National Seed Swap Day

Thanks to my friends at Celebrate Green!®, I learned that the last Saturday in January is known as National Seed Swap Day. The event started in 2006 in the Washington, D.C. area, but has quickly spread across the country to become a national event.

• What is a seed swap?

Simply put, you trade seeds with someone else. Why? You can share extra seeds that you don't need and they won't go to waste. It's a fun way to gain seeds for your garden inexpensively. You might even obtain rare varieties that you can't find in local stores.

• How do you save seeds?

Jack Rowe has posted a marvelous free Vegetable Seed Saving Handbook to get you started. Some seeds are harder to save than others. Modern-day carrots, for example, can be cross-pollinated by the wild carrot, or Queen Anne's Lace. The seeds you'd wind up with from this cross would not produce tasty carrots.

• How long do seeds last?

It depends upon the seed. Even the experts disagree, as explored in this post by A Way to Garden.com.

When I was studying wetlands in graduate school, we talked about the government's idea of letting folks drain a wetland as long as they created one somewhere else. This was part of the No Net Loss wetlands policy first touted in the late 1980's.

This line of thinking fails to consider the functionality of wetlands. Wetland soil contains important seeds - a "bank" of future plants. Just adding water to an upland area doesn't turn it into a wetland. Conversely, some industrial areas built on drained wetlands have been successfully converted back to wetlands.

Seeds, when properly cared for, can last a long time.

• How important is it to save seeds?

One of the problems with modern agriculture is that we tend to fixate on certain types of plants at the expense of others. Let's say we have grown the perfect tomato. Other tomato varieties might be discounted because their fruits are too small, too squishy, maybe a funny color. If no one saves these seeds, we are in for a big problem when later, our perfect tomato falls prey to an insect or disease. Some of these lesser varieties might be resistant, but if we don't save the seeds, we don't have a way to deal with the problem.

This is the rationale behind seedbanks - we want to save the seeds for posterity. You never know when we might need them.

• How can I swap seeds?

Ask your friends and neighbors to swap seeds with you. The advantage of swapping seeds locally is that you know they are likely to grow in your climate and they won't harm your local ecosystem.

The National Gardening Association has set up this page to help you swap seeds online. HeirloomSeedSwap.com is an international seed swapping site. But be careful when sending seeds long distances - a seed that is welcome in your area might be considered an invasive somewhere else.

Happy swapping!


Photo credit: Kirsty Hall, via flickr // CC BY 2.0

Project BudBurst

Has the dreary winter weather got you down? Let's plan for a fun way to celebrate spring! If you're in the U.S.**, join Project BudBurst and record your observations about the yearly stages, or phenophases, of select plants in your area. Choose from one of these 75 plants to study. You can track things like the earliest date you see leaves, flowers, or fruits and then report your data online. (** Not in the U.S.? You can still have fun predicting the timing of next spring's phenophases and recording your observations.)

Dr. Kayri Havens, Lead Botanist, and Dr. Paul Alaback, Lead Science Advisor, are keeping a Project BudBurst blog to accompany the website. I thought this blog snippet from Dr. Kay covered the objectives of Project BudBurst quite nicely:

"Thanks to all of you who are watching plants and submitting your observations! These data are helping us get a much clearer picture about how plants are responding to different climates around the U.S. This will help us predict how plants will respond to a changing climate."

At Project BudBurst, you can learn more about phenology, the science behind this study, download teaching materials about plants and plant identification guides, browse the map of recent observations, and more! And be sure to upload your plant photos to the Project BudBurst Flickr photo pool.

Colony Collapse Disorder: Meet a beekeeper! Part 3

Continuing our interview with Michele Bennett Decoteau, of Blue Hive Journals, today's topic is Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, a serious condition that is severely impacting honeybees in the United States. (If you're just joining us, here's part 1 and part 2 of the interview.)

I read recently that nearly one-third of the honeybee population died last year due to CCD. What is Colony Collapse Disorder and how can we help save the honeybees?

CCD is a scary new thing beekeepers are facing. What happens is that beekeeper will open a hive and find healthy larvae and honey but essentially no adult bees. Under typical disease circumstances [only a few adult bees leave and don't return and] there is a decline in bees that is reflected in the larvae and honey. Most diseases show their influence in the larvae [not the adult bees]. The question is where the [adult] bees are and why are they not returning to their hive.

I don’t think a single cause will be found. Some suspects are pesticides, pollution, transporting bees, and disease.

Some pesticides disrupt a bee’s ability to navigate home. One potential culprit is Imidacloprid. When bees get a good dose of this pesticide they act drunk – they cannot fly well, they don’t orient to home, and they get lost easily. This pesticide is banned in other countries but can be purchased [commercially] here in the US. (Mama Joules' sidenote: "Imidacloprid and nicotine have similar activity in the nervous system," according to a 2001 "Insecticide Factsheet" in the Journal of Pesticide Reform.)

