People are asking about this new product, especially if they’re garden writers finding free bottles at their doorstep.  So hey, the makers of FreezePruf are sponsors of this very blog (and website and newsletter) so I took it upon myself to interview the botanist who developed FreezePruf, and the full report is over here on the blog I get paid to write.

Well, the topic for Blog Action Day this year is one I’ve written about in many articles and here are just a couple (with more assembled on GardenRant): 

• Global Warming in the Garden
• I cover carbon and carbon offsets here:  Carbon Calculations in the Garden. 

And here are some great articles about climate change and gardening by others:

• Global warming’s impact on your garden" in Slate.com by Constance Casey.
• The Carbon Footprint in Your Garden by climate change expert Michael Johnsen.
• How gardening offsets carbon by Amy Stewart.
• The Brooklyn Botanic Garden covers the effects of climate change on our plants.
  

For gardeners, climate change means changes we need to make, like:

• Switching to more drought-tolerant plants.  Especially that thirsty lawn.
• Adding organic matter to make our soil better able to hold water.
• Choosing plants that can tolerate variability in temperature and precipitation.
• Letting our lawns go dormant when there’s insufficient rain.  (Brown is the new green.)
• Catching rainwater for use in the garden.
• Planting shade trees on the sunny side of the house.

Basically the way we should be gardening anyway.

For a small delivery fee, my town will dump up to 10 cubic yards of partially composted leaves in your driveway.  Now getting it OFF the driveway and into the garden – that’s my fitness regime for the next month.

I was introduced to Suzanne Wainwright-Evans, an ornamental entomologist, on Joe Lamp’l’s terrific podcast.  She helps nurseries and garden centers with their bug problems, so she has to know what works and what doesn’t. 

Her approach to destructive insects:

• Grow pollen-producing plants to attract beneficial insects, the ones that feed on the destructive ones.
• And conserve the beneficials by avoiding pesticides, especially the synthetic ones like Pyrethrin.

What about buying ladybugs or praying mantis?

First, she calls ladybugs "ladybird beetles".  Okay.  But the take-away message is that the ones we buy often carry disease and parasites, so avoid them.  And most will immediately fly away, anyway.  So save your money.

And those praying mantis end up eating all sorts of critters we want, like butterflies, beneficial insects, and even hummingbirds!!  They’re also not native anywhere in the U.S., and bottom line, are not effective.

What does work? 

Nematodes.  She says these microscopic worms are very effective at controlling soil-borne pests.

Suzanne, any advice about Japanese beetles?

• First, don’t use traps – they end up just attracting them to your garden.
• Plant resistant varieties of plants
• Use Neem Oil.  She sprays it "every few days"
• Apply insecticidal soaps – repeatedly.

Uh, that repeated spraying sure doesn’t sound like sustainable gardening to me.  I’m sticking with choosing the right plants.

Read much more of Suzanne’s wisdom at her website: Bug Lady Consulting.

FABULOUS article by Adrian Higgins about the need for sustainable gardening, and the great work going on to spur the movement.  He starts by getting our attention:

There’s someone on my block pouring greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, contributing to summer smog and allowing polluted runoff to reach the Chesapeake Bay.  It’s me.  Oh, and you.  And everyone else.

The ecological pendulum has swung somewhat since the postwar decades, when homeowners blithely burned autumn leaves and applied nasty pesticides and too many synthetic fertilizers to their garden plants.  But we still have a long way to go before our gardens are ecologically sustainable.  This may sound strange, given that the whole point of gardening is to venerate nature, secure in the knowledge that our plants trap carbon, provide shade and pump oxygen into the air.

But in existing properties, too many gardens are part of the problem, with plants needing chemical support because they are il-chosen or in poor soils, or both.  Lawns, apart from required repeated fertilizer applications, rely on gas-powered mowers and blowers.

Even gardeners who are dutifully trying to be green by minimizing the lawn, turning to hand tools and planting low-maintenance vegetation see storm water gushing down the driveway into the street, losing water that otherwise could be used in the garden while reducing river pollution.

