Build a Bee Condo

Norfolk city ordinance prohibits keeping bee hives inside city limits on less than 5 acres of land, yet we all know that bees are important pollinators of our favorite fruits and vegetables as well as some flowering plants. And, of course, we all heard the news reports that the most common hive bee, several varieties of European honey bees, are in deep trouble because of a little understood condition called Colony Collapse Disorder. So how does a Norfolk gardener get his plants pollinated?

The answer is native bees, of course. So while most of us don't have enough property to keep bee hives in Norfolk, we can encourage native bee habitat in our gardens, just like we do for birds and butterflies. (For you tomato growers, you should know that the common honey bee is virtually useless at pollinating tomatoes anyway. We know from experience and university studies that tomatoes varieties that are not self pollinating are pollinated best by native bees or other insects, not honey bees.)

Many varieties of native bees live in our area--bumble bees, sweat bees, digger bees, long-horned bees, carpenter bees, leaf-cutter bees, and mason bees are probably the most common--and each requires its own habitat. University studies show that the champion native bee pollinators is the long-horned bee, but all are highly useful. Most native bees are solitary or small community nesters and none are aggressive. In fact, native bees are quite docile--male bees don't have stingers--and most native females have to be severely threatened to be provoked into stinging you.

I mentioned that honey bees are not good tomato pollinators. This is not the fault of the honey bees but the tomato plant, which doesn't give up its pollen easily to just any bee. As I mentioned, most varieties of tomatoes are self pollinating, but certain popular varieties--like cherry tomatoes--require insect pollination and even self pollinators could use the help of a good bee. Bumble bees, in particular, have mastered the art of "buzz" or sonic pollination of tomato plants.

To buzz pollinate, a foraging bumbler will grab hold of the tomato flower with all six legs and flap her wings furiously, transmitting all her energy into shaking the flower. When you hear this going on in your garden, it sounds like the bee is angry. But that's just the sound of bumble bee working hard to help you get more tomatoes. This violent sonic vibration causes the tomato flower to spew out pollen, which covers the bee and floats to other tomato flowers. You can do this yourself using a tuning fork--about Middle 'C' works well--but a lazy gardener would just let the bees do it.

So how do you encourage native bee habitat? By providing the essentials--water, food, and shelter--and stopping or limiting your use of pesticides, particularly insecticidal dusts, which stick to the bees and then are ingested when the bees clean themselves. Garden plantings for native bees is for another article, but if you are butterfly gardening or fruit or vegetable gardening, then you're well on your way to having the right food habitat for bees, which need nectar for energy and pollen for protein (you didn't think they were doing all this work for free, did you?).

What native bees need most from you is a little home in a quiet corner. There are two good ways to create habitat for native bees. The easiest native bee home to build is a bundle of reeds or hollow stems of various diameter, such as bamboo, cut in 6-8 inch lengths. Be sure to cut bamboo at the node so that there is an open end and a closed end. Then bundle 15-20 tubes with closed ends grouped together. I wedge my bundle of bamboo at the 'Y' where the rain gutter down spout bends inward to meet the house. A rafter in a carport, open garage or the crotch of a tree would work just as well, too, someplace where the nest will stay relatively dry and out of the weather.

The second way to build a native bee habitat is to drill nesting holes into a block of UNTREATED wood. A scrap 6-inch long piece of 4X4 (drill into the cut end to get the proper depth) or a length of 4X4 screwed to a 2X6 mounting board works fine. Holes should be 3/32 to 3/8-inches in diameter on 3/4-inch centers. Holes larger than 1/4-inch should be 5 to 6-inches deep. Smaller diameter holes should be 3 to 4-inches deep. Do not drill through the board! The hole must be closed at one end and fairly smooth inside. Then mount your bee condo on a fence post, tree, or outbuilding 3 to 6-feet off of the ground. A slight downward slope will keep most rain out.

Here's a picture of a luxury native bee condo that combines both of these ideas and then adds a roof.

Bumble bees are ground dwellers, so a clear and undisturbed patch of garden is all they need. Often bumblers will set up a small brood in an abandoned mouse hole. Many beekeepers make nesting boxes for bumble bees--a small wooden box buried with all but a length of 3/4 inch PVC pipe exposed for an entrance --and later rent their bumble bees to commercial greenhouse operators who need reliable pollinators.

For more information, see the Xerces Society web site www.xerces.org or pick up the may-June 2008 edition of Audubon magazine.

White Fly Trap

I love our gardenias, almost as much as the white flies. Every year we struggle for control of the bushes that remind us of paradise and remind the white flies of...well I don't know. Anyway, I've been assured it is a loosing battle. I've been told by one Extension Agent that I should Shovel Prune my gardenias and be done with it, but we love them too much to do that. So the struggle goes on year after year. Since we limit our use of insecticides to emergency infestations of house eating monsters, I'd like to share our more natural techniques to wrestling the white flies to a draw.

