Tag Archives: variety

How To Grow a Clover Lawn To Improve Biodiversity

by LieseloR94 Posted on November 5, 2019

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The American obsession with a pristine, green lawn presents a few problems. That green lawn requires a lot of work to maintain and is a huge drain on resources. Lawns in the U.S. are the country’s largest irrigated crop, consuming more land than any food crop. Besides hogging resources, the solid carpet of turfgrass we’ve created also hurts wildlife by discouraging biodiversity and creating runoff that pollutes waterways.

There are benefits to having a yard full of grass. And it’s possible to have a gorgeous, biodiverse lawn that benefits the environment. It just takes a little rethinking about what makes a lawn, including reconsidering clover — a plant that we redefined as a weed after WWII.

Embracing clover as a mainstay of your lawn can tip the balance back in an eco-friendly direction. You’ll also benefit from a lower-maintenance, self-fertilizing green lawn.

Choosing the Right Clover Strategy

The benefits of clover are vast. It’s drought tolerant and self-fertilizing. The plant absorbs nitrogen from the atmosphere and returns it to the soil. In other words, it creates its own fertilizer and fertilizes nearby plants. When you mix it with common grass types such as Kentucky bluegrass or fescues, it creates enough nitrogen to eliminate the need for chemical fertilizers.

Clover provides forage for pollinators such as bees. It also looks magical and you may find your neighbors admiring it. Just make sure you choose the variety best suited to your needs. Dutch white clover (Trifolium repens) or micro clover (Trifolium repens var. Pipolina) are the best species to incorporate into your turf. Dutch white clover stays green year-round, while micro clover turns brown during the winter. Micro clover is more tolerant of foot traffic and blooms 90 percent less than Dutch white clover. That means fewer bees and less support for pollinators .

Most people are happiest with a combination of turfgrass and clover. While some perform aggressive lawn makeovers to completely convert to clover, that isn’t necessary. If you already have a lawn, you can overseed it with clover and gradually let the clover take over.

White clover is low growing and needs no fertilizing. Source: Flickr

Planting Clover

To establish a mixed grass/clover lawn, you can sow clover seed into the lawn, encourage existing clover patches, or both. Encouraging existing patches is as easy as mowing over clover with the mower blade set low, between 1½ and 2 inches. This will allow the clover to take over by weakening the grass.

Sow seed in spring as soon as the last frost has passed. Dutch white clover should be seeded at 1 pound of seed to 1,000 square feet, and micro clover needs double that. After you seed, water the lawn daily until seedlings are visible, and then only once in a while, as needed.

Maintaining a Clover Lawn

There’s no need to fertilize a clover lawn. It takes care of that for you! It is also imperative that you do not apply broadleaf herbicides to a clover lawn unless you want to kill it. Your irrigation bill should drop, as this classic “weed” is drought tolerant. Try irrigating every other week in summer and see how it performs. A bonus? You only have to mow a clover lawn once a month to keep it looking tidy. Other than the frequency, just mow clover the same way you would mow a regular grass lawn.

The very same weeds that homeowners have been struggling to eradicate might be the answer to the low-maintenance, green lawn you dream of. Unlike typical turfgrasses, a clover lawn reduces water use, eliminates the need for fertilizer, cuts time spent on lawn care in half, and increases biodiversity. Plant it right and enjoy a future where your lawn is part of the solution rather than contributing to the lawn problem.

About the Author

Alexis Jones is a freelance writer whose work appears on the LawnStarter blog and other publications. An amateur landscaper who prides herself on being eco-friendly, she uses only native plants to encourage biodiversity and wildlife-friendly backyards.

Feature image courtesy of Forest & Kim Starr, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0

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How To Grow a Clover Lawn To Improve Biodiversity

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How to Grow Your Own Dry Beans

by RichLindquist Posted on July 14, 2018

Growing your own dry beans is a great way to have fresh and organic dry beans on hand year-round. Beans are an easy crop to grow and there are numerous varieties you can experiment with. Let?s take a look at how to get started.

Choosing a Variety

Beans come in hundreds of different heirloom and modern varieties, all with unique flavors, colors and shapes. One of the best ways to find good varieties is to visit your local farmers? market, seed swap or garden center and ask which types of seeds work well in your area. Seed catalogs and online suppliers should also have a selection of beans appropriate for drying. In addition, chat with other gardeners to find out what?s been working for them, and maybe ask if they could share a handful of their favorite beans you can plant.

