Tag: yard

Repairing Backyard Rivers

  • The Conservation Resource Alliance works with property-owners to repair their rivers from problems such as erosion (Photo courtesy of the Conservation Resource Alliance)

American rivers have gone
through a lot in the last century.
Their twists and turns have been
turned into straight channels.
Their banks have been washed away.
And pollution is still flowing off
farm fields and city streets. Fixing
these rivers is a big challenge. A lot
of the land that rivers run through is
privately owned. So that means – to
fix a river, you often have to work with
landowners. Rebecca Williams has the story
of one group that thinks they’ve found
the secret to winning people’s trust:

Transcript

American rivers have gone
through a lot in the last century.
Their twists and turns have been
turned into straight channels.
Their banks have been washed away.
And pollution is still flowing off
farm fields and city streets. Fixing
these rivers is a big challenge. A lot
of the land that rivers run through is
privately owned. So that means – to
fix a river, you often have to work with
landowners. Rebecca Williams has the story
of one group that thinks they’ve found
the secret to winning people’s trust:

(bird sound)

Di Rau is the fourth generation of her family to farm this land in Northern
Michigan. Her grandpa homesteaded the land and set up a sawmill.

“It was the primary industry – I mean there was logging camps just
everywheres you turned.”

Back then the rivers were the only way to get those logs downstream. But
years of rolling logs down the bank into the river were causing serious
erosion. Huge trees were crashing into the water.

Rau says she didn’t know any of her family’s legacy until one day, when a
local group gave her a call. The more she learned about the problems, the
more she felt, well…

“Guilt! (laughs) Because of my ancestors. It’s like practicing medicine. It’s
always evolving and you don’t really know lots of times what you’re doing
wrong until another generation comes along and tells you this is what
you’ve created. Then it’s like okay let’s do something about it.”

So Rau let construction workers on her land. And now, ten years later, she
says it’s beautiful.

“Go down and just listen to creatures. You have deer come splashing
through, we have a bear around here, he likes to visit, couple bobcat.
There’s a lot of wildlife – it’s pretty cool.”

The woman who won Di Rau over is Kim Balke. She’s a biologist with the
group Conservation Resource Alliance. She says working with Di Rau was
pretty easy. But not everyone opens their doors so quickly.

There was the divorced couple who still owned land together, the fighting
brothers, the neighbors who nobody liked.

“Other people have said you know don’t go to their house they’ll greet you
with a shotgun!”

So far, no shotguns. Balke says she’s learned not to listen to what neighbors
say about each other. She approaches each person one by one, and talks to
them about what’s at stake. Her sales pitch? We’re just here to help – and
hey, we’ll pay most of the bill.

“You know a lot of our projects are erosion control, when banks are
completely falling into the stream – landowners, it’s not hard for them to
realize they’re losing property.”

But Balke says, still, you can’t just rush in and tell people what to do. She
says it can take months or even years to warm homeowners up to the
project.

That’s because fixing rivers is serious work. If a riverbank is eroding or an
old bridge is falling into the water, we’re talking about heavy construction
equipment. You have to be willing to have bulldozers and port-a-johns on
your lawn for a long time. And you might have to lose a tree.

“Things can look a little rough when you’re doing construction and some
people are a little worried about change.”

Balke says she just takes her time. She sends letters, sits down for coffee,
lets people think it over.

And it’s not just homeowners who Balke’s group needs to win over. There
are road commissions, tribes, sportfishers, and environmentalists. People
who sometimes just don’t trust each other.

Amy Beyer directs Conservation Resource Alliance. She says her group has
gotten all those people together.

“Yes they have been historically mortal enemies and that doesn’t mean all of
the baggage falls away but I can tell you it feels awfully good to go around
the circle when we complete a project and hear all the different voices and
how they’re celebrating that success.”