Bees are also transported around the country to pollinate large crops. First bees pollinate almonds in California, then they go to Texas to pollinate squash, then maybe over to Georgia for peaches and head up to Maine for blueberries. Bees are eating one single crop at a time and are fed sugar water in transit. This doesn’t sound like a good life for a bee to me. For one thing, the queen and larvae get chilled during transport. I think that all this moving around and single crop feeding is a challenge to the bee’s immune system.

Pollution may affect bees in an unexpected way. Bees use pheromones to communicate within the hive and even to some extent between hives. Pollution can disrupt a bee’s ability to smell and [the bee] may get lost [due to] high levels of pollution.

Disease and bugs that bite bees are an ever increasing issue. Many of these pests come from other countries and were introduced into US bee populations from unmonitored imports of bees. Today, beekeepers use a number of pesticides to deal with these bee-pests.

I am a hobbyist beekeeper and generally we are not affected by CCD. Since we don't know what the cause of CCD is, it is unclear why hobby beekeepers don't see it often. Perhaps it is because we don't transport our hives and feed them a single nectar source or stress them other ways. Stress decreases every being's immune system and a weakened immune system might allow some disease to attack bees. Until we know more about what CCD is, we won't know for sure.

Nonetheless, even hobbyists do keep a close watch on diseases and pests in the hive. Essentially we are just big worker bees taking care of the colony!

Michele's top five things we can do to help the honeybees:

1. Become a beekeeper
2. Buy local honey – Check out farmer’s markets and beekeeper’s organizations
3. Plant native plants for pollinators – Check with your local nursery for ideas
4. Grow organically – Stop using chemical pesticides in your flower and veggie garden
5. Buy organic – The fewer pesticides in use in the environment, the better for bees!

Thanks so much for the insight and advice, Michele! Join us next time as we conclude our interview by learning how to start beekeeping (read the next part of this interview here). Be sure to check out Michele's blog, Blue Hive Journals for more ideas and tips about keeping bees.

Michele says, "Take time to try different honey. It’s OK to have more than one jar of honey! Every honey tastes different. I love lavender honey made from lavender nectar."

If you liked this post, you might like:

Meet a beekeeper!

Meet a beekeeper! Part 2: The intelligence of bees

Meet a beekeeper! Part 4: Learning to keep bees

National Pollinator Week 2009


Photo credits: Michele Bennett Decoteau (top photo); Ryan Wick (bottom photo, through a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license)

***

[10/2/09: Updated to include links to the rest of the interview. Deleted phrase "native honeybees" because it is factually inaccurate. Honeybees were imported to the United States.]

Take the lead out of gardening

Did you hear that lead was detected in soil from the White House vegetable garden? I wasn't surprised. Although lead is not widely in use today, prior to 1978, it was a common additive in paint and gasoline. Lead was widely deposited in urban soils through car exhaust and flaking paint from building exteriors. In rural and formerly rural areas, lead may be present in soil from the historic use of lead-containing pesticides like lead arsenate. (If your neighborhood has streets with names like "orchard" or "farm", you probably live on former farmland.)

Since lead is a metal, it is persistent in soil. Unlike a volatile compound (think gasoline fumes), lead tends to stay put. Some of this lead may be bioavailable, meaning it can enter your plants and, ultimately, you and your family.

But don’t let your concerns about lead exposure dampen your enthusiasm for gardening with your kids! There are easy steps that you can take to limit this problem:

• Locate your garden away from roads and buildings. This 1995 study showed that soils in some inner-city front yards in Washington, DC were contaminated with lead; the source was traced to paint.

• Consider importing fresh topsoil for your garden. You can work this soil into your planting beds or use containers and elevated planters.

• Make sure that you and your children wash your hands after gardening and remove your shoes before coming into the house. Wipe the feet of pets that have been in the garden with you.

• Wash all fruits and vegetables thoroughly before eating them. Ingesting contaminated soil poses a greater human health risk than eating foods grown in contaminated soil.

• Studies have shown that leafy greens (like lettuce) and roots (such as carrots and onions) are the most likely to uptake metals. If you are concerned about the soil in your garden, you may want to grow fruits, like tomatoes, which are less likely to become contaminated.

At 93 parts per million, the lead levels found in the White House garden are actually quite low for urban soils; values over 400 ppm lead might raise an eyebrow. To learn more about the possible risks of lead exposure from gardening, check out:

"Leaden Gardens" from ScienceNews

"Lead in the Home Garden and Urban Soil Environment" from the University of Minnesota Extension Office

And to learn more about lead and lead poisoning, visit:

"Blood-Lead Level Basics: What You Really Need to Know" from Washington Parent

Public Health Statement for Lead from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.


A portion of this article appeared previously in Natural Family Online.

Photo credit: Leon Brooks, BurningWell.org

National Pollinator Week 2009

When I learned that June 22-28, 2009 was National Pollinator Week, I immediately thought of the plight of the honeybees (see clip below) and the beauty of butterflies. But hummingbirds, bumblebees, bats, ants, beetles, and even lemurs and skinks can also pollinate flowers. When they go from flower to flower, these critters transfer pollen. This fertilizes the plants and allows them to reproduce successfully.

