The New Green Economy

Sustainability is more than just a home that provides shelter, warmth, and power.  Sustainability is good, nutrient rich, organic food.  Secure your families local organic food by investing in Edible Landscaping.  It’s easy, long-lasting, with minimal maintenance.

Edible Landscapes can be created in innumerable combinations of annuals and perennials.  Annual plants are herbaceous and live one, sometimes two, seasons.  Perennial plants live for more than two seasons and are perpetual growers’ season after season.  Many perennials are deciduous, meaning they are woody stemmed plants that shed their leaves annually; while some perennials are herbaceous, meaning they have the texture, color, and resemblance of foliage leaves.  Herbaceous perennials die back to their roots in the winter and re-grow new foliage every season.

I have been planting edible landscapes for seven years now.  I have found that both perennials and annuals will practically maintain themselves when planted and grown under three key guidelines.

1. Heirloom, Organically Grown Plants

The first key is to always plant heirloom, organically grown plants, whether annuals or perennials.  You want gardening to be easy, fun, and long-lasting.  The best way to cause yourself intense yearly work and expense is by planting poisoned plants that produce no viable seeds, are genetically modified, or have synthetic pesticide or fertilizer contaminates.

Heirlooms have no genetic modifications and produce viable healthy seed season after season; replanting and re-growing themselves God’s way.  Organically grown plants contain no dangerous contaminates that poison you, your water, and soil; but are nutrient rich, healthy and delicious.

A great source for heirloom vegetable, flower, and herbaceous seeds is www.HeirloomSeeds.com.  For deciduous heirloom fruit baring perennials, check out www.TreesofAntiquity.com.  I’ve personally purchased seeds and plants from both company’s and have found them to be of excellent quality and reasonable priced.

2. Companion Planting

Using only heirloom and organic plants, the next key is to companion plant.  Companion planting is when you arrange your desired selections so that plants that are highly susceptible to certain bugs are planted in the area of a plant that either repels the harmful insect or attracts a beneficial insect that likes to eat the harmful one.  These plants are then called “companions”.

Companion planting takes forethought, but is one of the easiest ways to maintain a healthy, vibrant, productive garden.  From my own experience, every cause a synthetic pesticide drug pusher tries selling you dangerous contaminates for, there is a companion planting arrangement that will solve the same problem cheaply and perpetually.  The trick is finding and knowing the right companion plant.  A great book for finding your companion plants is Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening by Louise Riotte.

3. Fertility Cultivation

In order to choose the right edible plants, everything depends on your soil.  Whether your grow-able area is sandy, clayey, or rocky; you can grow an organic edible landscape.  Your goal is to create pH balanced, nutrient rich, water-retentive soil.  The key is fertility cultivation.

You do not create fertility by fertilization, but by cultivation.  Cultivating fertility is creating an environment where the fertility of the soil increases perpetually.  This can be done by feeding your soil microorganisms, which then grow and produce all the nutrients needed for your healthy, vigorous plants.

You feed your soil microorganisms by composting and mulching.  In the beginning, you will need to compost and mulch twice a season while your seedlings or transplants are getting established.  Compost and mulch before the trees begin to bud and after the first winter frost; mulch midseason or as needed to control weeds.  By the third season of growth, mulching becomes all that’s necessary for maintaining your soil’s fertility.

Composting:

You can make your own compost with a simple, no-turn, no-fuss, no-smell backyard composting bin by doing Layer Composting.  Layer Composting, also called Continuous Composting, is exactly how it sounds.  All year, you layer your nitrate-rich manure between layers of carbon-rich foliage in one bin.  At the end of the first year, you begin another bin the same way as the first.  By the end of the second year, the first bin is completely composted and ready for use.  After emptying the first bin, you begin the third year’s layering in the first bin while the second bin is composting; going back and forth, from bin to bin, year after year.

Manure can be sourced by using your own manure, manure from a local animal farm, and right from your kitchen with all your leftover meat, dairy, and veggie scraps.  Foliage can be sourced by using fallen tree leaves, the dead tops of herbaceous plants, straw, hay, sawdust, and soft wooded woodchips.  The ideal ratio for composting is one part manure to thirty parts foliage.  In the beginning, you might have to source your composting foliage from outside your garden; but once your plants begin to grow, you’ll have an abundance of yearly foliage.

Mulching:

For mature plants that only require yearly mulching, when the plant drops its leaves or the foliage tops die, breakup and pile the dead foliage right around the dormant plants.  The dead foliage will provide adequate mulching for water retention while giving back all the nutrients contained in the foliage.

I’ve been Layer Composting for ten years and have never turned a pile.  With adequate covering material (carbon-rich foliage), decomposing manure never smells or attracts animals.  I’ve purposely walked guests by my composting bins and asked them to breathe as deeply as they can.  They always say the same thing: no noxious smells.

Where to Begin:

Start with one area at a time.  Decide what you want to eat, smell, see, and attract to your garden.  Choose the companions needed for those plants.  Cultivate the soil’s fertility with composting and mulching.  After the first area, plan and plant one area after another until your entire grow-able land is filled with healthy, vigorous, productive plants baring delicious food.