Beyer says this is not a quick and easy process – it can take years to get
people to actually find some little thing to agree on. But she says you can
fix a river without ever going to court.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Growing Food – Not Lawns

  • Aileen Eilert and her plastic wagon loaded with tomato and pepper starter plants, headed for the subdivision one block over to campaign (Photo by Ashley Gross)

Many environmentalists knock the suburbs. They don’t like how

dependent suburbs are on cars. They don’t like the sprawl, the large

houses and huge lawns. They think it’s a waste of land. Ashley Gross

reports… one woman is on a campaign to see some of those expansive

lawns turned into something a little more productive:

Transcript

Many environmentalists knock the suburbs. They don’t like how

dependent suburbs are on cars. They don’t like the sprawl, the large

houses and huge lawns. They think it’s a waste of land. Ashley Gross

reports… one woman is on a campaign to see some of those expansive

lawns turned into something a little more productive:

(sound of movie music)

Ever since soldiers returned from World War II, the suburbs have been portrayed as
the family-friendly ‘good life.’

“And so they joined the stream of family life in the suburbs. Soon to become part of
its familiar sights. Soon to absorb its familiar sounds.”

One of the most constant of those familiar sounds is a lawnmower.

(sound of lawnmower)

That noise just grates on Aileen Eilert’s nerves. Her goal is to live a more
environmentally-friendly life in the suburbs.

(sound of opening door and walking outside)

She does have a lawn. But she and her husband are converting much of it to
vegetable garden plots.

“So I have some snow peas growing here and here’s you know four tomato plants
and Bruce planted some peppers all the way down here.”

Eilert says gardening means she drives less often to the grocery store – and she’s
not buying produce shipped in from a different continent.

That’s important to her. Eilert says she decided to use less oil after her nephew was
killed in Iraq in 2005.

“You know, we’re fighting over there and it was about oil, and so I just thought I’ve
got to do something. I mean, it’s too late for me to do anything about my nephew,
and he was such a good kid. I’d like it to be where people – oh we don’t need to buy
oil from countries that may not be friendly to us or may not be stable.”

Eilert is not alone. People in the suburbs are beginning to think about their lifestyles
in a different way.

Evan McKenzie is a professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago He researches the
politics of suburbia.

“The stuff that was planned and put in place in the 60s and 70s and even the 80s, I
think in some cases is giving way to new ideas. I mean they’re selling and giving
away rain barrels in the suburbs so people collect rainwater to water their plants
with. I never heard of that before.”

Not everyone is onboard with the environmental movement in the suburbs yet. Last
year Americans spent almost 11 billion dollars on do-it-yourself lawn care just to
keep the grass green.

Aileen Eilert wants to change that. She calls her new campaign “Grow Food, Not
Lawns.”

Her approach is one-on-one. Today she’s pulling a plastic wagon loaded with
tomato and pepper starter plants. She’s headed for the subdivision one block over.

(sound of wagon)

Eilert approaches Tim Lakis as he mows his lawn. He gives him a pepper plant.
Then comes the pitch.

Eilert: “Lawns actually use a lot of chemicals if you put chemicals on your lawn and
that gets into the water system.”

Lakis: “Okay.”

Eilert: “And then also your lawn mower has way more emissions than a car would,
not that I’m saying that…”

Lakis: “Okay, I’ll look it over.”

Aside from some strange looks, that went pretty well.

But Eilert learns pretty quickly there’s way more gardening going on here in this
neighborhood she thought. She’d pegged it as a lawn-addicted wasteland. But this
subdivision’s residents are kinda green.

Eilert: “I assume you use a gas mower?”

Man: “No. Electric.”

Eilert: “Do you? Oh you are just the perfect person to talk to today.”

Woman: “I mean, every year I grow my tomatoes and peppers and zucchinis.”

Second Man: “Every year I try to get rid of more grass and put in more plants.”

Eilert even gets a recipe for cooking dandelions. She leaves the subdivision
encouraged.

“People were concerned and people did think it was a good idea to have gardens
and they’d be willing to make a little more of a sacrifice to make the earth a little bit
better.”

She’ll be visiting more subdivisions soon, trying to get more people to turn those
suburban lawns into gardens. And maybe get them thinking, just a little about other
things they could do.

For The Environment Report, I’m Ashley Gross.