AMEN.   He goes on to describe the nearly-complete guidelines for Sustainable Sites, a joint project of the U.S.  Botanic Gardens, Lady  Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and the American Society of Landscape Architects.  Like LEED standards for buildings, these guidelines will become the standard for environmentally responsible treatment of landscapes nationwide.  Very exciting stuff.  Here’s Higgins’ summary of the practices endorsed and given credit for:

Using recycled rain and household water for irrigation, improving soil health with compost, choosing plants suited to the site and its climate, avoiding chemicals that contribute to smog and using vegetation to reduce the heat island effect of cities.

The photo above and many more of landscapes using these practices are available on their website, which looks like it’ll become a terrific new resource for us all.  Higgins relates the experiences at two test gardens in California.  Side by side gardens were grown either conventionally or using native plants only, and the costs and amounts of water used yearly were recorded.  Great information to have, and I look forward to some residential examples here in the East.  (Heck, I’ll volunteer my own lawnless garden as a "case study".)

Higgins goes on to make the important point that it may take the right landscape firm to make this all happen – by teaching the homeowners how to maintain their new sutainable gardens, which is "not the business strategy of a lot of garden design firms".  Looks like they need to team up with some garden coaches!

Photo: Cayuga Medical Center in Itaca, New York

For publication in the February 2009 Takoma Voice newspaper. 

Composting of all types is finally catching on, and that includes vermicomposting – employing worms to turn your kitchen scraps into black gold.  Seattle and other progressive jurisdictions are even distributing worm composters to their residents.  But mention of these industrious recyclers increasingly leads to the question: But aren’t they invasive?  Well, some are, in some situations, but confusion abounds and unearthing the 411 about which ones and where is easier said than done.  Not that that stopped me from trying.

First, what’s not to love about a critter who returns organic waste to the earth?  And not just kitchen scraps, either.  Rachel Carson wrote about worms being used to remediate pollution by removing toxins from the soil.  Municipal sewage systems are using worms to remove harmful bacteria in human waste and turn it into clean biosolids – a great substitute for synthetic fertilizers on farmland.  Some ranchers are using worms to compost the tons of animal waste that would otherwise be polluting our waterways.   

On organic farms, the castings of another type of worm – the earthworm – not only increase soil fertility but have been shown to reduce plant disease, without the use of chemicals.  Studies show yields increasing by 20 percent after earthworms are added to growing fields.  Even for the home organic gardener, worm castings provide essential nutrients and have fungicidal properties that can fight mildew and other diseases.  Then there are the soil-aerating benefits from earthworms’ constant burrowing, which helps improve both water retention and drainage.

Invasive Worms Damaging Northern Forests

Yet there ARE destructive worms in the U.S. During the last ice age, glaciers covered about half of North America and wiped out the earthworms in their path. Above a certain latitude the forests evolved without earthworms until the introduction of worms from elsewhere, brought there in cargo or carelessly discarded by fishermen, and these invaders are changing the forests. Authorities in Minnesota, the leader in fighting to protect Northern forests, explain that these nonnative earthworms are changing the structure of the soil and therefore the ecology of forests. Worms eat the thick layers of leaves called "duff" that covers the ground, turning it into richer soil, which affects what plants can grow in it, what insects that can live in it, and right up the food chain. Ultimately these worms may could cause some plants and animals to go extinct.

(Here in Maryland, below the glacier line, native earthworms were left intact.  In fact, across North America there are today about 120 native earthworms, none of which seem to be sold as composting worms because they act so slowly.)

Night Crawlers are Bait 

According to Minnesota’s top worm expert, Lee Frelich, seven types of worms have been found in their hardwood forests, including the European Lumbricus rubellus or night crawler. The evidence against this popular bait worm mounts, with both Cornell and Maryland having fingered it as the primary culprit. It and the other invaders thrive in unimproved soil and can survive severe winters. Maryland’s Extension Service goes on to say they’re NOT suited to compost bins and will die in them – as will Maryland’s native worms.