The U.S. Forest Service Botany Program reports that every third bite of food you eat is possible because of a pollinator. "Pollinators play a key role in the production of more than 150 food crops in the U.S., such as apples, alfalfa, almonds, blueberries, cranberries, kiwis, melons, pears, plums, and squash," according to material provided by The Pollinator Partnership.

So, the next time you see a bumblebee visiting your vegetable garden, or a honeybee buzzing in your flowers, don't be afraid. Just admire them from a distance and let them continue to do their important job.

Grow a science garden

Over the week-end, I was reading about Michael Twitty and his involvement with African-American heritage gardens. I love the idea of growing plants with special meanings and sharing those meanings with others. Growing up Catholic, I've heard of Mary gardens planted in flowers (often blue and white) with symbolic ties to the Blessed Mother. So, I started thinking, what would a science garden look like?


A science garden would have to include peas. Gregor Mendel, the famous geneticist, cross-bred over 300 strains of peas. His discoveries of dominant and recessive traits are the foundation of modern-day genetics.

Apple trees would be another good choice. Isaac Newton is widely reported to have watched an apple fall while developing his theory of gravity.

Peanuts should also be included. George Washington Carver developed over 225 peanut products in his lifetime, including gasoline, shampoo, dry coffee, and, of course, peanut butter. (If you're allergic to peanuts, consider planting sweet potatoes. He found over 100 uses for them, too.)

Charles Darwin, famous for his theories of evolution and natural selection, is said to have favored orchids. Benjamin Franklin set up a plant exchange between French and American gardeners, bringing rhubarb, yellow willow, and the cabbage turnip to colonial America.

A science garden would probably have most plants grown in neat and orderly rows, perhaps with varying watering schedules and fertilization rates to see the effectiveness of different cropping techniques, à la Rothamsted (reportedly "the oldest agricultural research station in the world"). But any science garden should have at least one corner where all of the leftover seeds are thrown together for fun, just to see what happens.

Photo credit: Scott Bauer, ARS, USDA

Thoughts on Blog Carnivals

I've recently learned about blog carnivals, these online magazine-like publications organized and hosted by different blogs. Each blog carnival features posts from various blogs on a specific topic with new issues posted on a regular basis. The range of blog carnival topics is wide, with Blog Carnival listing over 4,000 different ones, on themes ranging from kidney stones to signing babies and everything in between.

I've been having fun submitting Mama Joules' posts to different blog carnivals. I haven't quite found our exact niche -- I'm still looking for a "family science blog carnival" -- but I've enjoyed being a part of these issues:

Tangled Bank #107. Science. Love this issue's "choose your own" theme.

June 2008 issue of Learning in the Great Outdoors. Environmental education. Good stuff!

Carnival of Mathematics #34. All things math.

Berry Go Round #5. A celebration of plants.

Website of the Week: 2008 National Cherry Blossom Festival

This is the last week-end of the 2008 National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, DC. According to the website:

“The plantings of the cherry blossom trees originated as a gift in 1912 from the people of Japan to the United States as gesture of friendship and goodwill. Since then, the number of trees has expanded to approximately 3,750 trees of 16 varieties on National Park Service land.”

The first time I heard about the cherry blossoms, I wondered what all of the fuss was about. I mean, they’re just trees, right? And trees produce flowers in the spring. So what?

Well, last year I was fortunate enough to visit the Tidal Basin when the trees were in full bloom. They looked magical. I remember thinking that they seemed like fairy trees. It was a truly ethereal experience.

If you are able to visit this year, you might consider submitting your photographs to the 2008 NCBF Photo Contest, sponsored by Lulu.com. And if you can’t visit, be sure to check out the Cherry Blossom Web Cam.

Start a leaf collection

Fall is the perfect time to start a leaf collection. Take your child for a walk around the block and admire the leaves that you see. Notice how many leaves are on the ground versus how many are still on the trees. What does that say about the time of the year? Is winter here yet?

How many colors of leaves can you count? Pick up a leaf and notice what makes it unique. Leaves are identified in part by their shapes (like round, oval, triangular) and their edges (spiky, wavy, jagged).

If you live someplace where the seasons barely change and colored leaves are rare, have your child write to a friend or relative and ask that person to send some fall leaves your way. Your child will be thrilled. One of my favorite childhood memories is of my father bringing me home colored leaves from a business trip to Boston. (Thanks, Dad!)

To dry your leaves, place a paper towel on the counter. Arrange your leaves on the paper towel so that none of them are touching. Place another paper towel over the leaves and a heavy book over that. The book will flatten the leaves and the paper towels will absorb any moisture. After a day or two, your leaves will be dry.

To make a leaf rubbing, lay a sheet of paper over your leaf. Take the side of a crayon and rub gently over the paper. A leaf shape should soon appear.

You can also take a piece of contact paper, lay the leaves on it, and lay another sheet of contact paper over them to make a placemat for the table. If you don't want a placemat, cut out the contact paper-wrapped leaves and punch a hole at the top. Let your child hang the preserved leaves around the house.