My white flies are attracted to a particular shade of yellow, specifically the yellow the color of the plastic in Preston Antifreeze jugs. Accept no substitutes; we've tested several other kinds of yellow product. The attraction is so strong that I've found white flies hanging around a jug of Preston I left next to the garage last week. Auto shop dumpsters are a good source for empty Preston jugs.

We wash out the jug and cut a number of 2X2-inch squares and then rig hangers from string or wire. Then we smear the yellow plastic squares with Vasoline or some other viscous oil from the kitchen to make them sticky. Hang the square in each infested bush near the infestation. Check weekly. Clean off the stuck flies and recharge with petroleum jelly if needed.

This and a light spraying with insecticidal soap solution keep white flies in check around here.

Vermiculture

Worm Smoothie

Into the remainder of your morning's fruit smoothie add to the blender:

1-banana peel
green tops from strawberries
those moldy blueberry and strawberry's

Add:
2-apple cores from yesterday's lunch
morning coffee grounds
several used tea bags (remove string and staples)
bad spot from last night's potato
culled lettuce from last night's salad
slimy celery tops from the crisper
moldy half cucumber
carrot peelings
egg shells from last weekend's breakfast

Add water to liquefy to consistency of sludge. Serve

...to your worms.

Instead of buying plant food, we've hired worms to eat our garbage. In return for the occasional contents of the kitchen bucket, our worms work day and night to produce pails full of rich, organic worm castings and friable compost each year. We have a small worm farm we bought on the internet which is composed of 5 stackable trays on top of a catchment basin with spigot in the bottom unit to catch that yummy worm tea our flowering plants drink all summer long. These trays take advantage of worms' natural instinct to migrate upward in search of food (through grid openings in the bottom of each tray) . Once they've finished all the food in the bottom tray, the wrigglers move up to the next tray in search of more eats. We then harvest the castings from the bottom tray, rescue the stragglers, and put that tray on top of the stack, ready to receive our fresh garbage. The new tray is charged with shredded newspaper--printed with soy inks anymore, but avoid slick color sections--a small spade full of soil, a handful of fresh worm castings or compost, and then wet until damp. Add a layer of leaf litter on top and you're set to start burying your kitchen waste.

You can also construct your own worm bins from stackable plastic trays from the store (like Rubbermaid), just drill lots of holes for the worms to wriggle through in the bottom of all but the bottom tray. Be sure to cover your worm condo to prevent a rain from drowning your worms as well as to discourage marauding Robins, who will turn your worm bin into a worm buffet in a heartbeat. Ensure ventilation with tiny holes high in the side of each tray. Plans for larger bins, constructed from plywood, some large enough to be patio benches, can be found on the Internet.

Does it smell? Not if you do it right. I had our bin in my home office all winter long to keep them from freezing and never noticed an odor. A bad odor indicates poor living conditions inside the worm bin, usually too wet, where anaerobic bacteria have taken over. Anaerobic conditions will kill your worms.

What do you do in winter? A small 25-watt light bulb under your bins, moved into the garage or basement & covered with an old quilt, will keep your worms toasty and eating your garbage all winter long. Worms do best above 59 degrees, but remember the bins generate a good deal of heat because of aerobic decomposition, so they can stay warm down to 45 degrees or so outside. Also, their home should be shaded during the summer. Mine are in a fence corner behind a stand of Camilla, in the shade of the Wild Cherry tree.

Where do you get composting worms? The best producing worms for composting are Eisenia fetida, but Eisnia andrei and Lumbricus rubellus are good, too. Searching the Internet for "compost worms buy" will turn up several dealers who will ship you a pound or two of good composting worms. Many people get their starter worms from fishing shops, but many times these worms, often Eudrilus eugeniae or Nightcrawlers, are not top composting worms, but acceptable if you think you may want to sell excess worms to fishermen.What should I do first? If you put your worms into "fresh" garbage, they will die. So set up your bin at least two weeks before you introduce your worms to your new home. In truth, worms do not eat the garbage. Instead, they eat the bacteria and fungus that break down the food. This is the reason you add a bit of soil and compost as well as bedding material after you've harvested a tray of worm castings, to introduce the real worm food: bacteria and fungi. Bacteria and fungi are also the reason you should have a rotation of multiple trays: one major processing tray--the one on the bottom--with the trays on top in different stages of "cooking" the food.

What should I not feed? Generally, you should not feed your worms meat scraps, fat, dairy products, or very much citrus fruit. Mostly because these will attract raccoons, not to mention your own dogs. Too much citrus will change the pH level of the tray and often hatch out fruit flies.

How Much Do I Feed? It is easy to overfeed your worms. We started off with about 1 lb of kitchen waste per week in a 2-lb starter herd of worms. We have increased this as the worms reproduce--when they're happy, they reproduce fast. The ratio should be about 2-lbs of worm to 1 lb of garbage. We can now feed about a pound a day.

