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April 2023

Home Grown Bouquets

In all of the research I have been doing over the last few weeks, I keep coming back to the same conclusion: the key to a successful urban cutting garden is thoughtful planning before planting. I know that in most cases we talk about careful planning, but for this project the decisions we make before we begin, guide how we proceed. 

How Much Did That Bouquet Really Cost?

One of my guilty pleasures has been to keep a bouquet of fresh flowers on my dining room table. Every week I would poke through the grocery store’s display racks until I found the perfect choice —. Colorful, fragrant, full of unusual blooms and BIG. Always big. I'd head home and arrange them in an antique vase my mother gave me years ago. I loved those floral displays gracing my dining table; like I said, they were an extravagant, guilty pleasure. Then, I read an article about the environmental costs associated with my beloved bouquets.  I was heartbroken, but after studying the issue, I knew that I had to break the grocery store bouquet habit.

Digging into Dirt: Nurturing the Soil

In 1937, after witnessing the havoc and economic desperation that the Dust Bowl had wreaked on our nation, Franklin D Roosevelt sent a letter to all of the governors of the United States, asking them to oversee the adoption of legislation that would create soil conservation districts. In his letter, Roosevelt wrote, “The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.” His words, so appropriate to the time, still hold truth for us today. Because of our incomplete understanding of soil biology combined with incorrect and overuse of chemicals, we have put our soil and water at risk. If we continue to destroy our environment, then we will eventually destroy ourselves.