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Keeping Your Lawn From Bugging You

  • There's a movement to stop using pesticides and sprays on your lawn (Photo by Ilja Wanka)

A lot of us have a love-hate relationship
with our lawns. We love them when they’re lush.
We hate them when they’re full of dandelions and
dead patches. It’s easy to have someone come out
and spray pesticides to take care of weeds and bugs.
But some people say it’s not necessary and could
do more harm than good. Rebecca Williams reports:

Transcript

A lot of us have a love-hate relationship
with our lawns. We love them when they’re lush.
We hate them when they’re full of dandelions and
dead patches. It’s easy to have someone come out
and spray pesticides to take care of weeds and bugs.
But some people say it’s not necessary and could
do more harm than good. Rebecca Williams reports:

So, you might be using pesticides on your lawn right now. And of
course, the pesticide industry says that’s okay.

The industry says the chemicals are safe to use on the lawn if you use
them correctly.

Alan James is president of Responsible Industry for a Sound
Environment, or RISE. It’s a trade group for pesticide companies.

“If individuals or professional applicators read the labels and follow
labels, the likelihood of misuse of pesticides is virtually zero because the
labels provide all the information a consumer or professional needs to
apply products both efficiently and safely.”

But the problem is, not everybody reads the label.

Alan James says if you’re hiring someone to spray your lawn you should
make sure they’re certified and insured. You should also take your kids’
and pet’s toys off the lawn before they spray.

But a lot of people say there’s no point in using chemicals just to make
your lawn look good.

Jay Feldman is with the group Beyond Pesticides. He says of the 30
most common lawn pesticides, most of them are suspected by the
Environmental Protection Agency to cause cancer, birth defects or other health problems.

“There’s a range of adverse effects that are indicated as a part of the
pesticide registration program at EPA. EPA knows this information.
Why not remove pesticides from the equation, especially in light of the
fact that they’re not really necessary?”

There’s a movement to stop using pesticides in North America. Both
Ontario and Quebec have banned the sale and cosmetic use of
pesticides. And Home Depot in Canada recently said it will stop selling
traditional pesticides all together by the end of the year.

So if you’re not going to use pesticides, what do you do?

That’s a question Kevin Frank gets a lot. He’s an extension agent at
Michigan State University and an expert on lawns.

“I love to mow my lawn on the weekends because nobody can call me on
the phone or email me with questions.”

He’s been showing me green, healthy test plots of grass and some that
look sad and neglected. The scientists here have been working to find
ways to have good-looking lawns without a lot of chemicals.

Back in his office, Kevin Frank says he tells people they shouldn’t be
afraid to experiment.

“Do you have it in you to let it go for one season and see what happens?
And it could be ugly, so you’ve got to be prepared for that!”

He says a healthy, dense lawn is actually really good at fighting off
weeds and pests all on its own. So, how do you get a healthy, dense lawn
without a lot of chemicals? Frank says it might take a couple years to get
there. And it means going against conventional lawn advice.

“We’ve done a great deal of research here at Michigan State that runs
contrary to what I call ‘turf dogma’. You know: water deeply and
infrequently – and we’ve shown if you do it on a more frequent basis you
end up with a healthier plan overall.”

He recommends watering lightly – just 10 minutes – every day instead
of soaking the lawn once a week. Frank says it’s also good to fertilize
twice a year, use a mulch mower, and mow high instead of giving the
grass a buzz cut.

He says that could make your lawn so healthy, it might mean you won’t
need to spray or hire someone to spray your lawn.

He says the biggest adjustment in reducing pesticide use is managing
your expectations, and deciding how many weeds and bugs you can live
with.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

The Answer Is Blowin’ in the Wind

  • The Tehachapi Wind Farm in California. The turbines produce enough electricity to meet the needs of 350,000 people each year (Photo courtesy of the Department Energy)

Large wind turbines are popping up all over
the United States. But some homeowners are beginning
to put up their own backyard wind turbines. Lester
Graham reports:

Transcript

Large wind turbines are popping up all over
the United States. But some homeowners are beginning
to put up their own backyard wind turbines. Lester
Graham reports:

Dozens of companies are popping up, making these smaller wind generators.
Southwest Windpower is one of the older manufacturers.

