Exposing the Exposers

We are at the point that concerned citizens must hold the cold feet of anyone whose responsibility it is to uphold environmental laws close to the fire. +Albert Bates says that this is a civic duty brought to the fore by the revolutionary mandates of the Paris Agreement, as the preeminent example. The fate of humankind hangs in the balance.

Though easily jaded, I am not ready to begin my civic action efforts with civil disobedience, though there may come a time when roaring becomes my M.O.  A lot of leftist literature seems to be written by fanatical, poor-men's Donald Trumps, to borrow from The Flaming Lips. Less hostile steps may win the day in some cases, though escalation may ultimately lead to destructive behavior.

A template for reasonable objections to offending parties dealing with watershed protection regulations is provided by Community & Environmental Defense Services, offering an actionable alternative to raising hell. I noticed one glaring case in my community where Dominion Corp's contractor, IHI/Kiewit, has piled up excavated soil from the Cove Point LNG plant expansion and does not seem to protect it well from erosion.

One side (not pictured) is mostly covered with new turf, but the remainder does not seem to get the attention it should. The simple principle that Exposed Soil = Pollution makes this small mountain of dirt a likely pollution problem. The silt fence cannot be expected to catch more than half of the soil that reaches it, with the rest eventually settling in streams and ponds in the Gray's Creek subwatershed, and, ultimately the Chesapeake Bay.

I may not be fanatical or even a radical, but after Dominion's callous treatment of concerned citizens during the hearings on the LNG plant construction, I'll be ready to take the gloves off this time.

A Way to Plant Free Trees

The erosion control project that I am advocating for my church is to block surface runoff from eroding the topsoil into our detention pond by building a hugelkultur mound on the upper rim of the excavated area. This mound would be planted with a cover crop for at least one season, but after that, it would get some perennials or even trees in places where they wouldn't interfere with future building plans.

I hope we can get started with our preparations soon because we might be able to get help from The Alliance for the Chesapeake's Trees for Sacred Places program, which offers not only free trees, but technical support, training, and religiously-oriented motivation. You just need to have room to plant 60 or more trees. This may be possible, but it would surely fill up our open ground (outside the future building footprint). Teaming with another church congregation to make a total of 60 tree plantings may have to be our approach.

Alliance for the Chesapeake has partnerships with an organization called Interfaith Partners for the Chesapeake, which includes the tree planting program and a new program called RiverWise which looks at stormwater management more broadly, similar to the Watershed Stewards program, and even provides substantial financial assistance to correct problems.

It makes sense to involve church congregations in these efforts. They already have many diligent members who want to be contributors to improving their local communities, but starting with their own properties is a necessary first step.

Trees for the People

In Maryland it can be hard to see the trees for the forest, since the forests cover over 40% of the landscape. Forests offer cover, but trees offer comfort, whether from their fruits, nuts, shade or shape. A tree in a forest is just another occlusion, while a tree free to unfold can be a wonder to behold.

Photo by liliebloem CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

In case anyone in my area was planning to plant trees this Spring, the end of March is the free shipping deadline on trees from Izel Plants and Tree-Mendous Maryland. The latter is a government program for plantings on public property and the former is a clearinghouse for a few commercial nurseries specializing in native plants. Prices from either are about half of what you would pay at retail nurseries. Good deals on small numbers of trees are also to be had at Master Gardener and Garden Club plant sales.  Sotterly Plantation's is coming up at the end of April, as is the Calvert Master Gardener's on May 7. Trees planted in large quantities for conservation efforts can be ordered from the Maryland online nursery at just $1 each.

We get the urge sometimes to plant trees. We want to offset our own carbon emissions, leave a lasting token of our love of life, or maybe mark the years of our demise by a tree's increasing grandeur. We may own little land on which to plant, but who says you have to own the land?