1. Bush Beans

If you live in a colder climate, bush beans are often your best choice because they have a shorter time to maturity compared to pole beans. The plants typically only grow around two to three feet (60 to 90 centimeters) tall and can stand on their own without support.

Some fast-maturing varieties to watch out for include ?Jacob?s Cattle?, ?Vermont Cranberry? or ?Black Valentine?. In climates with a longer season, ?Calypso?, ?Anasazi? or Soldier beans are classic varieties that produce well.

2. Pole Beans

Pole beans typically have a longer growing season than bush beans. They will also continue to produce beans for a longer time, unlike bush beans that often mature all at once. Pole beans require some form of support, such as a trellis, a classic pole ?teepee? or a fence. Another option is to grow your pole beans on the stalks of neighboring corn or sunflowers.

The varieties ?Good Mother Stallard?, ?Czar? or Romano-type pole beans all make excellent dry crops.

Related: How & Why to Participate in a Seed Swap

Planting Your Seeds

If your growing season is fairly short, it?s best to plant your beans soon after the risk of frost has passed in spring. If you have a longer season, you can plant beans after your spring crops are harvested and the weather has warmed up. A sunny location is ideal.

It can be beneficial to cover your seeds with Rhizobium bacteria before planting them. You can buy Rhizobium at most garden centers, and the bacteria will help the developing bean plants fix nitrogen in the soil.

All beans prefer direct sowing in the soil. In colder climates, you can plant your seeds on raised beds to capture more heat. Plant seeds one inch (2.5 centimeters) deep in your soil with one to two inches (2.5 to 5 centimeters) between the seeds, giving larger seeds more space. Then, space additional rows at least one foot (30 centimeters) apart.

If you?re growing pole beans on corn or sunflowers, plant the bean seeds directly at the base of the support plants when they?re about one foot (30 centimeters) tall.

Mulch the soil after sowing to retain moisture.

Care Tips

Beans do best in a moderately rich soil, but they can also grow in fairly degraded soils due to their ability to fix their own nitrogen. This also means they do not need extra fertilizer while growing.

Water the developing plants regularly, especially as they?re forming pods. Make sure the plants dry out in between waterings to prevent mold and bacteria problems. As the plants mature, they become more drought tolerant and you can cut back on water.

Remove weeds as the seedlings are growing, although the bean plants effectively shade out any weeds as they get bigger.

Related: How to Make Beans and Grains More Digestible

Harvesting

Your beans are ready to harvest when the pods look dry. You?ll also likely be able hear the beans rattling inside when you shake them.

Keep in mind that beans are very sensitive to frost, so make sure you harvest them well before a potential frost date. If your beans aren?t ready yet and frost is expected, you can cut the plants early, hang them in a protected area, and let the pods continue to mature.

If your pods have matured well on the plants, you should be able to simply pull up the plants and harvest the beans. When you only have a small patch of beans, the easiest way to get the beans out of the pods is by hand. You can squeeze open the pods as you?re harvesting the plants and collect the beans in a container, or you can pick the pods off the plants and set them aside to open later.

Another option is to hold the plant inside a barrel and bang it against the sides to get the beans out. If you grow a large area of beans, you may want to invest in professional threshing equipment.

To clean the beans, you can either run the beans over a screen or use a hair dryer to blow off any debris.

Storage

Check that your beans are completely dry before packing them for storage. When you bite a bean, it should feel hard. If the beans still have some softness, spread them out in a warm area and let them dry longer until they?ve hardened.

When the beans are ready, pack them into airtight containers and store them in a dark place. They?re best used within a year. You can keep them longer, but they may become too dry and difficult to cook.

Related: 7 Ways to Avoid Gas from Beans

Bean Recipes

Looking for ideas on how to enjoy your harvest? Check out some of these delicious recipes.

Hearty 4-Bean Stew
Tuscan White Bean Soup
Simple and Delicious Black Bean Chili
Herbed Bean Salad
Beans and Greens with Herbed Polenta
Black Bean and Sweet Potato Enchiladas
Jamaican Rice and Beans

Related on Care2

How to Grow Your Own Goji Berries
12 Ways to Get Rid of Aggressive Weeds Without Resorting to Roundup
Do Marigolds Really Repel Garden Pests?