Andy Kruse is a Vice President there.

He says these smaller wind turbines can supply power for houses on the grid; maybe
even enough to sell some electricity back to the power company. But some states
haven’t passed the laws necessary to require power companies to allow the turbines to
be hooked up to the grid.

“States that have yet to do that, you know, they have to question it. I mean, some of
them have never even heard something like this either for solar or for wind, so it’s a
learning curve for them.”

Kruse says home-grown wind power is starting to catch on, with thousands of people
asking about getting their own small wind turbine put up in their backyard.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Rats Scurrying to the Suburbs

  • Life in the suburbs is idyllic to some people... (Photo by Bon Searle)

Unusually heavy rains this summer are partly to blame
for rats pouring out of the sewers in droves all over the country, and the nasty vermin are relocating to some of the most pristine
neighborhoods. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Joyce
Kryszak explains what caused the rat invasion and
what’s being done to evict them:

Transcript

Unusually heavy rains this summer are partly to blame for rats pouring out of the sewers
in droves all over the country. And the nasty vermin are relocating to some of the most
pristine neighborhoods. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Joyce Kryszak explains what
caused the rat invasion and what’s being done to evict them:


Piercing blue autumn skies and billowing white clouds drift across the chimneys of this modest,
but perfectly manicured suburb. There aren’t even many leaves crunching under foot. Town workers
have already come and vacuumed them all away. But there’s a nasty little secret scurrying under
the porches and behind the garden sheds in this Western New York town. County Sanitation Chief
Peter Tripi takes us for a peek.


“Can you see the teeth marks here? That’s actually rat gnaw marks. And there’s the garbage bag.
And that’s what we found when we went to this property.”


Now, you might be thinking that we trudged through derelict grass and scattered debris to find
these rat clues. Nope. This is a gorgeous, manicured yard – with not a blade of grass out of
place. But Tripi says rats aren’t choosy.


“You would never think by looking side to side that there would be a rat problem in this yard.
Doesn’t matter what neighborhood you live in, or how much money you’ve got. There’s no difference.
They just like your food.”


And you’d be surprised where rats can find food. A garbage can left even briefly uncovered, a
neglected bird feeder, uhhh… dog feces… and even a compost pile.


“Absolutely. This is a rat condo. It’s a grass-clipping compost pile that basically housed rats
to go a hundred yard radius all the way around to the different houses.”


Tripi says rats had to get creative with their housing. A summer of extremely heavy rains drove
the out of the sewers and into some previously rat-free neighborhoods. And with the West Nile
virus killing off millions of birds, the rats have less competition for the food they’re finding
above ground. The consequence is a virtual rat infestation all the way from New York and Illinois
to Virginia, Michigan and L.A. In Kenmore, there have been four thousand rat complaints – nearly
double last year.


(Sound of garbage truck)


Of course, none of this is news to the garbage collectors. They see the problem up close and
personal. Twenty-year veteran Louie Tadaro says this past summer is the worst he’s ever seen.


“Across the street there’s an alleyway and there had to be like ten of them in there, And we
started chasing them with garbage cans trying to kill them, but we couldn’t. By the time we
got there they just split.”


The problem is, they don’t split for long. Vector Control Chief Tripi says now that the rats
have relocated from the sewers to upscale accommodations, they kind of like it.


“And what that means is that they want to live with us. They want to be near our garbage and
our bird feeders. The problem with that is that rats carry diseases.”


We all know about stuff like typhus and the bubonic plague. But there are emerging diseases,
such as a pet-killer called Leptospiroris. It’s killing dogs all across the country. Tripi
says they need to get rid of the rats before the disease starts spreading to humans. So, his
team is taking the rats on, one yard at a time.


Tripi and his Vector control team set rat traps, they fill bait boxes with poison, and – when
they have to – they issue citations to residents who don’t heed the town’s new “rat control rules.” Covered garbage cans only. Clear away all brush. Clean up scattered bird seed and dog feces. Slowly, the rules seem to be working.