A guerrilla tree planting methodology could involve meeting with authorities concerning the public lands nearest your usual haunts to see if they would want any more trees planted on those properties. If they are open to the idea, come back with suggestions of sites (unless they already have some in mind), species, and patterns. If they can budget for the work to be done or just for the trees, then it makes things easier the following year, but in the meantime keep a lookout in the vicinity for tree service companies working in the area and get a truckload or more of woodchips dumped on the site. If you can get 2 inches of compost (preferably with biochar) or manure and layers of newspaper and/or cardboard (weed blockers) in place before the woodchips, so much the better. The site will be ready to plant in after a year or so of this organic material decaying in situ.  Order trees between January and March for the best deals on shipping.  If the owner is unable to bear the expenses, other civic groups, like the Master Gardeners may have funds to contribute.  The steps outlined by the Tree-Mendous Maryland program capture other essentials and should be followed in conjunction with the guerrilla methodology.

So, next time you look at an open space in your community that seems barren, unattractive, and lacking purpose you now know a possible way to bring it to life. I'm not sure where I will apply it, but once our erosion control project is done at my church, I'd like to follow +Michael Judd's example "like Johnny Appleseed in spreading these patches everywhere. "

Demystifying the Woods

Photo by Brett Whaley CC BY-NC 2.0

The University of Maryland Extension's Watershed Steward program imitates the Master Gardener and the Master Naturalist programs in acquiring volunteers to be "boots on the ground" promoting care of their respective commons. There is another similar program called the Maryland Woodland Stewards program that has been around for decades under the title "The Coverts Program." The name changed in 2007, probably so as not to let it get mixed up with so many other covert programs with obscure names in this deep state vortex surrounding our nation's Capital.

The Woodland Stewards program (not covert in the usual sense) is interested in people who have acreage of forest (coverts, if you will) that they own and/or manage. I don't think they would be too interested in me, since I am responsible for less than an acre and I'm planning on converting it to a food forest.

On the other hand, there are many links to biochar and mushrooms that would make Maryland Woodland Stewards of interest to me. Before proceeding with my plans to replace most of the trees on my property, I should avail myself of the booklet and workshop entitled, "The Woods in Your Backyard," and another, "Your Woodlot and Your Wallet," with relevance to raising mushrooms. There are also resources about wood energy, which could educate me about better using the heat from making biochar. The presentations from two years' worth of MWS classes are also downloadable, along with a great number of other resources for folks like me who need more than the average level of knowledge about trees of the forest.

Getting Cred to Help the Watershed

Rain barrels are one of many changes you can make to your property for stormwater management. BayWise certification process and reading +Michael Judd's book, Edible Landscaping, I hadn't realized how important erosion control is to gardening. The organic layer of a garden is the first to wash away, so getting control of how rainwater flows is a must in setting up any planting area. The main things are to reduce the velocity of runoff and to capture nutrients before they escape.

The University of Maryland Extension notes many other features which I have incorporated into my hilly property, such as rain gardens, conservation landscaping, swales, fertilizer reduction, a pet waste station, and tree planting. Before going through Maryland's

Stormwater management is not the most tantalizing task, even less so when it requires many hands. That is why, in setting up a curriculum for the Watershed Stewards Academy, the University included lessons on educating and motivating groups to take action. County ordinances, such as Calvert's offer a negative incentive to meeting minimum standards, i.e. do it, or we will do it for you (on your dime). Right now, my church faces a choice between taking the initiative or the risk of getting negatively incentivized to remediate the erosion that has occurred over the past several years into their detention pond.

A motivator of those who seek certification through the university extension as a Master Watershed Steward Volunteer, or Master Naturalist Volunteer, or (in my case) Master Gardener Volunteer is the scale at which you can hope to have an impact.  It's not just on your own property, but in many parts of the locale.

Water is every bit as critical to our future as food, and even more urgent. Expanding local applications of biochar and mycorestoration as well as the exigent need at my church could draw me into making the jump to the Watershed Steward program, ne: Master Gardener. There is only a little while to decide, since the application deadline for the next class is April 22. There are information sessions tonight (March 23) and next Thursday for anyone interested.

