How does your garden grow?
With spring in full bloom, gardeners everywhere are shaking bags of composted poop and other fertilizers onto their plants. But how green are they?
MILORGANITE
This “organic nitrogen fertilizer” wraps an awful pretty package around dried Milwaukee sewage sludge. For real. This is big-city human feces, people. So, yes, it may score the USDA Certified BioBased seal, and as an upcycled waste product can claim to be “eco-friendly,” but it also admits to containing trace pharmaceuticals, cleaners and personal care chems.
SCORE: N
MIRACLE-GRO ORGANIC CHOICE PLANT FOOD
Nowhere on the label does it tell you what the hell is in the stuff. A quick call reveals it’s pasteurized pelleted poultry poop and feathers. Considering the notoriously heavy antibiotic use on chicken farms, I’m not sure I want chicken dung on my veggie beds.
SCORE: N
GREEN EARTH BONE MEAL
Most bone meal comes from ground-up factory-farmed bones. Green Earth uses chicken Miracle Grow Organic uses pork. Heads up: the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has found antibiotic-resistant bacteria in this kind of fertilizer.
SCORE: N
URBAN HARVEST KELP MEAL
Kelp meal is a sustainable vegetarian alternative to fish meal, full of micro-nutrients to keep your plants happy. Urban Harvest gets it’s kelp from certified organic sources in Nova Scotia.
SCORE: NNNN
BACKYARD COMPOST
The very best compost is the stuff you make yourself in your own backyard bin or indoor worm composter. FYI, free city leaf compost is up to 10 per cent green bin compost, which the city says is safe for veggies. Super-locally sourced.
SCORE: NNNNN
Label Decoder
ORGANIC No one’s policing this term on garden supplies, but the Canadian Food Inspection Agency suggests organic fertilizers are really just “remains” of any old animals or plants (not certified organic animals or plants), in contrast to synthetic fertilizers. Lots of factory-farmed manure/bones/feathers.
CERTIFIED APPROVED FOR USE ON ORGANIC FOOD This doesn’t mean your bag of fertilizer/compost/soil contains certified organic material it’s just approved for use on organic crops. Factory-farmed manure, bones and feathers are okay, according to Pro-Cert certifier, but must be tested for heavy metals and can’t be from confined animals like veal calves or crated pigs.
Greenwash Of The Week
Temptations naturals
Temptations may have dropped the dodgy BHT/BHA preservative in its “Naturals” pet treat line, but the “Free Range Chicken” label doesn’t refer to the presence of happy grass-pecking birds. Seems “Free Range Chicken” is just a flavour. Ditto for “Wild Salmon.” Otherwise, they’re the same basic chicken meal, ground corn, meat by-product crack treats felines and canines love.
This Is My Brain On Nature
Even a touch of the wild can make us Smarter, healthier and more blissful
I’ve been trying to map out 30 x 30. The math genius in me, confirmed by my computer’s calculator, tells me the answer is 900, but the David Suzuki angel sitting on my shoulder explains that 30 X 30 isn’t an equation or a room size but a challenge. Can we get outside for 30 minutes a day for 30 days straight?
That’s the question Suzuki is putting to Canadians for the second May in a row. “Commit to getting outside for 30 minutes a day for 30 days. Whether it’s in a local park or backyard garden, getting your daily dose of nature is a key ingredient for a happy, healthy lifestyle.” He even suggests it can make us more generous.
My initial take? Cakewalk. It’s spring. There are no book deadlines looming, so I’m not padlocked to my laptop. But who am I kidding? I’m a writer who can work in pyjamas all day if I so choose, and I can get a little hyper-focused. Today? I was planning to eat breakfast in my backyard, but, well, toast at the laptop it is.
So as of today I’m officially, if belatedly, signing up for 30 more of x 30. I think you should join me (davidsuzuki.org) sign up your workplace (250 have already committed). Hold walking meetings, park-bench lunches, pop-up picnics.
Studies show just two minutes of nature, even urban shards of it, can reduce stress, muscle tension and blood pressure. An hour of the green stuff can boost your attention span by 20 per cent. More studies link green time to 50 per cent lower risk of diabetes and heart attack, reduced ADHD and depression, and greater weight loss.
Read the book Your Brain On Nature and you’ll learn that literally stopping to smell roses, or the phytoncides produced by trees can boost your immune function and production of cancer-fighting natural killer cells for a day or two. A weekend in nature can boost those killer cells for a month.
The more time we spend in nature, the more we’re inspired to protect it, and disconnection from it can affect decisions like how we get to work and whether or not we support green policies.
Researchers at Trent U will be mapping out the effects of this daily dose of outdoor time on thousands of Canadians. Psych prof Lisa Nisbet, who’s heading up the research, has spent the last decade studying “nature relatedness,” the cognitive, affective and physical connection we have with nature.
As she says, “People underpredicted how happy they’d be when they went for a 15-minute walk in nature. It’s always more wonderful than you think.”
Nature Notes
Cola’s tar sands truck test
Cola truckers have been pictured in soda ads in the past, but never quite like this. ForestEthics and Sierra Club have just kicked off a joint campaign taking on pop giants Coke, Pepsi and Dr. Pepper-Snapple’s use of tar sands fuel in their transportation networks. The eco orgs hope to jolt the trio into a 25 per cent fuel efficiency boost to their 100,000-truck delivery fleet (forestethics.org). Also in tar sands news, a coalition of more than two dozen Canadian and American enviro groups and half a dozen academics launched oilsandsrealitycheck.org to help counter Big Oil’s ethical/responsible/green Alberta oil PR campaign.
Arctic council’s cold shoulder
As the new chair of the Arctic Council, Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq promises to make “creating economic development” top priority for the North. No mention of the 90 billion barrels of oil sitting under the Arctic Ocean, but Canada was no doubt crossing its fingers behind its back when it released a joint statement with the council’s other members on the “urgent need” to reach a legally binding deal to prevent the planet from further warming.