What if I go on vacation? Bulk up your spare trays and forget it. Worms will work and rework trays looking for food for many weeks. They can survive 30 or 45-days without any care at all. If we are gone for more than a couple of weeks, we hire a neighbor girl to make an occasional worm smoothie.

Any warnings? Only two.

1. You can do more damage by over feeding than by starving your worms.

• Lots of fat, wiggly, worms and eggs (look like yellow pearls) is a good sign.
• Sparse & skinny worms with few baby worms means feed more.
  
• A wet smell mess means too wet and too much food.
  

2. Worm castings and worm tea are somewhat "hot" fertilizers. We cut our castings and tea with tempered compost or potting soil, 1/4 to 1/2, depending on how tender the plants are.
Resources? There is a lot of information on the Internet. I particularly like the WormBin group on Yahoo groups, which is great for beginners. Also the small book, Worms Eat My Garbage, by Mary Appelhof, is an indispensable guide.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Around our house we eat a lot of yogurt in small cups as well as from the larger containers, but the City of Norfolk guidelines for recycling state specifically: NO Wide-Mouth Plastic Containers (such as those for yogurt and butter). It seems a waste to just trash these nice cups, so we wash them and stack them in the garage. During the winter months we make seedling cups from the small ones. The larger ones we use for transplants. All you have to do is poke a few holes in the bottom for drainage.

Those cups we do not reuse, we collect and take to the Green Alternatives store down in in Ghent (1905 Colonial Avenue). The Green Alternatives folks collect these cups and ship them out for recycling as... [ta dah] seedling cups. If you don't want to bother making your own seedling cups from your used yogurt cups, then consider collecting your cleaned cups and dropping them off at the Green Alternatives store.

Also, from the Just So You Know department: the folks at Green Alternatives also accept all kinds of electronics for PROPER electronics recycling--computers, monitors, cellphones--as well as batteries. And the store carries compostable plastic tableware and paper plates made from 100% post consumer recycled paper for your parties, picnics, and barbecues. As a test I put used paper plates and compostable plasticware into both my compost pile and my worm bin. I'll report back on how they do.

Kids Gardens

Children do better when they garden with a purpose. Here's a good group project for those with kids to entertain and educate this summer: a Pizza Garden, followed by a pizza party!

Use your imagination, but my Pizza Garden would grow:

• green Bell pepper
• jalapeño pepper
  
• a determinant tomato, maybe a cherry
  
• red onion
• some garlic
• thyme
• oregano and
• basil

A pizza garden can be grown in the ground or in containers. The ingredients are easy for kids to tend and later harvest. And it's a wonderful way to connect children and what they like to eat--pizza--with where it all comes from, the garden. All you need to finish this meal off is get a store bought pizza dough, some tomato or pizza sauce, cheese, and whatever other topping the children can't grow.

Instead of trying to make tomato sauce from fresh tomatoes, I'd oven dry the tomatoes the day before the pizza party. Slice the tomatoes and place them on a cookie sheet cut side up. Season with a bit of olive oil, salt, pepper, and some of the fresh thyme from the kids garden. Let rest one hour for the salt to draw out the liquid. Preheat the oven to 250 degrees. Bake (dry) the tomatoes for 5-6 hours. Then use the oven dried tomatoes like pepperoni slices on your Kids Pizza Garden Pizza. Tomatoes prepared like this are sweet and a bit chewy and kids love them.

Maybe finish up with an Ice Cream Garden:

• strawberries
• mint
• chocolate mint

Or try a Taco Garden:

• tomato
• cilantro
• onion
• garlic
• lettuce
• peppers--both green and hot

In the winter, maybe a Pot Roast Garden would be in fun using root crops, or an Italian Dinner garden that included eggplant or an Asian-themed garden. You get the idea. The important point is to give children the skills they need to grow some simple foods and to help them make the connection that what is on their plate came from the ground and their hard work. If you come up with a Mac & Cheese Garden, let me know.

Bunny Deterrent

You know it's spring when you see bunnies in your garden. But bunnies also mean crop damage in your pea patch. If you're like me and don't have the time or heart to trap and kill the little fluff balls, do what our forefathers did: plant a sacrificial bunny garden. When you look at the plans of many old time gardens, you will see an outer ring of tender, sacrificial green vegetables, like lettuce or spinach.

Being prey animals, rabbits would prefer to creep along in good cover than to cross out into the open. Nor do they like to be "trapped' inside enclosures, like a fenced garden. So if there is enough to eat on the outside of your garden, the bunnies will almost never go past that outer ring. If you don't want to plant that much around your garden and if you can figure out where the "bunny trail" runs, try offering up some greens along the trail.

Why Are Peppers Hot?