Eco-solution for E. Coli

When I became aware, a couple of years ago, that roof runoff may contain some heavy metals that could potentially find their way into your food garden, I took a bucket of biochar and dumped it into the bottom of my rain barrel. Problem solved. What I didn't realize is that I was solving another (bigger) problem of roof runoff - e. coli bacteria.

To be honest, my quick fix may not have solved the problems; (a) because I didn't really have a problem - my rain barrel feeds my ornamental rain garden, and (b) the biochar filter inside a rain barrel should probably be a little more meticulously constructed and maintained.

Now that I am about to set up a rain barrel that will be used to spray my mushroom logs and save money on my water bill, I definitely need to think about the contaminants in the water. The draft Certified Naturally Grown standards for mushroom growers does not address roof runoff specifically, but does cover surface water. Could a biochar filter be used to meet the CNG standard? Let's explore.

The water standards for mushrooms are the same as for irrigation water. A study done at Rutgers University found that the major concern for roof runoff is e. coli contamination, rather than heavy metals (though lead and zinc warrant measurement). This bacterial contamination could stem from dead animals and feces, particularly in gutters (but also in rain barrels and on the roof, itself). Occasionally, the study found e. coli in excess of the limit coming from a roof in their study.

It turns out that biochar captures and sequesters e. coli bacteria, as +Kathleen Draper points out, referring to research done at McGill University showing that biochar filters out e. coli. The excellent thesis by Shoieb Akaram Arief Ismail shows how large pore biochar with particle sizes up to 2 cm (such as the wood based product that I make with my pyramid kiln) is a significantly better e. coli filter (a couple orders of magnitude) than sandy soil alone.

Granted, the filtering action in this study took place over 24 hours, but some reduction of e. coli could be expected by less than a minute of residence time in a rain barrel partially filled with biochar. The practical limit is how badly the water flow would be reduced by the filter. This can be discovered empirically. The biochar should be rinsed thoroughly prior to adding to the rain barrel in order to prevent washout of fine particles which could clog the outlet. In addition, gutters should be cleaned regularly and the biochar filter changed annually when the rain barrel is scrubbed clean for the season.

The rain barrel volume you are sacrificing to the filter may require a larger barrel. I got a good deal on a 65 gallon barrel, which I think will do just fine. Even a 55 gallon barrel should be big enough. For my homeys, Baltimore is having a truckload sale of them and Calvert County has a half-price deal for residents that comes with a free workshop, both in April.

Avoiding Poison Mushrooms (at the Market)

Not all edible organic mushrooms are safe to eat.  As +Paul Stamets points out in Mycelium Running - How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World, some mushrooms from China, for example, might have accumulated heavy metals from the high degree of ambient pollution where they were grown, yet still be considered organic. The draft standards for Certified Naturally Grown (CNG) mushrooms should mitigate this problem, as hyperaccumulation of heavy metals is built into its safeguards. To wit:

• Substrate may not be directly placed on any surface contaminated with heavy metals or other synthetic pollutants. 

For growers, CNG offers a clearer path to producing wholesome mushrooms than the organic program followed by most other agricultural producers. The National Organic Program (NOP) requirements may take measures beyond what should reasonably be applied to an organic mushroom farm, since fungi are nourished and cared for differently than plants and animals. However, if a beginning grower could convince themselves that they comply with the CNG standard, and try to align that with the NOP requirements, as long as they are not grossing over $5,000 of organic product sales per year, then they should self-certify as "organic." 

Beyond $5K in sales, official certification is required. At that point, I would probably opt for the CNG certification, rather than organic. After an inspection by one of the incumbent experts (possibly +Tradd Cotter, himself), as the only CNG grower in my area (the closest is vegetable grower, Working Over Thyme Farm in Brandywine), I could then be an inspector of new mushroom farms seeking the CNG label.

As far as buying mushrooms, my advice is to try to buy organic mushrooms, and when the certified naturally grown label for mushrooms becomes available, opt for that. In either case, you'll be safeguarding yourself from pesticides and other poisons that you could get in mushrooms which seem to eat about anything fed to them.