Healthy Planet = Healthy People


Happy Earth Day from all of us at the Sustainable Gardening Library! 

Please garden and farm responsibly, because we can’t get there without you.

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Detention Basins: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

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In our area, stormwater sewers that serve housing developments and some businesses empty into the dreaded detention (or retention, or infiltration) basin, a visually hideous engineered method of holding large volumes of water until it can safely disperse to groundwater, natural streams, ponds, etc. (top photo). These are generally grass monocultures or rip rap which, if not properly maintained become weedy, overgrown maintenance nightmares. Suffice it to say that anyone who can get away with not maintaining one will continue to not maintain it. Frequently, the town ends up owning and maintaining such basins, meaning that all the taxpayers pay. When grass is used as the only groundcover and pesticides and fertilizers are applied, they can contaminate the runoff. Regular mowing of the basins is difficult because of the steep sides and wet floor. This maintenance adds contaminants to the watercourse, as well. Grass basins also attract undesirable wildlife, such as Canada Geese, which ...
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CowPots™: Molded Manure

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If you haven’t yet heard of them, CowPots™ are made from 100% Cow-Poo that is molded into plant pots for seedlings. They are about as organic as one can get and, unlike peat pots, completely renewable. (Insert feed into front of cow, raw material for pots exits at rear end.) When I spoke to inventor/dairy farmer Matt Freund at the Garden Writers symposium, I was beside myself with excitement as I listened to his story, because our little corner of New Jersey has lost nearly all of its dairy farms to housing developments. My passion for this product is on three levels. The first is that I love cows and Matt and his brother Ben have found a way to generate another income stream that can keep their small farm profitable. I still mourn the loss of the farm next door to me to a housing development in the 1980s. I had lived on that farm for a while as a child and, even after mom bought her own lot and built a small house with the help of Grandpa and my uncles, I still went down to help...
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34 Great Resources for Learning About Bees, Butterflies, and Other Pollinators

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Looking for sustainable gardening information on inviting bees, beetles, butterflies, and other beneficial insects into your garden? How to identify which ones are visiting your backyard? Learning about the lifestyles of the honey-makers and nectar-sippers?  Explore the Sustainable Gardening Library’s Topics app to learn from the experts at public gardens and arboreta, colleges and universities, and government agencies. They’re sharing their knowledge all in one place, so you don’t have to spend hours searching all over the web. Thirty-four organizations from Maine to Miami and Seattle to Suffolk, are sharing their photos, posters, research, and tip sheets with us to help you identify and support beneficial insects in your geographic region and plant hardiness zone. Just go to the Library’s Topics Directory , and select the Beneficial Insects icon to open up an interactive map that shows the locations of our content providers. Click on any map pin to open a popup that provides ...
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