Year after year farmers in the US plants a lot of corn. A safe estimate is around 80 million acres with another 70 million acres or so going to soybeans. Corn comes from South America, soybeans are from East Asia. When we plant these crops we plant them in such a way that we exclude or, at the very least, limit the ability of native plants to grow. A safe estimate is that 99 percent of our cropland is planted in non-native species. … Continue reading this article “What About the Corn?”
Author: jeffgillman003
Our visiting Garden Professor and his Kentucky coffeetree
By Dr. Charlie Rohwer
Since my last guest professor submission (buying organic food for health) garnered so much discussion, I thought I’d try to write about a less controversial topic: evolution. There’s no scientific doubt that’s where plants (well, all species of everything, really) come from, but what got me thinking about it recently was my Kentucky coffeetree.
My wife and I bought our first house a couple years ago, and for the previous 25 years at least, the landscaping had been severely neglected. … Continue reading this article “Our visiting Garden Professor and his Kentucky coffeetree”
Dirty Dozen?
Nobody in their right mind considers pesticides safe. They are, after all, poisons which we have created to kill things, be those things plants, insects, fungi, rats, or whatever. The idea that we could have foods with no pesticides on them is attractive. Now I’ve got to admit that, as a general rule, I don’t think that the levels at which most pesticides are found on foods is concerning. Our methods of detecting poisons are just too sensitive today and so we end up saying that a poison is “present” on a tomato or whatever even if it’s there at a harmless parts-per-trillion level. … Continue reading this article “Dirty Dozen?”
Right and Left
Just got a picture of the cover of a new book I’ve got coming up soon. It’s a collaborative project with an old friend of mine who is a political science professor at UNC Charlotte. We look at a bunch of different environmental issues, different things that the government could do about these issues, and then we rate these options by how the well the right and left wingers would like them. Sure to tick people off! … Continue reading this article “Right and Left”
Do Organophosphates cause ADHD?
Ever since Monday’s post I’ve been preoccupied thinking about that article which was mentioned in the comments section by Daniel http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/05/17/pesticides.adhd/index.html?iref=allsearch . This article basically summarized a study that seemed to show that ADHD in children was related to exposure to organophosphate insecticides.
Articles like this appear all of the time in mainstream media and they scare the bejezus out of us because, after reading them, we end up thinking “Holy crap! We’re killing ourselves and ruining our society with these insane chemicals!”… Continue reading this article “Do Organophosphates cause ADHD?”
Visiting Professor guest post: Organic foods
There are lots of reasons consumers give for buying organic foods, but a few reasons are very common. Among them is the notion that organic foods are better for you. Really? Are organic fruits and veggies better for you? Depends on what you mean by ‘better for you’. But as far as we know, the answer is probably ‘no’, especially if you’re buying organic fruits and veggies (F&V) at the store. It might seem crazy, but there’s no good evidence to support the notion that you will be more healthy by shopping for organic F&V. … Continue reading this article “Visiting Professor guest post: Organic foods”
Building a Better Container
As most of you know, roots circling around a container isn’t considered a good thing. And so people try various things to control circling roots. One of the more creative horticultural minds out there, Carl Whitcomb, a guy why basically got sick of academia and went into private industry (and, as far as I can tell, loathes peer review and the whole process of publication), decided to see what he could do about making containers that don’t encourage circling roots. … Continue reading this article “Building a Better Container”
The Approach Graft
Seeing as this blog is called “The Garden Professors” it has been far too long since we’ve given you a lecture on a useful practice for your garden, so this week I thought I’d give you a little how-to demonstration on something called approach grafting. Approach grafting is a technique that you could use to graft a tomato to a tomato (good if you want to use a disease resistant root with a non-disease resistant top — common in heirloom tomatoes), a tomato stem to a potato root (just a fun project), or an eggplant root to a tomato shoot (good for wet locations).… Continue reading this article “The Approach Graft”
Visiting Professor guest post: Native wildflowers
Recently I have been fascinated by the native wildflower field I planted last fall. Although I seeded it with the same mixture of seeds (mixed with sand to spread them evenly), you can see that we have clumps of different flowers throughout the area.
Figure 1. Descanso Gardens, California
The area where the wildflowers were planted had several 1-2 foot raised mounds; some were in the shape of keyholes. These were built with silty sand from a nearby seasonal stream that had some erosion problems in a rainy year.… Continue reading this article “Visiting Professor guest post: Native wildflowers”
Some Super-Cool Stuff
For the past ten years or so I’ve worked to try to transfer information about horticulture to people. It sounds simple, but it actually took a lot of time and effort to figure out the best way to do it, and I’m still not there yet — and probably never will be. The reason that I mention this is because I appreciate it when another horticulturist, such as my fellow garden professors, work to get information about horticulture out to the public. … Continue reading this article “Some Super-Cool Stuff”