Hot on the trail of an answer to that burning question is botanist and researcher Joshua Tewksbury of the University of Washington. He's researching down in the jungles of Bolivia. An article about his research is in the April 2009 edition of Smithsonian Magazine. Researchers have known for years that birds are not bothered by capsicums, the active ingredient that puts the hot in hot peppers. That is actually beneficial to the peppers because the pepper seeds then pass through the birds to seed new plants. For some time researchers have also known that seed crunchers, like rodents, are deterred by hot peppers. That's obviously beneficial to the pepper plant as well, because a broken see will not germinate. But Tewksbury thought there was more to the story.

Why, for instance, could he find mild and spicy peppers of the same variety growing in the wild in close proximity to each other? His answer: fungus. A genius of the Fusarium fungus is specific to peppers. In the wild the higher the concentration of capsicum in the peppers, the lower the rate of fungal infection in the pepper plant. And mild peppers often carried heavy loads of the fungus.

The tendency toward high concentrations of capsicum is long lived in the gene pool of the peppers that develop it, which is why healthy plants still produce hot peppers. Then centuries ago spice loving humans came along and selected certain peppers for their heat index to pep up their food, perpetuating those hot genes. Because of some antifungal properties in hot peppers, many cultures have used peppers to preserve food over the centuries.

Chemist Wilber Scoville invented the scale to measure the "heat" in peppers in 1912. The SCU or Scoville Heat Unit measures how hot a pepper is:

Bell Peppers - 0
Poblano - 1,000 - 2,500
Jalapeño - 2,500 - 8,000
Serrano - 7,000 - 25,000
Cayenne - 50,000
Chiltepins - 70,000
Habanero - 200,000 - 300,000
Scotch Bonnet - 200,000 - 300,000
Naga Jolokia - 855,000 - 1,041,427

Organic Pest Control

There are good bugs and there are bad bugs. We all know that. And in nature they're pretty evenly matched. Each is attracted to it's own kind of shelter, food, and nursery materials in the wild. The good and the bad tend to keep each other's population in check. Most gardens, though, are not much like nature. In nature plants are intermingled and mixed. In a garden we often have long rows or square plots of monoculture. So once a bad bug gets into a monoculture it thrives there. Then there are not enough good bugs to help keep them in check. When a gardener sprays to kill bad bugs, she'll kill the good bugs too. And it is axiomatic in organic circles that the bad bugs always rebound faster from a dose of chemicals than the good bugs do, usually making the problem much worse, not better. However, there are several organic techniques to help encourage good bugs and discourage bad one by keeping your garden in a natural balance:

Select Pest Hardy Plants--cultivars of corn that have good thick husks are seldom much bothered by corn earworms. And purple cabbage is seldom troubled by imported cabbageworms. Many varieties of tomatoes and other vegetables are bred for natural resistance to disease.

Concealing or Masking the crop from pests--light weight, translucent row covers are a good way to prevent many pests from getting into your young crops while still allowing sunlight, water, and air to circulate. This technique is particularly good for the young, tender salad crops--lettuces, cabbages, spinach, kale.

Producing odors that repel or confuse a bug--scientific experiments have demonstrated that many of the night-flying moths, including the one that delivers those vicious cut worms to your garden, track odors upwind to the plants they lay their eggs on. Marigolds (most nursery marigolds are unscented so look for Tagetes patula or Tagetes erecta -- if anybody runs across these spp. locally, let me know) mints, and sweet basil interplanted with flowers and vegetables helps to "mask" or repel unwanted pests.

Use a "Trap Crop" to lure unwanted insects away from your garden--growing collards well away from cabbage will help protect against diamondback moth larvae. Plant petunias well away from your roses to trap Japanese Beetles. And be sure to remove and replace any infested "trap" crops to keep the pests from multiplying and spreading to your more desirable plants.

Provide food for beneficial insects as they search for pests--beneficial insects tend to have short mouth parts. So small, open faced flowers will provide easy to reach pollen and nectar to give your little garden friends the strength to go after the pests. Dill, fennel, anise, and coriander (all members of the carrot family) produce small flowers suitable for beneficial insects. Longer blooming sunflowers, zinnias, and asters also attract and feed them. Other plants attractive to beneficial are yarrows, angelica, chamomile, candytufts, morning glory, baby blue eyes, evening primrose and goldenrod. You'll notice that many of these plantings are basic to a butterfly garden.

Companion Planting--There are some winning combinations for companion planting:

• Basil and onions with tomatoes to control tomato hornworms.
• Thyme or tomatoes with cabbage to take care of flea beetles, cabbage maggots, and white cabbage butterflies
• Catnip with eggplant to deter flea beetles
• Set Onions in rows with carrots to control rust flies and nematodes.
• Horseradish with potatoes to repel the Colorado potato beetle
• Add radishes or nasturtiums near your cucumber plants to control cucumber beetle
• Interplant borage among your tomatoes, cucumbers, and strawberries to both repel some pests and attract many good ones
• Cilantro among the spinach will repel aphids and attract the very beneficial tachinid flies
• Summer Savory with your beans will repel bean beetles
• grow tomatoes, parsley, or basil with your asparagus to help keep a check on asparagus beetles
• and if you can, leave the paper wasps nests and spider webs alone. They are ferocious hunters.
  