(sound of Tripi looking into rat trap)


Still Tripi says it’s mostly educational warfare. And he says now – heading into winter – is the
best time to nip the problem. If the rats get cozy, not only will they stay, they will multiply.
Fully nourished, one adult rat can breed up to sixty baby rats a year.


“The adult rat can live on a little bit of food, but he can’t procreate unless he has a lot of
food source. And they can’t live through the winter unless they’re warm and fattened up.”


So now is the time to – quite literally – put a lid on it. Keep those garbage cans covered, unless
you want some uninvited furry guests this winter, and many, many more come spring.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Joyce Kryszak.

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Romancing the American Chestnut

  • American chestnuts (left) are smaller than Chinese and European chestnuts. The Chinese and European varieties are also resistant to the blight, making the imports more desirable to growers. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Food is always a big part of the holidays. But one
traditional food has – for the most part – disappeared from American tables. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Food is always a big part of the holidays. But one traditional food has – for the most part – disapeared from American tables. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


(Sound of Nat King Cole singing, “Chestnuts roasing on an open fire…”)


That old chestnut of a song romanticizes roasting chestnuts as a part of the holidays. But a lot of us have never even seen chestnuts, let alone roasted them on an open fire. Chestnuts used to be a major part of the Eastern hardwood forest. There were millions of them. In fact, 25 percent of all the mature trees were chestnuts. But a blight, imported with some Chinese chestnut trees, slowly wiped out the American chestnuts. Now, they’re gone.


Well… almost. Much of the root stock is still alive. Sprouts grow until the blight knocks them back again. A blight only hurts the standing tree where it branches out.


And, in a few isolated pockets in the Midwest, the blight hasn’t reached the trees. A few American chestnuts are alive and growing and some of them are free of the blight. At Nash Nursuries in central Michigan, owner Bill Nash is guiding us through a rare sight… a grove of American chestnuts.


“These are 20 years old and as you can see, they’re fairly good sized. The American chestnut is quite a rapid growing tree. It’s well-suited for our climate, so it doesn’t have any of the problems that some of the hybrids do as far as growing and cultural care you have to take care of them. The Americans, you get them started and they’re pretty much on their own.”


In a few places in Michigan and Wisconsin there are small groves of chestnuts. They’re prized trees. They’re great for shade. The hardwood is rot resistant and makes great furniture and fence posts. And the chestnuts are eaten by humans and wildlife alike. Bill Nash says the tree will be popular again if it ever overcomes the blight that’s hit it so hard.


“The American chestnut will make another big comeback in this country as a yard tree, as a timber tree, as a wildlife tree.”


That part about a wildlife tree is more important than just worrying about the squirrels and bunnies. Chestnuts were an important food source for all kinds of animals.


Andrew Jarosz is a plant biologist at Michigan State University. He says the loss of chestnuts has been hard on wildlife populations.


“Chestnuts shed nuts in a more regular pattern than oaks, which will have what are called mast years – where they’ll have major crops, massive crops one year and very small crops in other years – which means it’s either feast or famine if you’re depending on oaks.”


Since the blight first began hitting American chestnuts about a century ago, researchers have been looking into all kinds of ways to stop it. One way is to cross it with the Chinese chestnut which has a couple of genes that resist the blight. But it takes a long time to breed out the Chinese characteristics from the American chestnuts and still keep the resistant genes.


Another approach is genetic manipulation. Genetically modifying the American chestnut tree to make it disease resistant. Again, work is underway, but it takes a long time. And even after success, it’s likely some people won’t like the idea of releasing a genetically modified organism into the wild.


The final approach worked in Europe when the blight hit there. It seems there’s a naturally occuring virus that kills the blight. It spread naturally in Europe. There are a few groves in Michigan that have naturally acquired the virus and it’s working to keep the blight at bay. Andrew Jarosz is working on the research. He says the trick is figuring out how to get the virus to spread to other trees short of manually spreading it on cankers infected by the blight.


“If we’re literally talking about millions of trees across probably, you know, the eastern third of the country, we obviously can’t treat every canker on every tree. And we need to be able to figure out a way to deploy the virus in a way that it can spread.”


