Or, at least, the uglier parts of it.

If you haven’t given any thought to becoming a Guerilla Gardener or, if you have thought about it but simply haven’t taken action, you really owe it to yourself to see how much beauty one guy with buck teeth has brought to Zurich, Switzerland.

http://www.maurice-maggi.ch/blumengraffiti/guerilla-gardening/ggtv-guerrilla-gardener-maurice-maggi-zurich/

There are two videos at the above link. Watch them in succession and then ask yourself if you don’t know of some locations in your neighborhood that could use some cheering up.

Maggi simply gets the seed below the surface, hiding it from birds and insects. He doesn’t water it. He doesn’t fertilize it … nature handles that just fine. It would appear that he plants hollyhocks and poppy’s together … both can tolerate fairly dry conditions.

He used a term that I was unfamiliar with: biotope. I’ve looked it up for my benefit and passed it along for yours. This definition comes from Wikipedia; YMMV.

Biotope is an area of uniform environmental conditions providing a living place for a specific assemblage of plants and animals. Biotope is almost synonymous with the term habitat, but while the subject of a habitat is a species or a population, the subject of a biotope is a biological community.

^{I Stumbled this a few minutes ago … I hope it takes off. If you have a way to help it along, please do so.}

^{Here’s my review in Stumble:}

“Guerilla gardening means the planting of public spaces without permission. Maurice Maggi has been during this in Zurich for ~20 years. He’s the source of the hollyhocks that beautify that city. Now, do your part in YOUR city. For more info, Google for "guerilla gardening".”

I was checking Google for some of the keywords I want to rank for and was tickled to find that this blog is on the front page for multiple keywords multiple times. That, as any blogger will tell you, is the sweet smell of success! So I called Mrs. Bill in and we had a good laugh, feeling somewhat giddy about those results.  However, while I was at it, I decided to look at one of the blogs that ranked with me.

Wow, did I ever get my eyes opened.

I was stunned to find that the discussion of gardening activism has only two viewpoints: “The Milquetoasts” staying quietly at home while tending a few pansies and “Grub & Snapdragon Alphatrowel” set to change the world overnight: by force, if need be. There didn’t seem to be a middle-ground perspective. In this case, the debate developed around the disputes regarding global climate change. I’ll agree that this is an interesting problem, but I won’t agree that this should be the central focus of gardening activists. The problem with this polarity is that most of us occupy a middle ground, finding it defensible and a firm base from which to extend our reach. One. Garden. At. A. Time.

What good does it do to fight un-winnable battles while neglecting the victories that are actually within our grasp? Global warming is just one of these un-winnable battles. Think for a moment and you will uncover others, such as off-shore oil drilling or the use of chemical fertilizers that has created a vast dead-zone at the mouth of the Mississippi. It takes big resources to fight big enemies.

What about those of us who want food independence for ourselves and to turn our neighbors on to this quiet revolution? We can’t stop the UN … or the WTO … they’ve got more bullets than we have seeds. But we can render their policies as they affect our dinner table moot.

That’s right: we can stop them at the fork and that is a victory that the global-warming mongers and nay-sayers can never win. To the extent their focus has been blunted and deflected into empty debates, their power to cause positive change has been frittered away. Meanwhile, the real movers and shakers continue silently along the paths of their original agendas.

Carbon sequestration? That seems to be the buzz-word du jour with the climate change crowd. The whole argument centers around the question of CO2 … its effects and its sources. No one seems to have a problem with the two molecules of Oxygen, lots of people object to that single liberated molecule of carbon. Well, here’s a fact that can’t be argued: Every gardener who ever turned garden or animal waste back into the soil sequestered carbon; sometimes a surprisingly large amount of it. It isn’t unusual for a single gardener to make a ton or more of compost in one season and to turn it back into the soil at the start of the next. Whether the purpose in so doing is to enrich the soil, reduce the load on garbage dumps or to sequester carbon willy-nilly is irrelevant. The point is that returning nutrients to the soil has always been and will always be a net positive for the humans who inhabit this tiny rock with its microscopic layer of breathable air and its limited habitable zones.