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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How to Grow Your Own Dry Beans

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20 Percent of Seafood Is Mislabeled

by DeanSealey Posted on September 10, 2016

Mother Jones

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Do you ever wonder where the seafood on your plate really came from? Or whether it’s the species of fish that was advertised? New evidence proves you have every reason to be concerned: A report has found that 1 in 5 samples of seafood are mislabeled worldwide. And the mislabeling happens at every sector of the supply chain—from how the fish is sold, distributed, imported and exported, and packaged, to how it’s processed.

The report, released Wednesday by the conservation agency Oceana, analyzed 200 studies on fish fraud from 55 countries. It found fraud in (wait for it!) every investigation except one. The deception happens in different ways: for instance, by disguising a cheaper, farmed fish as a pricier, wild-caught variety, by mislabeling packaging, or by lying about the origin of the fish.

This deception gyps consumers, and it can also pose a risk to their health—fish full of mercury, for instance, might be subbed in for another variety, unbeknownst to the buyer.

Here are some of the report’s highlights, via Oceana:

The average rate of fish fraud in the United States is 28 percent, according to studies released since 2014.
In cases where a different fish was substituted for another, more than half the samples were a species that posed a health risk to consumers.
Sixty-five percent of the studies showed clear evidence that there was an economic motivation for mislabeling seafood.
You’re probably eating more catfish than you realize: Asian catfish has been substituted and sold as 18 different types of fish. The three most common types of fish used as substitutes worldwide were Asian catfish, hake, and escolar.

Not all the news is bad, however. The report highlighted that at least in the European Union, the fight against seafood fraud seems to be working. Beginning in 2010, the European Union began requiring catch documentation for all imported seafood and enacted stringent labeling and traceability requirements. The measures seem to be having an effect: Oceana found that between 2011 and 2015, overall fraud rates decreased from 23 percent to 8 percent, a low for the region.

This map from Oceana’s report shows places where seafood fraud is happening. Clicking on each fish shows a summary of each study the agency analyzed (the darker the color of the fish, the more severe the mislabeling):

For more on how fishermen are using tech to fight back against fish fraud, read this piece and listen to our Bite episode “Fishy Business” here.

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20 Percent of Seafood Is Mislabeled

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Donald Trump Is Just a Garden Variety Right-Winger These Days

by QuinnWayn231 Posted on December 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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In a blog post about an entirely different subject, Jay Nordlinger says this about Donald Trump:

I am reminded of how the Left and Right can blend — although it’s pretty much impossible to locate Trump politically. Is he Left or Right or in between?

This has long been a common observation, but is it really true anymore? A few months ago, for example, I wrote that Trump didn’t favor a flat tax. But that’s true of most Republicans. And now that Trump has actually released a tax plan, we know his tax notions are entirely orthodox these days. Ditto for Planned Parenthood, which Trump is now on board with defunding completely. Ditto again for his short-lived support for an assault weapons ban.

So what’s left of Trump’s alleged populism? I count one thing:

He doesn’t want to cut Social Security and Medicare.

Is there anything else left? He’s not stridently anti-gay, but he’s opposed to gay marriage nonetheless. Sort of Jeb Bush-ish. He refuses to say that he still supports affirmative action. His foreign policy is…um…a little hard to get a handle on, but it sure can’t be described as liberal these days. He claims to have opposed the Iraq War, but that’s just a lie—and ten years in the past anyway. He sometimes sounds a populist note on trade, but his real position is that he’s smarter than all the dimwits in Washington and could negotiate better terms than they do. He doesn’t seem to harbor any real leftish views on trade.

So really, his support for Social Security and Medicare is pretty much it for non-conservative heresies—and even there his position remains unclear. Does he mean that he doesn’t want to cut Social Security and Medicare at all, or does he mean he doesn’t want to cut them for people currently in the system? After all, the standard Republican position already protects Social Security and Medicare for anyone over age 55. But since Trump has declined to provide any further detail, we don’t really know what his position is.

Trump used to have a few more quasi-liberal positions, but the campaign has sanded them all down. Today, he’s just a really loud right-winger who understands that bashing Social Security and Medicare doesn’t win any votes. That’s it.