Even with all that hopeful research, it’ll be ten years at least before some practical solutions end up in the forests, and Jarosz believes a couple of centuries before the American chestnut holds the place it once did in the forests.


Bill Nash knows it’ll be a while before there are major changes, but he is optimistic about the American chestnut.


“Oh, I would think the tree has a bright future. There’s enough people working on that, enough programs going on now… So, I would suspect that in the not-too-distant future we should have some of this progress made. You know, Robert Frost in his poem predicted the comeback of the American chestnut, that something would arise to offset that blight. And we’re starting to see that.”


Frost put it this way: “Will the blight end the chestnut? The farmers rather guess not, It keeps smoldering at the roots And sending up new shoots Till another parasite Shall come to end the blight.”


Seems Frost was an optimist too.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Essay: Mourning the Destruction of a Flower Garden

It’s the time of year when many gardens reach their peak – and even grow a little bit wild. That has made one essayist’s loss all the more painful. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly remembers a special garden:

Transcript

It’s the time of year when many gardens reach their peak –
and even grow a little bit wild. That has made one essayist’s loss all the more painful.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly remembers a special garden:


It looked like a crime scene.


Everything in the garden was gone.


The morning glories no longer crowded the sidewalk. Sunflowers were cut down in their
prime. There was a hole instead of the lilac. And one stubby trunk – where someone had
hacked off the sand cherry tree.


We started the garden just over a year ago. I found out I was pregnant and next thing I
know, my husband is incubating black-eyed susans on top of the refrigerator.


He seemed to have that nesting instinct. Suddenly, he was spending every weekend at
the nursery. He came home with tools and soil and plants and even trees.


The scraggly yard in front of our apartment building was being transformed.
For me, it was just what I needed – a patch of nature in the middle of the city.


This summer, the flowers came back. And we shared the garden with our 6 month old.
We were pointing out the buds on the trees, and the bees buzzing around.


We didn’t tend it much as we got ready to move. And it grew pretty wild.
There were flowers, but also grass and weeds.


Two weeks after we moved, all that life was torn up. Eleven different kinds of plants – all
carefully chosen and tended. We visited them every time we walked in or out of the
building.


I can’t imagine the person who could just rip flowers out of the ground. It was a tiny,
imperfect oasis. Now, it’s just dirt.


Ironically, the only thing that survived was a plum tree we planted on the city property –
between the sidewalk and the road. We thought city workers might pull it up – since it
wasn’t official. Instead, they plunked an iron gate around it and now, every week, a city
truck comes to water it.


We always laugh about how it survived its brush with the city officials.


Now, that tree has proved it really is a survivor – but all that perennial color that was
once a backdrop to it is gone. It was not just a bit of our past, but an investment in the
future as well.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.

To Bag or Not to Bag Grass Clippings

  • Reporter David Hammond's yard. He has the vague notion that not bagging grass clippings is more environmentally friendly. (Photo by David Hammond)

At one point or another, most of us have had to do yard work. If it was one of your chores as a kid, you probably developed a strong aversion to it, but as some of us get older, get married, and move to the suburbs, something interesting happens. Taking care of the yard becomes important, but is there an environmental impact? As part of an ongoing series, called “Your Choice; Your Planet,” the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Hammond takes a closer look at his own back yard:

Transcript

At one point or another, most of us have had to do yard work. If it was one of your chores as a kid,
you probably developed a strong aversion to it. But as we get older, get married, and move to the
suburbs, something interesting happens. Taking care of the yard becomes important. But is there
an environmental impact? As part of an ongoing series, called “Your Choice; Your Planet,” the
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Hammond examines his own backyard.


To bag or not to bag? That is the question. Well, at least that’s my question… on most Saturdays
say about 10am.


(lawnmower sound up far away distance)


That’s when the men of my neighborhood head outside for their weekly call to arms. It’s yard day.
And once the first mower starts, like fruit flies to a banana, everyone heads outside to do their
mowing, edging, and weeding. It’s a procession that lasts all weekend.


(lawnmower sound up close distance, up and under)


This is a new neighborhood… only a couple of years old. Everybody has put in new landscaping,
and everybody spends a lot of time taking care of their lawns. Brian Van Netta is one of my
neighbors.


