis.

Once you get past the obvious drawbacks—that is, that it doesn’t work at night or on cloudy days—solar cooking can be a pretty darn good deal. The technology is mature (it’s over 240 years old) so that it’s well understood; it’s easy as pie to use a solar cooker. It yields absolutely no pollutants, except maybe a little CO2 and water vapor released from your food as it cooks, and you never have to purchase fuel. As long as the sun’s shining, you’ll have more than you can ever use. All you need is a calm, sunny spot and an oven.

Solar ovens come in three basic designs. The most common is the box cooker, which is, as it sounds, a simple box where sunlight is directed into the interior. A box cooker can handle up to several dishes, depending on its size, and generates medium to high temperatures.

Parabolic ovens are shaped like a satellite dish, and focus light to a point near the center, where very high temperatures can be achieved. However, parabolic solar ovens tend to require a lot of adjustment, and aren’t as easy to make as box ovens.

Panel cookers combine the features of both parabolic and box ovens, and consist of movable panels that you can easily adjust to attain medium to high temperatures.

Photo courtesy of yanealhoo at Flickr.com.

Incidentally, a decent commercial solar oven doesn’t cost any more than a decent commercial barbecue grill; you can get one for about $200, sometimes less. However, you can also make your own from household items like aluminum foil, plywood, and cardboard that can cost you as little as a few dollars.

For example, here’s a simple box cooker that gets hot enough to boil water (that’s 212 degrees Fahrenheit, folks) and cost the inventor a whopping $7 to make. It won him a $75,000 prize. Talk about a nice return on your investment!

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Save Those Late Tomatoes: How to Ripen Green Tomatoes

by blair on October 14, 2009

Photo courtesy of skyehopper at Flickr.com.

Tomatoes are almost exclusively warm weather fruits; even a light frost will ruin them. So what do you do if your last tomatoes aren’t quite ripe and a cold night’s been forecast? Well, you could knit little tomato cozies for each unripe fruit, but even Martha Stewart probably couldn’t accomplish that in an afternoon. Here’s a better way: carefully pull up the tomato plants, roots and all, and then hang them upside down in a dry, warm location indoors. This will give the tomatoes enough time to ripen right on the vine. It’s not the best solution, but at least you don’t have to worry about wasting veggies. And remember: there’s always fried green tomatoes, if you want to go a more traditional route.

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Managing Mints: How to Grow Mint Successfully

by blair on October 12, 2009

mint morguefile

Most mints (including catnip) are pretty easy to grow in the organic garden, and it’s gratifying to see your mint plants spreading lushly. But be careful; it’s also easy to get too much of a good thing! Mints are extremely aggressive plants, and tend to take over a garden given the least bit of encouragement. They propagate through underground runners, popping up elsewhere unexpectedly—so if you’d rather not maintain a running battle with your mints, be sure to create a barrier around its section of the bed, down to about a foot. One way to avoid this problem is to gird it around with aluminum sheeting; another way is simply to grow it in containers, and never let any seeds or cuttings escape.

Check out this book on growing herbs for your kitchen!

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10 Cool Gardening Apps for the iPhone

by Libba on October 9, 2009

Do you love gardening? Do you think about your garden at work, while you’re running errands, or do you get inspired to grow certain things in your garden when are out to eat at a restaurant?

And do you also love your iPhone and/or iPod Touch?

If you answered yes to both of these questions, keep reading! Because we’ve gone through and picked out what we think are the top 10 best gardening apps from iTunes for your iPhone and iPodTouch.

1) Botany Buddy by AVAI VENTURES Inc.

This reference application seems to have it all, and for a whopping $9.99, I wish it could make my iPhone do the work in the garden for me. Maybe that will come with the next generation of the iPhone? Who should I talk to at Apple about that? Anyway, back to the application.

With more than 1,300 (and growing) native and ornamental plant species, you won’t need to buy another plant application. You get free updates, too, so when they add more plants and features (if that’s possible), you get all those goodies for free! Search for plants you know you want to plant and even those you see but can’t identify on your own. Quickly find all you could want to know about any of the 1,300+ plants in the database.

Best of all, it doesn’t require an internet connection, so you can search for and keep track of your favorite plants while out on hikes or out in your garden. The large library requires internet connection for installation, so be sure you sync up your gadget before you head out of the house.

Cost: $9.99

2) Botanical Interests by Netframes

Of the seven people who have reviewed this gardening application on the iTunes store, all have given it 5 stars, and at $5.99 (the second most expensive app on our list), you’d expect the users to love it. If you have a vegetable garden at home or are thinking of starting a vegetable garden, this app may be just the one you are looking for to help you with gardening success.

Learn “tips and tricks” for helpful advice for gardening successfully, create a list of your favorite veggies and plan your garden with nearly 300 different “botanical high quality varieties.” Get comprehensive growing and harvesting information on any variety and send questions directly to Botanical Interests, the company behind the application that is a producer of organic vegetable seeds.

Cost: $5.99

3) Pocket Garden by At Media

Calling all vegetable gardeners! This app is ideal for identifying and tips for growing hundreds of types of vegetables in your garden. Quite literally from Artichoke to Zucchini, you can easily scroll through seed types to find the exact varietal you want to learn about and/or grow.

In the My Garden section of the application, you can keep track of all the vegetables in your garden, make notes on each varietal and monitor the expected harvest date of your veggies. With this app, I’ll no longer have an excuse for my slight black thumb problem.