Also, sphagnum moss has fairly powerful antifungal properties. Top dressing around your new plants is said to help prevent some fungus diseases from getting started in seedlings.

And don't forget the beneficial animals --Toads for instance, eat 3,000 grubs, slugs, cutworms, flies, wood lice, grasshoppers and beetles a month (make a toad house by placing an old clay pot upside down in a cool, moist, out-of-the-way place in your garden. Break out a door for Mr. Toad, about the size of a 50 cent piece, at the rim where the pot touches the earth). An added benefit of toads is they won't turn on your flowers and vegetables if there are no insects to eat. Most pests are actually night workers, so a single bat will eat 1,000 bugs a night, a family of bats thousands. If you're near some open spaces,consider erecting a purple martin house, each martin eats 1,000 insects in 12 hours. A single wren can gobble down 500 insect eggs, beetles and grubs an afternoon. 60% of a chickadees diet during the winter is comprised of aphid eggs.

All good reasons to make your yard as bird and animal friendly as possible.

Gardening for the Mobility Impaired

I never tell people when they need joint replacement, says my ortho doc.They'll tell me when it time because they can't stand the pain anymore.
Can you get me through one more summer?
No.
Bummer.

So I'm scheduled to get two new knees right as Spring gardening gets underway, double bummer. Recover will be long and the rehab grueling, I'm told. And I'm definitely not going to get down on my knees to dig in the dirt this Spring--so no fresh tomatoes on my vines, no snappy homegrown peppers, no spicy salad greens from my little ol' pea patch, not this year--that's a thought more depressing than the surgery.

Then my wife Gayle had an idea. What if she unloaded the junk from some plastic storage shelving in the garage and set the shelves up on the back deck? We could buy some containers to put on top of the shelves and I'll be able to sit in a chair to tend my cukes at table level after the surgery. Because I'd been eying the magazine ads for the Grow Box from Garden Patch anyway, that's what we ordered.

The Grow Box has several advantages for the mobility impaired (or for those with limited space, like a balcony): these planters are large and deep; they are self watering, so I won't have to maneuver down the stairs to drag the hose up onto the deck to water them every day or so; and they have a plastic mulch cover that not only helps warm the soil but also limits the weeding I'll have to do. They're a bit pricey, but we ordered six.

Now I've got my kitchen garden at table height where I won't have to get down on my knees to plant and tend vegetables. And because the water reservoir is large, holding a couple of gallons, watering is infrequent and can wait until Gayle is home to help. I dropped some mosquito dunks (Bacillus thuringiensis) into each water tank to control the little pests. Now, between physical therapy sessions, I can tend my veggies without the risk of tearing stitches or of falling on stairs.

Unwanted grass in ornamental grasses / perennial beds

Toward the end of last summer I was plagued by unwanted grass growing up through ornamental grasses. It was in some of my perennial bedding plants, too. This grass--tall, narrow leafed, fast growing--wasn't just growing near my other plants, it was growing up inside them, so that pulling out the unwanted grass meant pulling out the ornamental as well. During winter clean-up I cut the grasses and border perennials back to the crown after they'd died off. And so this spring, when I noticed the unwanted grass greening out long before anything else, I decided to do something to get rid of it.

But what to do? I stewed about it a couple of days and decided, despite my organic leanings, I'd need to use a contact herbicide like Round-Up. But how to apply it without killing the "good" plants? I put a waterproof dish glove on one hand and then pulled an old cotton sock over the glove. I wetted the sock--the palm and fingers of the glove--with herbicide and then ran my gloved hand over the long grass, from stem to leaf, grasping it like I was going to pull it out and coating the leaves with the chemical. Because the herbicide was applied only to the grass leaves and didn't touch the "good" plants, it worked like a charm. This week the good plants are budding out, free of that unsightly grass.

Gardening Tip

Pray for miracles, but plant cabbages.
-- author Ken Follett in his novel Pillars of the Earth

Wise County Plant Permitted

I've been away a few days, over in Wise County, Virginia, at the far western tip of the state. I was testifying before the Air Quality Board against the proposed Wise county coal-fired plant, know officially as the Virginia Cities Hybrid Energy Center--makes it sound like a Prius, doesn't it?

Tough trip for a 3-minute gig--9 hours each way--but statewide representation was called for and TWCAN and our eco allies have been battling this plant for a couple of years now. There was a good showing; we mustered about 110 people from all over the state, not bad for a hearing spanning a couple of weekdays out in the middle of nowhere (largest gathering of Toyota Prius' (Prii?) I've ever seen: 15).