Can’t wrap your head around sequestration? Try this out: “The average conventional produce item travels 1,500 miles, using, if shipped by tractor-trailer, one gallon of fossil fuel per hundred pounds.”

To sequester the stuff means to pull it back out of the atmosphere and tuck it away somewhere safe for a while. But, to grow food locally means not putting the carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to begin with.

That’s my brand of garden activism. Simply learn what the right things to do are … and do them. Over, and over again.

You don’t have to stick your neck out to be a garden activist or engage in full-on food politics to earn some sort of street cred with me. It’s enough if you can plant a few seeds, put back a few jars and tuck some compost back into the soil for next year. Anything beyond that is gravy.

I pass out bonus points like the government passes out tax shelters for the rich if you teach one or more in the current generation of youth why and how to do this. Let them preserve, by whatever means are suitable, some food for their families. It will stop being theory and start being valuable.

So, whatever level you can contribute at is good. Keep those pansies growing (dig some compost or manure in around the roots, eh?), keep the heat on the Department of Agriculture, the FDA, the EPA and all the rest of the alphabet soup of government and quasi-government agencies. Hold their toes to a rip-roaring fire if you can. Or just quietly get things organized for the next nice day in your garden.

It’s all good.

– Bill

I’m writing, and writing and writing. But I’m not posting much yet.

I want to get the appearance of the blog settled so that I am not constantly tweaking it later. I’m sitting on at least a dozen posts and quite possibly twice that amount (begun, but not ready for prime time): and that’s before I even start to hear back from you. Recent postings include a seriously updated “About” page and a brand-new page for Contacting me and a “Help-Wanted” page. I am earnestly looking to engage other writers who want to make a stand for gardening activism as a force for social change.

In fact, returning visitors are as likely to find a 404 Error greeting them as they are to find the page they linked to. I’m already working on that and will get it properly taken care of as fast as my fingers can get to it.

The theme I’ve been toying with all week (Atahualpa 3.4.9) simply isn’t going to work. It has problems remembering what I put in the widget areas. So, basically, that’s a wasted week in the rubbish bin. I tried installing the updated version (3.5.3) and it has coding problems that keep it from displaying even the first page. Fine. I don’t feel like fighting just to get basic functions to work.

I guess that it’s better to see these things early rather than later on. I really liked the appearance of Atahualpa 3.4.9, I’m sorry things aren’t going to work out.

The current theme is the stock 2010 theme from WordPress. I’m going to take a close look at it this week to see if it has all of the features I need. If so, it can stay. I”ve already changed the header image to one taken in Aruba. One of the features I really liked about Atahualpa was its header rotation.  If I can get that going in the 2010 theme, I have other photos I want to add and I’d like to incorporate some of yours, too.

I also have a copy of 2010 Weaver aboard. I’ve used it for a client’s site and I know that, while it has a quirk or two, it is very serviceable. It doesn’t put the blog title in <H1>, so that’s something of a bummer because that’s important in SEO. However, with the right plug-ins and strategy, it is still possible to get good rankings with it. I was able to get 4 posts in a row in the top 20, one at #7. Sadly, with the Google maps and the sponsored listings taking up so much space, #7 is still below the fold.

I think that finding I could get good rankings with a client’s site is what has inspired me to come back and work on this blog again. That, and a sense that things are getting out of hand in the US and elsewhere around the globe and that there are people, lots of them, who are far too dependent on the largess of a government that can shape responses to policy by granting or withholding that largess. We are contemplating huge tax cuts for the wealthy while those on Social Security have gone two years without a cost of living increase and the middle class has actually lost ground for the past 10 years.

We used to be able to feed ourselves without the approval of politicians. We still can. I’m here to see to it that that happens again because, while it’s easy to coerce a hungry man, it’s a much harder to challenge a fed (& fed up) one.

– Bill

With the economic situation what it is, likely there are many first-time or returning gardeners searching the internet for tips this year. That is good. But there are many sites that are long on eye-candy and conjecture and short on facts.