Red Wigglers are Composters

The red wiggler or Eisenia fetida, another European import, is the primary species sold for composting purposes.  Unlike the night crawler, the red wiggler thrives in organic waste, lives close to the surface, and can’t survive temperatures below 40 degrees or above 90 (the ideal is 70-75).  Where winters are mild they still only survive outdoors in compost bins or heavily mulched gardens that are rich in organic matter.   But as composters they’re ideal – they eat, excrete and breed quickly.  I learned that the red wiggler "has not been found outside of compost in Minnesota. They can’t survive being frozen."  The Brooklyn Botanic Garden website agrees that they’re not a "problem species."  Maryland’s Extension Service says these worms "do poorly" in average soil, and Virginia reminds us that composting worms like the red wiggler are not an "earthworm" at all.  Now can we relax hire these guys to do some composting for us?

Weird or Confusing Advice about Worms

Unfortunately, a recent New York Times article on invasive worms cited night crawlers and an Asian species as the harmful species, then concluded by telling readers not to "toss out fishing worms or red wrigglers by throwing them on the ground or in a pond."  Then the author described for urban readers how to capture and kill worms in their yards…but didn’t mention any evidence that worms are actually doing harm in cities (and I couldn’t find any).  Other authors recommend using only "native species of compost worm," which is totally unhelpful, since there are no native worms suitable for composting, according to the University of Minnesota.  No wonder there’s rampant confusion.

The public is often advised to consult their local Extension Service to see if earthworms pose problems in their geographic area and which species are causing the difficulty, though many of them simply don’t have an answer.  And one online source even suggests that readers "consult relevant scientific studies".  Again, good luck with that.

Despite state officials in Minnesota having cleared red wigglers as a potential menace there, Minnesota ecologist Cindy Hale tells composters to freeze their worm castings in air-tight bags for a least a week before adding them to garden soil, no matter what worms species they use. "It won’t hurt the soil microbes, but it will kill all the worms."" But composters tell me this turns castings into hard chunks that are impossible to spread.  She’s not the only authority recommending the freezer treatment so we can all compost "without fear of spreading invasive worms" – apparently not aware that "composting worms" aren’t the problem.

For outdoor composting, the advice is even weirder.   Sources warn against adding "extra earthworms" to outdoor bins… but does anyone buy worms to add to their regular compost bin, anyway?  Minnesota advises that "If you have a compost pile in a forested area, do not introduce additional non-native earthworms."  Makes sense but really, people do that?

Advice that make sense

Buy composting worms from a source that knows what it’s selling – and it’s red wigglers.   One supplier, WormpostNortheast, which only sells red wigglers and even uses the Latin name for them, warns their website readers about avoiding night crawlers, again using common and Latin names -  hooray!  Suppliers should also state clearly what temperatures are tolerated by the worms they sell; otherwise people with subfreezing winters might buy red wigglers and leave their bin outdoors, only to discover a worm graveyard after the first hard frost.  The use of the term "redworm" by some suppliers is particularly confusing, since it’s applied to several species.
   
Amy Stewart, author of The Earth Moved, a highly entertaining book about worms, adds this advise: Don’t dump any compost or mulch in wooded areas. That’s because this additional organic matter causes an unnatural increase in the population of earthworms – non or nonnative – which alters soils, and consequently plant and animal life in the soils.

Favorite Indoor Vermicomposters

I polled worm-composters across the U.S. and most agree that layered compost systems are the best because they separate worm castings from worms and uneaten food, making harvesting of castings much easier.  Commercially, brands like Can-o-Worms, Worm Chalet, Worm Factory and Gusanito sell for $65 to $160.  Do-it-yourselfers can save money and make a layered system in 30 minutes using Rubbermaid bins for $20, plus the cost of worms.  (Google homemade worm composter for directions.)

Though several sources advise against plastic bins, most composters use it and have no problems.   Others advise against using newspaper as bedding material within the composter, but again most people use it and report no problems.  But when it comes to buying the worms themselves, everyone seems to agree it’s best do it in spring or fall, and those are the only times that responsible suppliers will ship them.

For more information Wormwoman.com and Wormdigest.org are great sources.

Photo credit:  Red Worm Composting.