Unfortunately, I just read in the news this morning that the Air Board approved the permits last night. Still this was a qualified "win" for us as opponents forced several amendments. Dominion Power will now cut allowable Mercury output from ~10 lbs per year to 4 lbs and Sulfur Dioxide from 2,400 tons per year to 600. We did not convince the Air Board they had a duty to regulate Carbon Dioxide, despite the recent Supreme Court ruling. That was disappointing. By the way, Dominion could still do better on Mercury emissions. There is a Pennsylvania plant that has Mercury down to 1 pound per year. Since every fresh water body in the Commonwealth of Virginia has a warning about consuming fish because of Mercury contamination from coal-fired plants, the Air Board should have gone for the 1 lb standard.

Also as part of the deal, Dominion is going to convert two nearby coal-fired plants--built in the 50's and real polluters--to natural gas, which reduces the state's overall pollutants profile considerably, and was the rationale for allowing the 4 lbs of Mercury. But that was really a case of making necessity a virtue, since Dominion would soon come under considerable pressure to do something about the pollutants from those ancient plants in any event.

From the beginning this plant was designed as a fairly innovative circulating fluid bed "hybrid" plant that could burn waste wood and piles of coal left all over the ground from previous mining operations in the region. That left over coal is called "gob piles" by the locals. Runoff from gob piles has been polluting streams and rivers in Virginia for decades. There was a amendment added to the permits to prohibit the cutting of standing timber for fuel, only waste products.

The downside of this ruling:

* there's still no such thing as "clean coal," and mercury and acid gases--CO2 and SO4--are still being emitted,

* there is no requirement to actually collect and burn the gob piles,

* the plant is required to burn Virginia coal, which means more mountain top removal mining--which is really heartbreaking to see,

* while this plant might meet all existing state and federal regulations, if national politics continue as forecast there will be a substantial change in clean air regulations after the November elections, probably making this plant obsolete before it is built,

* no compromises were made on increasing statewide energy efficiency. According to the DOE EIA the average Virginian still uses twice as much energy (per capita, less transportation) as the average Californian, yet California has the world's 7th largest economy,

* at $2 billion this plant is no bargain for Dominion ratepayers as a guaranteed 14% increase in rates is built into the legislation. Not included in the future costs are adding carbon capture and sequestration capabilities as they become available--if they ever becomes available. (and if it will even work here. It is still not proven that abandoned coal seams are sufficiently air tight hold the carbon).

* Plus we should add in the costs of disease from the pollutants, lost work time and productivity due to those diseases, and lost revenue from eco-tourism, not to mention the costs of more CO2 emissions, if Congress implements some sort of Carbon cap and trade system.

Water quality is a real mixed bag in this deal. Dominion is reducing treatment of returned water by boiling most of it off in the operation. But the water will still comes from the scenic and environmentally sensitive Clinch River--home of many lucrative eco-tourism businesses. The Clinch River is also the source of water for the nearby Cabo coal-fired plant, which will lower water levels even more during dry season.

I'm still digesting it all. On the one hand, not a bad showing in the heart of coal country, I suppose. But on the other, you have to wonder about the folks of that region who showed up supporting this plant.

For 100 years coal has promised to pave their streets with gold, yet they're still the most economically depressed, polluted and diseased area of the state with the state's highest per capita suicide rate, alcoholism rate, lung disease rate, and exodus rate. In the end, Virgina missed an opportunity to bury coal as a source of power.

Already nationwide 80 coal-fired plants have been taken off of the books n favor of alternative energy and energy efficiency. Even the Department of Energy has abandoned its efforts at to build a super efficient coal fired plant as unworkable. There is no such thing as Clean Coal.

The Great Oil Stampede of 2008

So much smoke all of a sudden and so little fire, not just drifting out of the Great Dismal Swamp, but belching from the proponents of offshore oil and gas drilling. I've watched for a couple of weeks now as conservationists, democrats, liberals, foreigners and just about everybody else except the real culprits were dragged through mud in the press as being the cause of our sky high gasoline prices. There are a lot of reasons why they're wrong.

First of all gasoline is expensive because we allowed our economy to be driven into the ditch, and the value of the dollar has fallen on the world market. If we were buying gasoline with Euros, gas would be the equivalent of about $2.50 US per gallon. A weak dollar makes all foreign purchases more expensive.

Second, despite what Newt Gingrich and his cohort has been busy preaching on every talk show on TV and radio, there is no ban on offshore drilling to lift. Oil companies can still drill on the offshore leases they own, and they own a lot. There is only a ban on new offshore leases. According to evidence obtained through congressional oversight hearings (the first such hearings on energy of this president's two terms), as reported by Oregon Congressman Peter DeFazio, inside the continental US offshore waters there are "44 million acres off the coast leased, 10.5 million acres of that has been developed, but the other 33.5 million acres are available for offshore drilling." According to the United States Department of Minerals Management Services, 80% of the potential offshore oil is available to be developed through existing leases, but has not been pumped by the lease holder. From the report of hearings before the congressional Committee on Natural Resources, "Between 1999 and 2007, the number of drilling permits issued for development of public lands increased by more than 361%, yet gasoline prices have also risen dramatically contradicting the argument that more drilling means lower gasoline prices. There is simply no correlation between the two."