1) Many sites will refer to compost as ‘fertilizer’. While most of my readers know better, new gardeners might get hood-winked. With an NPK macro-nutrient rating of 1-1-1, “fertilizer” is the worst of all possible reasons for using compost. Although the actual values will vary somewhat from batch to batch, compost will NOT ‘shock’ your plants into incredible growth spurts like the bagged and commercially-hyped stuff will. Moreover, some of these sites will try to sell you some compound or other for making ‘super compost’. Ain’t no such thing. Stuff rots. Compost happens. The formula for a healthy compost pile is simple … and free. Water and air along with a 50:50 mix (by volume) of nitrogen-bearing material such as kitchen or garden refuse and any manures you might have access to and carbon-bearing material such as dried tree leaves or straw. Add enough water to make the whole thing fairly moist, toss so as to mix things up pretty well and walk away.

2) Compost is an excellent source of minerals and trace nutrients. These are needed for the major nutrients (usually present in the soil and air in sufficient quantities) to work. The neat part about it is that all of these nutrients are available in a very complex and precise ratio with no effort on our part. The trees, grasses, manures, and other plants that went into the compost already did the mixing for us, having drawn from the ground precisely what they needed … and nothing more. As they decay, they release these micronutrients again and, voila! compost!

3) Many sites will tell you not to use (fill in the blank) type of manure in your compost. These sites are full of (fill in the blank). Don’t use any manures directly in your garden; that is, don’t just toss a shovel full of cat turds on top of the soil. DO include them in your compost.* DO work them into the soil if you can completely cover them to a depth of an inch or more. Nature has effective means to deal with pathogens or mankind would have become extinct a LONG time ago. The idea in organic gardening is to work alongside the mechanisms of nature synergistically. Figure out how nature is handling things and, when beneficial, ‘turn up the volume’.

4) DO make compost and DO add it to your soil. It will work wonders for it, no matter what type of soil you have. It will loosen clay soils, bind sandy soils and will cause your drainage to become right in both cases. If, by some chance, you are able to make more than you can work into your soil, apply it as a mulch in a layer at least two inches and preferably 4 inches (5 to 10 cm) thick.

5) DO read up on compost. Get a sense of how to do it right. Then get out in your backyard and make some. Then make some more. It may take several batches before you get it just right. But that day will come and you will never look back.

6) There are a lot of ways to make compost and only a couple of them call for an obvious above-ground pile. Possibly the above ground method is not the best one for your circumstance. For instance, nosy neighbors might object to what looks like a pile of garbage in your backyard, but they wouldn’t think twice if they saw you layering straw over the ground (especially if they didn’t see you spreading out garbage and manure beforehand). The neighbors and the police are unlikely to say a word if you dig post holes during the day (and fill them with kitchen scraps, straw, grass clippings and leaves at night). There are a lot of ways to skin this cat. Find the one that works best for you.

7) DO invest in a compost thermometer if you are going to use the above ground pile methods. A good one with a 20” stem and an analog dial is roughly $20 mail order. It will last for years and, among other things, tells you if the compost pile is getting hot enough and alert you to when to turn it by letting you know when it has begun to cool off. If you turn too often, the pile won’t reach its peak temperature of 160F but if you turn too seldom, the outside layers will lose their nitrogen before they get a chance to heat up, too.

DO plant more than you think you’ll be able to eat. The critters will take some, the neighbors will appreciate your largess. ALSO plan on preserving much of what you grow … it won’t be harvest time all year.

9) Many years ago the USDA determined that a quart of home-canned vegetables or fruit cost (are you ready?) just 10 cents from planting the seed to the table. Ten cents! Using organic methods, my wife and I normally grow food that we value at over $4,000 (compared to in-season grocery store prices) from only 240 sq. ft. in our backyard. We are out the price of the seed / plants, the water and some perspiration in the spring and fall. During the summer, a few minutes in the morning, coffee cup in hand, is enough to keep the weeds down.

