Living Lightly

Mud Pies and Purple Onions
Recipe: Not your normal rice
New underground movement
Social justice and building your home from natural materials: a lecture
Recycling progress in Modesto: slow and steady
Farmers Market features culinary delights

Dear Friends and Fellow Gardeners.

We have a plant in the garden that brings us special pleasure. It is called common Sage or Salvia officinalis, and I always look forward to its mass of violet blue spikes in the Spring.

Because it is an early spring bloomer, it attracts a lot of attention from hummingbirds, black solitary bumble bees, hundreds of honey bees, and many other insects flitting about its nectar and pollen rich bloom. As this has been a busy year for me, I haven’t yet taken the time to pull up a garden chair and sit beside my friend the Sage.

Besides the refreshment of taking the time to stop and do nothing, be prepared to appreciate the beauty, efficiency, and wonder in this incredible world of insects and plants. Close observation of this wonderful world can be entertaining, and educational, as well as relaxing. Pick your favorite plant and pull up a chair. As the Spring passes there will be ever more opportunities to observe birds, beetles, and butterflies. I especially enjoy my buddleias, (butterfly bushes) of which I have too many.

Recently, I was asked about the use of some "natural pesticides" that included the use of tobacco juice, antiseptics, and shampoo. I was particularly concerned about the use of chewing tobacco as a remedy for white flies because it reminded me of a product sold on the market that is called Black Leaf 40. The active ingredient of black leaf 40 is nicotine sulfate, a pesticide derived from tobacco. Black Leaf 40 carries a DANGER POISON label making it a very dangerous and toxic pesticide to use.

Lets get something straight: toxins are toxins, regardless of their origins. As a matter of fact, nicotine in a pure state is so deadly that a drop can be fatal.

In addition people who smoke or handle tobacco products can transmit a disease to tomatoes called tobacco mosaic virus. This disease causes yellowing and contorted leaves leading to death of the tomato.

Although chewing tobacco may not cause immediate death, I would never recommend using any tobacco products in the control of insects.

One of the problems using shampoo, soap, or detergents as an insect wash, is knowing the effect of the additives contained in the product. Some commercial soap products contain additives that can be toxic to the plants.

If you have a heavy infestation of aphids or white flies, try a strong stream of water to wash them off. Sometimes white flies can be a problem with house plants. You would be surprised how many a vacuum cleaner can suck out of the air. If insects are persistent and causing plant damage, purchase one of the commercial insect plant washes such as ‘Safer’ products.

I’ll be darned if I can figure out why anyone would recommend using an antiseptic on plants. I have in the past used a 10 percent solution of bleach to disinfect my pruning shears to prevent the spread of fire blight when pruning effected plants, and there is some question about how much good it does. As for antiseptics on plant viruses or fungus diseases, I just don’t get it.

Foliar applications of liquid kelp have shown some promise against fungus diseases. Lime Sulfur if used properly and at the right time can act as a preventative for some of these problems.

Some of the problems in using home remedies is having accurate and safe directions for use. Some people still have the attitude that if a little bit is good, then more is better. This kind of attitude can cause serious harm to you, your family, and the environment. With all pesticides natural, organic, or chemical, if you must use them, please read the directions and follow the label.

Until next month Peace and good gardening.

By NANCY DIMOND

The first time I fixed this rice, friends with a one and a two year old were over for dinner. Even with the greens in the rice the kids ate it up to my great pleasure. The editorial staff will also attest to the wonderful flavor of this dish. I have used it as a side-dish, but adding pinenuts would make it a good vegetarian main dish. The original recipe calls for chicory, but I've modified it a bit.

Rice with Greens

1/2 pound fresh chicory
OR 12 oz. frozen, chopped mustard greens
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup finely chopped red onion
1 large clove garlic, minced
1 cup aromatic rice (basmati or jasmine)
2 teaspoons tomato paste
2 cups strong stock (see note below)
salt and pepper to taste
freshly grated Parmesan cheese

If using chicory, cut off root, rinse and dry well. Separate the stems and leaves into separate bowls. Heat the oil in a medium saucepan. Add the red onion and cook 2 minutes. Add the garlic and cook 1 minute. Stir in stems and cook 2 minutes longer (or add all frozen greens at this point.)

Stir in the rice and tomato paste and toss until well mixed. Add the stock, heat to boiling and then stir in leaves. Reduce heat, cover and cook 20 minutes on low heat until rice is tender. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve cheese on the side. Serves 4 to 6.

Note: To make strong stock, reduce 4 cups of stock to 2 cups by simmering; or make double strength stock from bouillon. The original recipe calls for chicken stock, but I've also used vegetable.

By WILLIAM E. BISHOP

Behold this compost! Behold it well!
Perhaps every mite has once formed part of a sick person. Yet behold!
The grass of spring covers the prairies,
The bean bursts noiselessly through the mold of the garden,
The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves,
The tinge awakes over the willow and the mulberry trees,
The he-birds carol mornings and evenings while the she-birds sit on their nests,
The young of poultry break through the hatch'd eggs

— Walt Whitman

Almost by chance I happened upon a new underground here in Modesto. But then again, perhaps it is new only to me. Don McMillan, spokesman for the group, told me that he had been converted to the movement while studying for his Masters Degree at Humboldt State and brought back the idea to Modesto. And now the Modesto Junior College Department of Community Education is featuring McMillan in a three hour workshop designed to propagate the movement locally.

This workshop is designed to introduce the ecologically innocent to the somewhat arcane practice of worm composting. Let’s face it, it’s not everyday we encounter someone as knowledgeable about worm composting as Don McMillan. As he indicated to me, worm composting is somewhat more labor intensive than ordinary backyard composting, but after watching him introducing more kitchen scraps to his compost bin, I’m convinced that the extra labor required would be of significance only to the truly slothful.

At this point, I felt compelled to ask the really hard question: "so who would be interested in doing this?" The answer seems fairly reasonable. "Teachers, who would want to provide their students with an ecology project. Fishermen interested in supporting the ecology and maintaining a self-sustaining source of free bait. Apartment dwellers seeking more connection with the environment their apartments seal them off from."

I would have turned my nose up at this last suggestion, were I not sitting in McMillan’s kitchen faced directly with the evident lack of odor arising from the composting tub before me. Equally evident was the lack of gnats and fruit flies flying about in great profusion.

That was when McMillan pulled out his ace-in-the-hole: a mason jar of dried and ground citrus zest. This definitely appealed to my "inner chef."

In the past two years he has taken perhaps 4 large grocery bags full of garbage out for collection. But he cooks with a lot of fresh produce and finds himself with a significant pile of trimmings at week’s end. The composting tub is the ideal way of dealing with these trimmings. McMillan went on to explain that while the worms dealt readily with the inner pith of lemon and orange rinds, the outer surface (what we chefs call "zest") of the skin was not to their liking. To deal with this, he would peel this surface off in long strands, hanging them up to dry and grind for future cooking.

The end product of this effort is three-fold: worm composting yields about 20 oz. of "worm tea" every week to ten days (a potent tonic for ailing plants), solid matter every few months (which can be reduced to potting soil), and worms to sell to other members of the underground, or to the passing fisherman. And most important of all is the sense of connectedness one gets from living a "non-toxic" life here in the city.

McMillan’s worm composting workshop will be presented on Thursday, June 24th , from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Anyone interested in learning more about worm composting should contact Don McMillan at (209) 523-8871, P.O. Box 4501, Modesto, CA 95352-4501, or e-mail him at mcmillan@ainet.com. And anyone interested in signing up for the workshop should contact Modesto Junior College, Community Education Department, 435 College Ave., Modesto, CA 95350-5800, (209) 575-6063.

By KEITH WERNER

If you have any interest at all in building your own home, using natural building methods, or learning how current housing practices help sustain an unjust distribution of wealth, then come see the slide presentation, "Natural Building and Social Justice" given by Robert Bolman on Monday, June 21 from 7 p.m. - 9 p.m. at the Stanislaus County Main Library, downtown Modesto.

Robert Bolman, of Eugene, Oregon, is a licensed construction contractor who became interested in the field of Natural Building. He studied and is now a devoted convert to Natural Building methods. He is the president of the Eugene chapter of the Northwest EcoBuilding Guild. And he has built his own house using straw bales and cob. What is cob? Come to the presentation and find out!

Here is what Bolman says about building with natural materials:

"Since the dawn of civilization, human beings have made housing for themselves out of locally obtained, entirely natural materials. The houses were, by definition, non-toxic and environmentally friendly. When these houses reached the end of their life spans, the building materials did one of three things: 1) they were recycled, 2) they decomposed, [or] 3) they made picturesque archaeological ruins."

On the connection with social justice, Bolman promises to argue that "U.S. foreign policy has served to perpetuate this poor distribution of resources," and to compare our use of resources to a shantytown in Mexico.

This presentation is sponsored by the Modesto Garden Project, in the interest of promoting a more sustainable way of life.

By MYRTLE OSNER

In an interview with Karin Rodriguez, Modesto's Recycling Coordinator, I came away with a somewhat chastened view of the process, even though Karin is an enthusiastic advocate of the program.

The bottom line is: it's about money.

Are you surprised? Don't be. We can still be idealistic about how much the earth will be cleaned and saved through recycling and still be very much aware of the cost in dollars.

I continually hear from many residents that they believe recycling makes money for the garbage companies. The fact is, it actually costs money, for these reasons:

• In order to pick up the green waste separately from the garbage, trucks have to make two complete trips around the city, once a week, thus adding a considerable amount of air pollution, to say nothing of the cost of gas and trucks.

• Other expenses are labor: pulling out the blue bags from the garbage, separating and bailing the ones that are salable. In some cities, a third can is used for recyclables; this keeps the material cleaner but adds a third truck circling the city.

Many know that Modesto was the first city in the country to start voluntary curbside recycling under the aegis of Ecology Action. Thus, the change from separate pickup of recyclables to putting those items in blue bags and into the garbage cans has been controversial.

"What happens to that stuff?" People ask me over and over."

According to Rodriguez, when garbage gets to the transfer station, the blue bags are picked out by hand from the garbage dumped on the sorting line. But here is the real bottom line: only items for which there is a market at that time are pulled out. Everything else goes into the garbage heap and ends up at our big waste-to-energy plant over on the county’s west side. This plant, used by the entire county, is a modern, very clean operation with minimal air pollution.

Karin gave me a report from Waste News, the newsletter of the waste hauling industry. The nearest area report is Los Angeles. It lists residential paper as 0 market value for the week in question, with plastics anywhere from 0 to 7 depending on the kind. Computer printout paper, however, had a value of 110 that week and aluminum cans 20, with corrugated containers 30. These examples tell you something about how important markets are in the recycling business.

To reiterate: The markets drive the program!

Modesto hired consultants in November, 1998 to look at the long term solid waste program in Modesto, which includes bio-solids as well as garbage pickup and recycling. They looked at how we are doing in our response to Assembly Bill 939 mandating cities to reduce their waste stream by 50 percent in 2000. Modesto is now at 40 percent, thanks largely to the green yard waste composting program.

The consultants pinpointed problems, chief among them being a lack of waste separation equipment at the two garbage companies. The companies are building better assembly line facilities, but blue bags will still have to be removed by hand.

Before blue bags, we were only recycling about 2 percent of our cans, glass, paper, and plastic. That has dropped somewhat, but green waste has risen dramatically.

Ongoing education still working

Ongoing programs still in existence and still working are the educational programs in the schools, recycling of used oil, and the hazardous waste dropoff program run by the County Environmental Resources Dept.

The program of contacting new residents began in December. A packet of instructions and information about recycling is given to residents who respond to the city's contact which averages now about 20 contacts a week. Residents are telephoned, then given packets if they desire them. Included in the packet are flyers on what to put in your two cans, the used oil program, where you can get blue bags, an explanation of the rockwell drainage system, and a question and answer sheet (many oldtime residents might find this useful).

Back to the green waste cans: be aware that there is a very serious problem; the bugs haven't been worked out yet in spite of the fact that we've been told over and over to put only yard waste in them. If the green waste has one bit of plastic or other contaminant in it, the item must be pulled out by hand, and there goes the expense rocketing upward again! Compost is no good if it's contaminated. You can't put old planter cans, plastic bags, wood, wire, pet feces, or anything else in those cans. Those who would like to buy compost from the city ($10 a yard at the composting center) need to know that it won't contaminate our gardens. Cleanliness is of the highest priority. Mo-Gro-Magic (our compost’s trade name) is available at several nurseries in bags. Yes, it does contain sewage sludge, highly treated and perfectly safe as a fertilizer.

One more fact: 43 percent of Modesto's solid waste stream is yard waste so it is really important to get it recycled by way of composting. We can't possibly meet our quotas without it. Furthermore, we need to return to the soil everything we possibly can to further enrich it so it will grow healthy food again. If you make your own compost, so much the better; see the article about worm composting in this issue.

Stanislaus County gets to count all the diverted cannery waste in their total, thus they are at about 67 percent. On the downside, the county has NO RECYCLING program in any of the unincorporated areas. There are several programs designed to recycle construction debris and old appliances.

By INDIRA CLARK

The Modesto Farmers Market has just begun its 21st season offering farm fresh produce, flowers, and plants, local bakery goods, and specialty foods and condiments. Customers are looking for old favorites, and some for new experiences in food, new ways of preparation and presentations or to explore unfamiliar foods.

This year local chefs are scheduled to prepare locally grown food amid the casual bustle of Saturday morning Farmers Market at 10 a.m. See the Farmers Market weekly ad in The Modesto Bee listing the chef of the week in each Wednesday's food section.

The 1999 Modesto Farmers Market runs Thursdays and Saturdays from May 22nd through November 20th on 16th Street between H and I Streets 7 a.m. - 12 noon (between the Modesto-Stanislaus Library and First United Methodist Church).