If you’re an existing home owner and are considering energy-efficient improvements this year, there are several options that you may want to consider.

The three major tax credits are listed below.  Before making your purchases, remember to research the specific product and make sure the manufacturer qualifies for the energy-efficiency rating under the IRS specifications.

1. The IRC 25C credit for non-business property expands from 10% to 30% of qualifying improvements in 2010, with a lifetime cap per taxpayer of $1,500. Qualifying improvements include installing insulation materials; exterior windows and doors; central air conditioners; natural gas, propane, or oil water heaters or furnaces; hot water boilers; electric heat pump water heaters; certain metal roofs and stoves; and advanced main air circulating fans. These improvements only qualify if they are made to existing homes.
2. An IRC 25D credit is also available for qualified fuel cell systems installed in the taxpayer’s primary residence. Unlike other residential energy efficient systems, fuel cells are limited to $500 per half-kilowatt of capacity.
3. A 30% credit is available for geothermal heat pumps, solar panels, solar water heaters, and small wind energy systems. This credit applies to the cost of labor and installation, as well as the cost of the equipment in connection with any residence used by the taxpayer.

With all the talk on carbon credits, cap and trade agreements, and proposed policies regarding carbon “pollution”, one question needs to be considered: what is carbon, and why a carbon tax?

Carbon is life.  It is the 6^th element on the Periodic Table of Elements.  It is one of the four most abundant elements in the universe: hydrogen, helium, oxygen, and carbon.  All life is composed of carbon.  Carbon is the chemical basis of all known life on Earth.

If carbon is the basis for all life, are we as a nation proposing a tax on life?

What about CO2?  CO2 is short for carbon dioxide – one carbon molecule and two oxygen molecules.  It is a gas at room temperature, and represents less than 0.04% of Earth’s atmosphere.  It is essential for all life, being the foundation of plant photosynthesis.

CO2 is produced as a byproduct from the combustion of carbon containing materials, such as wood, coal, and petroleum.  To be CO2 neutral means the CO2 being produced is equally consumed by the plant kingdom.  CO2 is also produced by the natural decomposition of organic matter, such as at a Wastewater Treatment Facility, where aerobic decomposition releases CO2 into the atmosphere.

Fun Fact: next time you are in the vicinity of your local Wastewater Treatment Facility, as you drive closer to the facility; notice how all the plants are lusher, greener, and healthier as you near.  This is directly due to the increased CO2 being consumed by the vegetation.

If passed, the proposed cap and trade regulations will be laid on the energy producer – such as a coal plant – and will then pass directly to you, the consumer, in the form of higher energy prices.  Call it an emission standard if you’d like, but it still boils down to higher prices for you.  I call it a carbon tax.  An indirect tax, but a tax nonetheless.

Both carbon and CO2 are essential for all life on Earth.

When considering the corporate and political agendas proposing regulations (taxation) on carbon or CO2, please consider: how would a tax on life affect you?  You and I are a part of life.

Tax on Carbon  +  Carbon Based Life Forms  =  Tax on Life

If the goal of the proposed cap and trade regulation is truly to fix pollution caused by non-renewable energy sources, then a more direct solution would be to remove the current government subsidies on coal and petroleum.  This would cause the energy prices to rise, directly reflecting there true cost; and subsequently making renewable energy, such as solar, wind, and hydrogen, financially viable competitors overnight.

Pollution is real.  Over consumption is real.  But there are also real solutions.  Taxation of the 4th most abundant element in the universe will fix nothing.  Changing how we think about energy - its collection, distribution, and storage - can fix everything.

In 2600 BC, on 200 acres, the Oldest City in the Americas, the Origin of American Civilization, thrived.  The Lost Pyramids of Caral encompass a city with some of the largest pyramids in the world, uncovered in the sand mounds of the Peruvian Desert, between the Pacific Ocean and the fertile forests.

Called the Mother City, Caral’s uniqueness is highlighted by its cultural diversity; agriculture achievements; and trade relations.  In its prime, Caral was a grand center of trade and commerce.  With no fortifications, no war depictions, and no signs of warfare; it was a time of peace and play.

With trade relations over 200 miles away, the people of Caral enjoyed a booming commerce around fishermen, farmers, and traveling merchants.  Farmers grew food and durable fibers for fish nets; traded to fishermen for a share of their sea harvest; and created a self-sustaining community based on peaceful trade networks.

The people of Caral were a truly diverse culture with sea traders, farmers, fishermen, forest natives, and distant traveling merchants filling the streets with their wares.  Craftsmen made the sounds of the day, with beautifully carved hand flutes.  Doctors prescribed herbal remedies and sanitation.  Farmers tended the vast gardens of fruits, vegetables, grains, and fibrous plants for netting and textiles.

Their key to success was their technological advancement: irrigation.  Irrigation from the  neighboring Andes rivers gave Caral the possibility for life: water, food, community, diversity, and peace.  This critical innovation provided the vast store of food and plumped water to its residents.

Agriculture and Trade were the unifying forms for this cultures’ millennium of peace.

What is the form we want our future to take?

Watch the BBC Documentary The Lost Pyramids of Caral on Google video.