If you’re weary of this application, try the free version first before shelling out the $0.99 for the ad-free version.

Cost: $0.99 (or Free with the Ad Supported Version)

4) Garden ToDo by Building Rainbows Software

Because sometimes a pen and paper just don’t cut it with ToDo lists, this gardening todo application really makes the chore organizing process so much easier. With this app, you can quickly organize gardening tasks by priority, time entered or even customize the order based on your own needs. Assign pics of your garden from your phone for specific tasks for the scroll wheel and cover flow options.

When entering new tasks, you can choose options from the scroll wheel or enter tasks manually, making this application great not just for your garden, but also for indoor tasks as well.

Cost: $1.99

5) Flower Garden by Snappy Touch

Not actually that helpful for gardening, this application is really a game where you plant and grow flowers. As you water your plants, they grow, and you can clip the flowers to create bouquets to send to friends and family via email. It’s a virtual garden in potted plants with real sounds of a garden.

Based on a water meter, you can tell when to water your plants for growth and health, when you add the water, it actually sounds like drops of water. Want to turn your terra cotta pot to see other flowers in your bunch? When you slide your finger across the screen, the pot turns and sounds like a real terra cotta pot moving against cobble stones.

The $2.99 version comes with up to 20 different types of seed to unlock, you can “grow” a beautiful bouquet arrangement. There is also a lite version for free that come with only three types of seeds.

Cost: $2.99 (or Free with the lite version)

6) Gardening by Jeff Hale

For people like me who really need help with new plants and who seem to always forget, this application is keeps a database of plants along with instructions on how to care for them. This application helps with knowing how to plant your seeds or seedlings and average harvest time of each varietal.

You can add plants to your personal garden list and keep track of each plant until you harvest them. This application also allows you to create todo lists and keep a journal (along with pics) of your garden’s progress. Take note, this application may help turn that black thumb into a green thumb!

Cost: $1.99

7) iPlant by Lundgren Consulting, LLC

For all those times you wonder if the plant that just brushed across your leg was poison ivy (yikes!), now there is an application that helps you identify more than 300 different types of plants.

This application goes into detail about plants common, scientific (Latin) and alternative names along with descriptions, common usage and value (medicinal vs. food) and any warnings that might be associated with the plants. This reference application would come in handy in the kitchen, on hikes and in the garden, and with more than 150 photos, it’s sure to be a breeze to find the plant you need.

Cost: $1.99

8 ) iGarden USA by NanoSoft, LLC

This is another application to help you plan and track your garden. It gives advice on the best planting dates for each US climate zone based on where your phone is located. You can also learn the best planting practices for each type of plant in your garden. After you’ve got your seeds planted, use the garden tracker to monitor your garden’s process and get ready for the estimated harvest date.

This application was recently updated, and the update includes lots of new features that make this application more informational and easier to use.

Cost: $4.99

9) Flower Pedia by Muli Mobile

Flower Pedia. Get it? Like an encyclopedia for flowers. This reference application boasts more than 1,500 photos of flowers, each toting a rating feature, ability to email and save the photos to your phone background and loads in information about each flower.

While 1,500 photos is a lot, this app holds information about 100 flower families (with over 500 of their genera, or closely related species) represented. All together, this application shows pictures representing more than 100k species of flowers from all around the world. Impressive, maybe, but their disclaimer explains that if you are a serious botanist, you should be advised that this is not a complete botanical encyclopedia. Rather, this application is geared towards those with a casual affinity for flowers.

Good news about this app is that no internet connection is required to access the thousands of flower photos. Take this application with you wherever you go to get information and photos of beautiful flowers from around the globe.

Not sure if this is the application for you? Be sure to try out the lite (not free) version available that includes 100 photos and flower info.

Cost: $4.99 (or a lite version available for $0.99)

10) MyGarden by Perceptive Designs

Although this application doesn’t have a database of different plant types (yet), you can still keep track of all the plants in your own backyard easily and on a clean interface.

Easily input data for your plant in the appropriate fields (like plant name, light requirements, watering needs, bloom time, soil requirements and much more) and keep track of your plant throughout the season. From the comments section, it looks like this garden application may have some bugs to work out, but who doesn’t have a few bugs in their garden from time to time, right?

Cost: $1.99

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Clean Greens: Cleaning Lettuce, Cabbage, Turnips and other Leafy Vegetables Effectively

by blair on October 9, 2009

Photo courtesy of thebittenword.com at flickr.com.

One of the challenges of preparing greens for cooking is cleaning them. Lettuce, cabbage, turnips and the like can be bad enough, but when you get down to the frillier greens like mustard, cleaning them can be a downright pain: these greens collect dirt like nobody’s business in all the folds and crevices of the frills. And hey, nothing kills the thrill of eating your organic vegetables like having to crunch grit between your teeth.

If you don’t mind washing and washing and washing your leafy greens, more power to you. But you have to admit that doing so can waste a lot of precious water, so here’s a purely organic, simpler solution: Don’t let them get dirty in the first place. If you’ll lay down a 1-2 inch layer of chemical-free bark, grass clippings, or straw around your plants and water it well to make it mat down, viola—you’ve got a nice fertile mulch that will not only retain moisture and control weeds, it’ll keep rain from splashing mud onto your greens. And if the weight of the rain itself causes the leaves to bow down, they won’t lie in the dirt. Of course, you’ll still need to wash your produce, but it’ll be a lot easier to get clean.