10) Although, as I stated in item (1) above, compost will not shock your soil into record production, it does something else even more valuable. It builds up the soil, while the commercial preparations deplete it. When a soil is converted from chemical farming to organic farming, the first year sees yields drop sharply. The second year, there is some improvement. By the third year, the organic output matches the chemical output. That’s where most of the studies of the process, funded by the chemical companies, end. In the fourth year … and every year after that … the organic soils out-produce the chemical soils. I have a 10 ft trellis in each of my garden beds. I’ve picked tomatoes, ripe tomatoes, 11 feet up in the air. I live in Michigan, so that was no ‘long season’ stunt. We’ve got about 6 good months to grow vegetables and a couple of ‘iffy’ ones. I garden organically.

If you want to know the REAL ins and outs of composting, there are lots of books you can read and I’ll list a couple of them below. But if you are really curious about what happens in a compost pile, I can recommend no better volume than The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure, Third Edition by Joe Jenkins. Don’t let the title put you off – the guy not only knows his stuff, he documents it and presents it in such a way that you’ll know your stuff, too, when you’ve finished reading it.

Be safe. Have fun. Eat well. – Bill

*Cat turds can pass parasites to humans. While this is a rare occurrence, if you have any doubts about how well a particular compost pile containing them did, allow it to sit for a year. The additional exposure to temperature extremes will work wonders.

I’ve been away from you for a long time. Much water has flowed under the bridge. My garden was a bust because I couldn’t be there at the times it needed me. In fact, despite the very best of intentions this spring, my whole summer was pretty much a bust.

My own health problems have played a significant role. I’m not looking for pity or even compassion for what has transpired, just recognition that I have been busy with serious matters and was not neglecting you willfully. Here are some of the highlights since last I posted.

When my wife and I took a vacation trip in mid-March we came home to some painful slander that threatened to disrupt our lives. Even though we were united against it, our household was in turmoil to think that we could even be accused of such things and deeply disturbed that others we knew … people who should have known better and defended us … believed it. We are only just now coming to grips with it because we have to continue to associate with the people we are confident did the slandering … as if it had never occurred.

I nearly lost my Dad. I did lose two friends to death. I was simply too depressed to make the trip to the backyard to salvage what was already burnt up by the sun and neglect. Even my compost pile never heated up and I usually make a couple tons of compost a year.

In mid-summer a new-found ‘friend’ made me a business offer. Then, after well over 300 hours of work he decided he didn’t want to pay me. Not – one – dime. So, kiss off September and October and the first couple weeks of November. (**)

Come next spring, I’m going to be telling a whole host of fair-weather friends to take a flying leap … I’ve got a garden that needs me and, if I care for it, richly rewards me for my efforts. They just want to waste my time with their silliness and in projects designed to help only them.

I’ve also got a few gardening friends, met through this site (and theirs). With that, my wife and my cat, I should be okay.

So, I’m going to dig in here again and start with a total revamp of the site (I’ve got a GREAT pic for the left side bar … you’ll love it!). I don’t have a solid “re-launch” date in mind, but look for things to start popping around the change of the year. I’ll try to get the pic up in the next day or so. (Note: the left side bar was only present for a few days. Some plug-in or other clobbered a needed file and the theme is no longer available. I thought I had a back-up but I can’t find it.)

BTW, affiliate programs help pay the rent but I don’t – and won’t — advertise anything I’m not a paying customer for.

Bluehost is a pretty doggone good web host, but no one ever seems to click through and sign up. If you are saying to yourself that “GoDaddy” is cheaper and you are making a hosting decision on that basis … then go with “GoDaddy”. In my opinion it IS cheaper … AND it costs less. I considered price as a purchase factor, but, for a few cents a week difference, I feel that Bluehost offered dollars a week more value. It is possible, sometimes, to pinch the wrong penny.

Well, I’m just bubbling over with story ideas that I want to make some sort of note of so I’ve got to go and get those jotted down. I really think that you are going to like the changes, and I want to thank you for hanging on this long. — Bill

(**) UPDATE: Last night he generously ‘gave’ me $300 after I offered to delete the site for free. We parted company. The website is his now. Although I am still (13 days left) downloading files from Shutterstock on his behalf, I made it clear that I had no further interest in helping develop his site. I will FTP those files to his hosted space and then I am done. This morning a file got corrupted and I don’t have a backup for it so, as you can see, I’ve had to start with a fresh theme. 10/29/2010