“It’s the showpiece of the house. It’s the first thing that people see when they drive by and it sets the tone for the rest of the house.”


Around here, that means bagging your lawn clippings. You know the routine. Mow a couple of
strips across the yard. Stop the mower. Take the grass bag and dump it into the compost bag.
Put the grass bag back on the mower. Mow a couple more strips then dump again. Then repeat
all afternoon.


I think it’s lunacy… a waste of the weekend. Something keeping me from solving really important
issues like: Does my beer taste great or is it less filling? I’ve also have a vague notion that not
bagging is better environmentally, but I can’t back it up with facts. So I decide to investigate.


(lawnmower sound out)


First stop – Wade Martingdale. He’s a neighbor who’s worked in the landscape business. Around
here, his word carries weight. Unfortunately for me, he recommends bagging.


“If you have a real full turf grass, you know, real thick and full, that when you cut your grass, the
grass clippings are so thick that actually strangles out your grass, its doesn’t let the water get to the
roots, the air, and then what water does get to the roots, it won’t dry so it can promote disease.”


He also says bagging makes a yard look better… usually as he’s looking at my yard.


“You can’t really tell from a distance, but you can tell up close. Just like your grass has a lot of
clumps in it…” (pause… laughter)


I was getting worried. If bagging was really the best environmental and the best neighborly thing to
do, I might actually have to start. No sense getting kicked out of poker night on account of some
grass clippings, but as I looked down my street at all the 30-gallon bags waiting to be picked up, I wondered where all that waste was going.


(sound of trucks picking up waste – up and under)


Canton Waste Recycling handles all of the recycling pickups in my town. Each week, they pick up
yard waste from nearly 20,000 homes, and then haul it to a regional processing center. There it’s
turned into compost and sold to landscapers and fertilizer companies. The only caveat is that the
yard waste collected from the neighborhoods can’t have any debris in it. If there are stumps or
rocks or concrete in the compost bags, then an entire truckload can be wasted. When that
happens, it gets sent to the landfill.


(begin fading truck sound)


So assuming that folks in my neighborhood are not sneaking any dead cats into their yard waste…
bagging seems like a decent bet environmentally. Sure, there is energy used to pick up and
process the yard waste, but the program employs a dozen local people. I had to give it thumbs up.


(truck sound out)


But now, my worry had turned to panic. I could see the rest of my summer out in front of me. No
more pool. No more picnics. No more Sea Breezes at high tea. No, what I saw was a sweat-stained, fat guy lugging 30-gallon compost bags to the curb. That was going to be my summer.
Hell, it was going to be the rest of my summers.


My last hope was The Huron River Watershed Council. They’re a local environmental group and
have developed a lawn care tip sheet. As I read through it, I started to feel the ol’ fun quotient
starting to rise. That’s because the tip sheet recommended not bagging your clippings. That is, if
you mulched them well when you cut them. Laura Rubin is the Executive Director.


“By leaving them there, they are sort of leaching those nutrients right back into the soil. So when
you mulch them, and you leave them, they just naturally put those nutrients back into the ground
and that’s what the soil needs.”


Rubin says that those added nutrients would allow me to save money because I wouldn’t have to
buy as much fertilizer. I also wouldn’t have to buy the composting bags. Rubin added that she’s
not against community compost programs. Just that leaving the clippings was a simpler
alternative.


“Community-wide composting programs are great and if you have a good one, you can’t go wrong.
It’s just changing the waste stream to a different area, but I don’t want to stress that there’s sort of
a ‘good way’ and a ‘bad way.’ If you send it to a composting program, you are still recycling and composting
that up rather than bagging it, and sending it to the landfill is the worst.”


So in the great bagging debate, it seems that both sides can claim the environmental high ground.
As long as I mulch my lawn clippings well, I can continue not bagging in good conscience. And for
the hardy souls who do bag? You’re good too. In fact, next Saturday, as I watch you schlepping
all those bags to the curb, I’ll tip a glass to you.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m David Hammond.