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Donald Trump Is Just a Garden Variety Right-Winger These Days

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Nuun All Day Hydration, Natural Vitamin Enhanced Drink Tablets, 4 Flavor Variety Pack: Grape Raspberry, Blueberry Pomegranate, Tangerine Lime, Grapefruit Orange (4 Tubes/15 Tabs Per Tube)

by 07ld5ksl Posted on August 5, 2014

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"Noah" Film Inspires Flood of Religious Freak-Outs

by MoseBodincktsh Posted on March 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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The new Darren Aronofsky movie Noah is pissing off quite a lot of people. The outrage over the film—which retells that famous biblical tale of Noah, his ark, and God’s wrathful flood—is international and diverse in its stupidity. And it goes without saying that the majority of the people saying mean things about the film haven’t yet seen it (Noah hits theaters on Friday, and stars Russell Crowe and Emma Watson). “It’s always kind of silly that somebody puts their voice and opinion to something when they haven’t seen it, based on an assumption,” Crowe said in an interview with Access Hollywood. (Crowe has been trying to get Pope Francis to endorse Noah. That won’t be happening.)

Aronofsky has dubbed his $160-million epic the “least biblical biblical film ever made.” (Word on the street is that it promotes some pretty “aggressive environmentalism.”) Here are some lowlights in the ongoing permutations of Noah hate:

1. Noah is actually banned in some countries because it depicts Noah.

Censorship bodies in United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Indonesia have banned national releases of the film. This pre-release backlash stems primarily from a conservative Islamic prohibition on representing holy figures in art and entertainment. (Al-Azhar, a top Sunni Muslim institute in Egypt, also objected to the film and released a statement declaring that it would hurt the feelings of believers.) Also, there’s a sense among certain government officials that Aronofsky’s film doesn’t play it straight: “There are scenes that contradict Islam and the Bible, so we decided not to show it,” Juma Al-Leem, director of media content at UAE’s National Media Center, said.

“If there is a fear that the film will cause unrest and protest from some groups then the government should create a situation conducive to people growing up instead of always limiting them to a narrow-minded condition,” Joko Anwar, an award-winning Indonesian filmmaker, told the Jakarta Globe.

Paramount

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"Noah" Film Inspires Flood of Religious Freak-Outs

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The Skinny Rules – Bob Harper & Greg Critser

by Myrna Posted on April 22, 2013

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

The Skinny Rules

The Simple, Nonnegotiable Principles for Getting to Thin

Bob Harper & Greg Critser

Genre: Health & Fitness

Price: $13.99

Publish Date: May 15, 2012

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group

Seller: Random House Digital, Inc. (Books)


THE LAST DIET BOOK YOU’LL EVER NEED With so much conflicting weight-loss advice out there to confuse your efforts, it’s no wonder you haven’t been successful losing weight and keeping it off. But with Bob Harper, superstar trainer and co-host of NBC’s hit show The Biggest Loser as your personal authority and coach, you can and will finally shed the pounds—whether you want to lose two or two hundred! Distilling Bob’s vast knowledge of nutrition, weight-loss strategy, and human nature down to twenty simple, nonnegotiable principles, The Skinny Rules will help you step away from a reliance on processed foods and the need for so much sweet and salt and step into a newly thin lifestyle. And Bob’s methods couldn’t be more straightforward. Taking the guesswork out of implementing the Skinny Rules , Bob offers a month’s worth of menu plans and more than 90 delicious, rule-abiding recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks to keep you cooking and eating skinny for life. You’ll be happily astounded to see the variety and volume of the tasty food on your plate! He also includes terrific tips for what to stock in your fridge and what to prepare every weekend in order to set yourself up for success during your too-busy-to-cook weekdays. A virtual GPS to your weight-loss goals, The Skinny Rules takes the mystery out of the process, offering the fastest route to your skinny destination. LOSING WEIGHT IS NOW AS SIMPLE AS 1-2-3 . . . AND 3-15-18-20 TOO! Rule #3: Eat protein at every meal, making some kind of fish your go-to protein as often as you can. Take your weight and divide it by two—that’s more or less how much protein you should be eating in grams every day. Rule #15: Eat at least ten meals a week at home (and cook them yourself). Restaurant portions are usually 40 to 50 percent bigger than what you’d serve at home—the more you eat out, the more you overeat. Set yourself up for success by preparing my turkey meatballs, hummus, and roasted vegetables on the weekend so that you will have go-to staples and no excuses! Rule #18: Go to bed slightly hungry. Denied fuel for more than five hours, your body will start burning its own fat and sugar. Make a point not to eat after dinner and you’ll be burning fat while you’re sleeping. Rule #20: Enjoy a splurge meal once a week. Unlike episodic bingeing, splurge meals are an ingredient in your diet. When you plan something, you are in control. From the Hardcover edition.

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The Skinny Rules – Bob Harper & Greg Critser

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