Further, back in the 90's former President Clinton leased what used to be known as the Naval Petroleum Reserve, now known as the National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska, to the oil companies, a field which contains a known 13.4 billion barrels of oil & is the largest reserve on the continent. Since the Clinton presidency, the lease holders have drilled 25 wells and capped them all. Because oil has gone from some $20 per barrel to it's current $135 mark since those leases were let, the Oil and Gas companies have increased the value of their underground stores without pumping a single barrel from under federal lands. In short, they're sitting on their investment and watching it grow in value. Why should they pump more oil to lower the price when we're willing to pay four to five dollars per gallon?

Finally, none of the sturm und drang over offshore oil leases really matters much when the United State's oil reserve numbers are compared to the world market, which produces (and consumes) 300 billion barrels of oil per year. According to the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration the technically recoverable oil in the lower 48 states amounts to 40.92 billion barrels of oil, a drop in the bucket. Of that, only 18.17 billion barrels of oil are "unavailable for leasing or development." Compared to the worldwide oil production, the much disputed ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) fields contain about 17 days of world oil usage. All told, US estimated oil reserves (Alaska plus the oil in and offshore of the lower 48 states) are 221 billion barrels--period. That's less than one year's worldwide production of oil or, if dedicated to the US market alone, 1000 days of US usage.

In short, we pumped America dry first and that hurts us now. But here's the real pain: within the lifetime of the graduating class of 2008, China alone--at it's current rate of growth--will demand about 300 billion barrels of oil per year, the today's total production. So we're at an energy crossroads in the United States.

We can either doom our children and grandchildren to endless wars over a depleting resource like oil, or we can put this nation's talents and considerable might behind greater energy efficiency and developing alternative energy options to fuel this great nation. This is a patriotic duty we owe our country and a parental duty owe our kids. Take up the challenge of developing alternative energy today.

Green is Dead, Long Live Blue

Podcasts Worth Hearing

From the Commonwealth Club of California, Inforum series.

Adam Werbach, was the youngest and first paid director of the Sierra Club. Four years ago he, along with Michael Shellenberger and Ted Norhaus, all well known environmentalists, rocked their world by delivering their eulogy for the movement called Is Environmentalism Dead? Read Here.

Today, after enduring years of being reviled as a environmental traitor and for working with companies such as Wal-Mart, Adam is back receiving the Inforum award for 21st Century Leaders Listen Here (real player file).

Natural Pest Control

A natural pepper spray to deter animals and, it is reported, two-spotted spider mites and other insects.

1. puree two chile peppers (the hotter, the better) & some water in a blender
2. strain out solids
3. add water to make 1 gallon

Mix 1/4 cup of concentrate per gallon of fresh water in a sprayer. Add one tablespoon of liquid soap to help spray stick to your plants.

From Organic Gardening magazine, 2007, v. 54, No. 6

Putting Conserve back into Conservative

When did conserve fall out of the Conservative movement? It's a serious question for Virginians on both sides of the political divide today. Amid the dust ups about climate change and among all the tears shed for drowning polar bears, Conservatives have overlooked the underlying issue of Virginia's runaway, cash and resource wasting energy consumption. No successful businessman would add a vehicle to his fleet or a person to his staff without first being absolutely certain that he had wrung every ounce of efficiency out of his operation. Yet as a state we pay and pay some more to increase energy supplies without addressing our underlying inefficient energy usage. Energy inefficiency is not good business and it's not sound fiscal policy for the Commonwealth.

Companies as large and as diverse as General Electric, Bank of America and 3M as well as future oriented utilities like Florida Power and Light, BC Hydro and Pacific Gas and Electric have all put considerable study into America's energy future and are taking steps to insulate their companies from the coming worldwide energy crisis and inevitable rate hikes as well as rapidly repositioning their product lines and portfolios to take advantage of the New Industrial Revolution (NIR) in energy efficient generation spreading across the nation (Alliance to Save Energy- www.ase.org ). One gauge of the strength of the coming NIR is venture capital investment in Renewable Energy, steady at around $250 million per year for the last several years, suddenly blossomed to $1.5 Billion in the first six months of 2007 alone (Newsweek, 08 Oct 07). Yet Virginia's energy future stands firmly rooted in the dirty past.

In 2006 the American Council for Energy Efficient Economy ( www.aceee.org ) issued it's annual report rating the 50 states in six categories, from Utility Spending on Energy Efficiency to Building Codes to State Leading by Example. The maximum score of 44 points was earned by Vermont while the Commonwealth of Virginia scored a measly 6 points, mostly on the strength of our building codes. Fortunately for the Commonwealth, enforcement of those building codes was not rated or we would have probably fallen even further in the rankings. In the end, Virginia finished 41st in ACEEE's assessment, much lower than it appears because of the numerous two- and three-way ties above us in the rankings.