Related Links

Essay: Tuning in to Urban Frogs

  • Ed Herrmann tries to hear some frogs through the traffic near the Rouge River. (Photo by Ed Herrmann)

Each Spring, thousands of people spend their evenings listening to frogs and toads. It’s not just for fun. They’re helping assess the water quality of rivers and wetlands around the country. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ed Herrmann joined the search for amphibians, and has this essay:

Transcript

Each Spring, thousands of people spend their evenings listening to frogs and toads. It’s
not just for fun. They’re helping assess the water quality of rivers and wetlands around
the country. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ed Herrmann joined the search for
amphibians, and has this essay:


I’ve always enjoyed being outside and listening to nature. Recording nature sounds is a
hobby of mine. So when I saw an ad asking for people to listen for frogs and toads, I
thought, “All right. Beats watching campaign commercials.”


I called up Friends of the Rouge…(that’s a local group dedicated to helping out the Rouge
River watershed) and a few days later I got a package in the mail. It was full of maps and
information, and had a CD with the songs of the local frogs and toads. I studied my area,
and found some good looking wet spots where I thought they might live.


I memorized the sound of the Wood Frog (sound), Chorus Frog (sound), Spring Peeper
(sound), and American Toad. Then, on the first night when the temperature and wind
conditions were just right, I headed out to hear some frogs.


(sound of traffic roaring by)


I don’t know what I was thinking. This is suburban Detroit, not exactly a wildlife refuge.
In fact, the only animal I see is a rabbit dodging traffic. And the only thing I hear is…
(more traffic sound)


The Rouge River flows into the Detroit River and then Lake Erie. It used to be one of the
dirtiest rivers around, mainly from all the industry down by the mouth. That problem is
more or less under control but now there’s a larger one.


If you look at a map from the 1970s, you see miles of wetlands, small farms and
orchards. Today you see nonstop subdivisions and shopping malls. It might seem like
progress to you, but for the river, the constant barrage of fertilizers, pesticides, soap and
other chemicals that everybody uses to keep their suburbs looking pretty is a lot worse
than an occasional dose of battery acid from a factory. Also having acres of concrete
instead of wetlands means there’s nothing to soak up and filter the water, which means
after a big rain, it floods. It’s obvious this river needs some help.


(sound of river)


In 1998, volunteers began surveying the frogs and toads in the Rouge watershed. These
creatures were chosen because they sing, so they’re easy to track. The reason they’re
good indicators is that, like other amphibians, they absorb water through their skin. That
means they get poisoned by everything that we in the civilized world pour into the water.
Plus, their eggs hatch in water and their larvae (the tadpoles) live in water. It’s pretty
simple: if the water is good, there’s plenty of frogs and toads. If not, they disappear.


So, night after night, I’m out there listening. Listening in the dark. Listening hard.


Not a peep.


I’m beginning to think that the price of all these well-manicured lawns is a silent spring.
Then finally one night, (sound of American toads) the good old American toad! All
right, it is the most common species around, but at least it’s a start.


(sound of chorus frogs and green frogs)


A few weeks later, I join a group at a “mitigated” wetland. That means that when a
developer decided that a real wetland would be the perfect place to build condos and a
golf course, the government said, “Sure, go ahead. Drain it. Just be sure to dig a hole
over here and fill it with water.” Now, five years later, some frogs have moved in and
seem to be fine.


But they still have a little problem…


(jet roars overhead, followed by a few green frogs)


Ah, location, location. This new wetland is right
next to the airport.


Now, the reason these frogs sing is to attract a mate. So if nobody hears them, there are
not going to be any tadpoles to make next year’s frogs. In order to survive, they need not
only to sing, but to be heard.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Ed Herrmann.


(frogs fade out)

Related Links

Commentary – The Grass Is Always Greener

With warm weather comes America’s annual lawn competition.
Homeowners spend time and money in an effort to achieve a thick, green
carpet of grass, sometimes hiring professionals to apply herbicides,
pesticides, and fertilizers to their yards. Great Lakes Radio
Consortium
commentator, Julia King, is opting out of what she considers an
unhealthy
practice. For this, she hopes to be rewarded: