This Is How We Garden In The City

I grew up on a farm and now live in a suburb of Raleigh, NC.  While it is nice to have a grocery store within walking distance, I realize that I took the land I grew up on for granted.   As a kid I could run all over the place and not worry about watching out for cars or bothering my neighbor when I cut grass. Now that I am grown up and can almost touch the house beside me from my window, I miss having that land to run around on.  I also miss having that land to grow a garden.  Let's face it, there is is nothing like a fresh garden tomato on a hot summer day.

If you are like me, you may have a spot of dirt, but shade from the neighbor's trees blocks the sunshine or after numerous years of gardening the same small garden now has disease and lots of insect pressure.

Well, I have an alternative way to grow some vegetables that I learned from my neighbor.  You grow them in a straw bale.  You can put the bale in any place in your yard and the bales will grow tomatoes or peppers with ease.

Step 1: Get some straw bales.  They are probably cheaper at some garden center or small nursery, but a place like Lowes will have them too.  I typically buy them at the end of March so that they will be ready to use by mid-April.

Step 2:  Place the bales in your yard where they will get at least 6-8 hours of sunlight.  For tomatoes, the more sun the better.  Put the bales longways where the narrow side is up and the the wider side is perpendicular to the ground.  Placing the bales on a flat surface is optimal.  This just helps keep the plants from tipping over too quickly once they get bigger.

Step 3:  Now we need to condition the bales or in other words start making the bales decompose.  We need to jump start the bacteria that will start the composting process.  This is as simple as adding some ammonia and nitrogen through fertilizer.  I just use some cheap 10-10-10, but you could use other types of fertilizer sources.  I just put a cup of 10-10-10 on the top of each bale every other day for about a week.  Then put half a cup every other day for the second week.   Most importantly water the bale thoroughly every day and keep it wet during this conditioning step.  The composting will soon begin.  For about 10-14 days your bale will "hot compost."  If you stick your finger in the bale it will actually be pretty hot in there.  Keep checking after day 10 and the heat will subside and the inside of the bale will go cool.  Now it is time to plant your plants.

Step 4:  Plant your vegetables.  Plant two tomato plants per bale or three pepper plants per bale.   Grab a large screw driver or small trowel to help part the straw.  Take your plant and remove the jiffy pot if your plant was growing in one.  Use the screwdriver or trowel to help open up a hole in the straw and stick the plant in.  Go as deep as possible for a tomato plant while a pepper plant needs to stay at the same level it was growing in your starter pot.   Push the straw back together and water the plants.

Step 5:  Take care of you plants.  Straw bales will dry out faster than soil so you have to water them more frequently depending on the weather.   Watering will probably need to be done every 2-4 days.  You can stick your finger in the bale each day to gauge the moisture.  As the bale composts it provides a great medium for plants, but you will still need to fertilize.  I usually use a cup of 10-10-10 once every 7-10 days, but fertilizer especially for tomatoes or vegetables will work just fine.  Just sprinkle the fertilizer in a ring around the plants.  If you plants turn pale green it is time to fertilize.  Thriving plants will be dark green in the straw bales.

Step 6:  Secure your plants.  As the plants grow they will need to be secured.  I use bamboo sticks and twine to tie them up, but you could make a trellis or other innovative support system.  We will see how my plants progress as we go through the summer.

If you don't have an optimal spot of soil to garden, try some straw bails.  At the end of the season you can continue to compost the bails until they turn into soil or just take the leftovers to your local dump for composting.  Happy gardening this summer in the city.

April 2015 Garden

April 2015 tomato bale garden

Chipotle's Anti-GMO Stance

Chipotle, a national restaurant chain, announced this week that its ingredients are now GMO-free.  I respect a business taking a stance and sticking to it.   We have seen these emotional headline grabbing stories before.  Chick-Fil-A made the news in a big way not too long ago for taking a controversial stance that quickly put people on opposites sides.  The beauty is many of us live in a place where we can chose to accept a corporation's stance and buy their product or boycott them altogether.

However, I do want to ask whether people (and companies) are jumping on the anti-GMO bandwagon because it is the hip thing.   Or do people (and companies) truly understand the issue at large before making their decision.  Chipotle is going GMO free in many ways, but it is not 100% GMO free like the the headlines and hype make you believe.  The truth is that almost all of the live stock in the US is fed with GMO feed.   Chipolte will be using pasture fed beef, but according to a CNN article its pork and chicken are still from animals that eat GMO feed.  It also still serves soft drinks and sodas have high fructose corn syrup that come from GMO corn.

If you do chose to eat at Chipotle because the food is great tasting then by all means go enjoy that burrito.  If you chose to go to Chipotle because they are against GMOs then I challenge you to take a moment and examine the issue from all sides before blindly jumping on the anti-GMO bandwagon.  There are numerous scientific articles that show that GMO food is safe. Trust me in saying that any GMO product released goes through years of safety testing.  The American Association for the Advancement of Science published a statement in 2012 that sums up the safety of GMOs.

A few highlights from the AAAS statement:

"Indeed, the science is quite clear: crop improvement by the modern molecular techniques of biotechnology is safe. Rather, these initiatives are driven by a variety of factors, ranging from the persistent perception that such foods are somehow “unnatural” and potentially dangerous to the desire to gain competitive advantage by legislating attachment of a label meant to alarm. "

"The EU, for example, has invested more than €300 million in research on the biosafety of GMOs. Its recent report states: “The main conclusion to be drawn from the efforts of more than 130 research projects, covering a period of more than 25 years of research and involving more than 500 independent research groups, is that biotechnology, and in particular GMOs, are not per se more risky than e.g. conventional plant breeding technologies.” The World Health Organization, the American Medical Association, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the British Royal Society, and every other respected organization that has examined the evidence has come to the same conclusion: consuming foods containing ingredients derived from GM crops is no riskier than consuming the same foods containing ingredients from crop plants modified by conventional plant improvement techniques."

It is easy to succumb to hype and make up our minds on an issue through emotion.   I would argue that we don't truly know the truth of an issue until we take the time to read both sides and then make our decision through logic.

References:
http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/26/investing/chipotle-gmo-free/
http://www.aaas.org/
AAAS GM statement

My First Telescope

In a transgenic world there are genes from other organisms that alter us.  One warm summer night when I was a kid that transgenesis came from my dad.   He set up a small telescope in our front yard in southern Virginia and pointed it towards the moon.  He beckoned me over and I had my first look of the moon up close.  It is crazy how certain memories are still so vivid even from over 20 years ago.  I still remember the spot in our yard where the telescope was set up.  I still remember seeing the small craters on the moon for the first time.  I still remember how the moon moved across the eyepiece as I was looking at it.  How was the moon moving?  Everytime I looked back at the moon in the sky it was in the same place.

Those memories have never left me and show the power of other people's influence over us.  What if I had never had that night to look through a telescope for the first time and see the real beauty of moon.  I am glad I don't have to find out the answer to that what if question.  I did see the moon and it opened my world to space and what was beyond.

Years later it led me to want to get my own scope so I could not only see the moon again in my own backyard, but to give my kids the same opportunity my dad gave me.  If anyone has ever been in the market for a scope it is easy to get overwhelmed.  There are so many choices.  Scopes come in different sizes and types.   This is a topic we can discuss in more detail at a later date.  Ultimately, I decided I wanted something that was easy to transport.  These small scopes are often called grab-n-go scopes.   Size does mater because the bigger the scope the more time it takes to set up.  Time is a deterrent, so a small scope has the advantage of a quick set-up and easy transport.  The next questions is where do you get a quality scope.  I found there is a very big community of amateur astronomers and they are always selling and upgrading equipment.  So if you are looking for a scope I would recommend checking out www.astromart.com.  This is a great place to buy used scopes and other equipment.  There is a small fee for a membership to actually buy something, but you can browse the classifieds for free.

There are two things you can do with a telescope.  One is use it for visual observation and the other is for astrophotography in which you hook a camera up to the scope and take a picture.  I knew I wanted to potentially do both.  So a small refractor was the type of scope I settled on.  It was small, light, easy to transport and the easiest scope to learn astrophotography on.   After searching astromart for a few weeks I found a deal on a used Stellarvue SV90T telescope.  It is a great scope and has provided hours of space observation.

While I love the 90 mm scope, I would be remiss to not bring attention to the Orion ED80.  Orion makes a small refractor called the ED80 that is also great and one of the best selling small refractors available.

If you have the chance to show your kids or friends an entirely new world with a telecope I definitely recommend it.

Stellarvue SV90T refractor telescope

What is a GMO?

There is no doubt that the word GMO stirs emotion and controversy.  For many the word even has a negative connotation.   Do people really know why they don't like GMOs.  For that matter, do people really even know what GMOs are?  Jimmy Kimmel sheds some some light on this topic.

A Transgenic World

The definition of transgenic is "of, pertaining to, or being an organism whose genome has been altered by the transfer of a gene or genes from another species or breed."  I work in an industry where my job entails making transgenic plants.   You may have heard these plants called GMOs or genetically modified organisms.    GMOs are a controversial topic and  people have very strong feeling about them on both sides of the fence.  I understand the the importance of the topic since we are talking about our food and what we put inside of our bodies.  I also feel like there is a lot of misinformation and a lack of education on GMOs.  I decided to try and at least share my viewpoint on the topic and maybe, just maybe change someone's mind who may be against genetically modified plants.  

While I love what I do and it is my hope to help make better plants, there are many other things I love to dabble in.  If we switch gears to a more philosophical viewpoint then we can think of our beautiful Earth as an organism.  We human beings are each a collection of lots of genes.  When we are born and come into the world we are transferring these genes for the first time to this wonderful organism we call Earth.  In essence the world is transgenic by the definition above.  It is a collection of so many genes from all of us and each of us alters the world in some way.   Whether it is our job, our relationships, or our actions we are influencing other people and our environment everyday.

How our genes alter and impact the world is the important.  This blog is where I can share some of the ways I make the world transgenic.  I hope to talk about topics ranging from space and astrophotography to GMOs and plants.  I also love gaming and technology and we may even dare to mix science and religion in the same blog.   It will be a grab bag in a transgenic world.