What Virginians need now is some creative thinking in Richmond about energy efficiency. Our legislature could look to Austin (TX) Energy for inspiration. Back in the early part of this century Austin Energy bought a 3-acre property and set it aside for a future coal-fired electrical plant. Today, that property has yet to be developed as a generation plant. Austin Energy, instead, opted to increase demand-side efficiency first by offering free energy audits to homes and small businesses as well as offering financing assistance and guarantees for energy efficient improvements. In the end Austin saved 600 MW of electricity through increases in energy efficiency alone and avoided building a 500 MW coal-fired generator. The cost of the new efficiency program? The citizens of Austin saved about one half the cost of the proposed billion dollar plus generation plant, and energy efficiency savings keep paying month after month after month.

In Virginia the stumbling block to utility-based efficiency programs is the way that Commonwealth utilities make money. Here, utilities only make money by selling electricity (supply-side), so there is no financial incentive for programs to reduce demand-side waste nor to limit supply-side growth. This is where proper conservative thinking in Richmond can help. We have not suffered an energy crisis in the Commonweath in modern times, but we should learn from those who have. Consider California, seventh largest economy in the world.

Like many people I got a good chuckle as California worked it's way through several energy problems over the last few decades, but California emerged with an energy system more efficient, more supply diverse, and considerably more future proof than that of complacent Virginia. In fact, because they are more efficient, the average Californian consumes only one half the energy the average Virginian does (on an annualized, per capita basis, in millions of BTUs from all sources of energy, less transportation--so as to compare residential and business use alone, Energy Information Agency - www.eia.doe.gov). As I write this, California is now on track to increase energy efficiency 1% per year over 30 years. They're halfway there. That's the equivalent of a major oil field discovered under the state, an oil field that is never depleted.

Nor does Virginia's government lead by example, as highlighted in the ACEEE ratings. Governor Kaine's 2007 Virginia Energy Plan is largely aspirational (aspirational goals having replaced Blue Ribbon Commissions in politics as the political fig leaf of choice for lack of vision and legislative inaction). The energy re-regulation bill now coming out of Richmond is largely written to favor one supply-side intensive industry. Our state legislature will not even commit to a modest Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard or enforceable Energy Efficiency standards for Virginia (again, offering only aspirational goals), even though there is a 20% payback on energy efficiency investments. My own city of Virginia Beach, is equally guilty. With 200 other cities Virginia Beach signed the Cool City Initiative, but as far as I can discover has made pitifully little progress toward energy independence nor energy efficiency for the city. Our elected leadership may not get it, but leaders in other jurisdictions do.

In Blountville, TN, for instance, the Sullivan County School District engaged in a performance contracting project to improve energy efficiency in their schools (projects from daylighting, to geothermal heating and cooling to just shutting off computers overnight--which saved the district $35-40k/year alone). No new taxes were raised for the project, the schools received millions in energy efficient upgrades and the district is saving $1 million dollars per year in energy expenditures, cash which they then put back into the classroom. Sumner Country, TN, installed geothermal heating and air conditioning in their schools and now have an extra $5k per month in cash flow to invest in education. The state of Kentucky saves $3 million per year in replacement and manpower costs by replacing every traffic signal with long lived LEDs signals ( www.kilowattours.org ). Even the most mundane application can be improved. It is estimated (FacilityManagement.com) that all the EXIT signs in the nation burn about 35 billion KWH per year. If those were replaced with more efficient LED models, it would save about 90% of the energy, the equivalent of 5 nuclear power plants.

So before Virginia agrees to yet another expensive, mountain destroying, air and water polluting, $1.5 billion coal-fired generation plant in Wise county, before we open a new power line corridor to the Ohio Valley to get yet more energy from some of the oldest, most inefficient coal-fired plants in the nation, join me on insisting that our representatives in Richmond ensure the Commonwealth is operating as efficiently as possible. Join me in putting the conserve back into Conservative.

Solar Decathlon

Every other year, twenty universities from around the world compete in the solar decathlon in (surprise!) 10 categories

• Architecture
• Engineering
• Market Viability
• Communications
• Comfort Zone
• Appliances
• Hot Water
• Lighting
• Energy Balance and
• Getting Around

the homes are limited to 800 sq. ft., for transport by truck or shipping container and, while designed for grid-tied electricity, are built off-grid on the Mall.

I've created a couple of video tours:

Introduction (win 2:12)
House by House (win 23:45)

Introduction (apple 2:12)
House by House (apple 23:45)


If you have a slow connection, right click the link, select "Save Target As", and play from the downloaded file later.
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Natural Round-Up

natural round-up from Mother Earth News

1 qt vinegar
2 TBLS canola oil
1 TBLS dish soap

Put in sprayer

Organic Insecticidal Soap

Natural Insecticide Soap from Mother Earth News


1" Fels-Naptha Soap
1 qt water
Boil to dissolve; put in lidded jar

1 tbl mixture : 1 qt water
1/4 cup rubbing alcohol

Put in sprayer