If you thought 'seed bombs' were an impressive concept then you are going to be blow away with the subtlety of this new weapon. While seed bombs are an amazing piece of ingenuity their effectiveness compared with this piece of GG arsenal could be likened to a one-shot rifle versus a semi-automatic.

Embrace the next wave of blooming terror to hit our concrete jungles - check it out....

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Now I'm not one to complain about other sites using my feed, provided they credit me with a link back to my blog. But this site wasn't even prepared to do that. While it all looked above board showing clickable links under each blog's name, the links just led to another page on this person's site.

Not surprising, when I tried to find some way to contact the owner, the Contact Us link was also bogus. So off I set for some moral justice trying to locate some info about the site's owner. After checking out the Whois data (most of it kept to private - surprise! surprise) it did list the dns data (or hosting service).

A quick email and a fast response indicated that the Host was happy with the site and that they hadn't contravened their Terms of Service. I pointed out that the links on the site were not external - therefore not crediting any individual blog - and while I didn't get a follow-up email, it was only a few hours later that this site no longer existed.

One small victory for garden bloggers!

On the other side of the world jodi was already reporting the site to Google's Adsense team to try and discredit the site's advertising potential. A quick reaction to bringing down a scamming opportunist.

While it may only be a small victory, it's still one step to ridding the web of people who are willing to scrape others hard work and efforts.

BTW - the host, which I would certainly recommend if they're willing to lose a customer for the sake of a better web, is NetJaguar.com. Kudos guys. And a big kudos to jodi for finding the offending site in the first place.

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I'm a keen fan of Guerrilla Gardening and the effort these volunteer gardeners put into re-scaping their urban environments. So, when I stumbled upon this blog, Guerrila Gardening.org I was excited to see that someone was now doing this more than an ad hoc feel-good affair.

These guys are true guerrilla's: working under the cover of darkness, being supplied by supporters and groupies and spending weekends trying to create fund raising ideas to keep the cause moving.

Sporting secret identities as agents would in the cult TV series "Get Smart" these revolutionaries hail from the UK. This doesn't stop them from Guerrilla-ttacking [that's my word - I made it up but you can use it] other places in the world. Steve (007) - [I'm sure I've seen that number being used before somewhere] and Mike (054) even performed a little makeover on a recent trip to Libya.

So, if you haven't checked out this green terrorists before now head on over and support their cause...

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Q: How do you get expensive fertiliser to slum dwellers so that they can produce their own vegetables?

A: You don't. You find an alternative that's readily available and produce a system that answers a heap of environmental problems along the way.

Bringing life back to some impoverished urban slums in Mexico City was the dream of Journey to Forever and their challenge had to meet four inflexible constraints;

1. Little or no land
2. Little or no investment in infrastructure
3. No purchase of chemical inputs, and
4. Be light weight for rooftop cultivation.

The idea that evolved after years of quasi-experimentation utilised the mass of car tyres that lay around as containers, used leaf litter as the medium for planting, and turned human urine and worm castings into an immediate source of fertiliser.

Another benefit from this project is that it allows families to grow enough for themselves but also produce an income from the excess.

If you want to read more about this great project read this...

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Apparently Los Angeles city law is similar to our own in that any tree limb that branches over a dividing fence becomes the property of the receiving person. If that branch happens to carry a load of fruit then the fruit becomes the property of the person who has it hanging in their yard.

"Possession is nine-tenths of the law"

But what happens when the branch hangs over council property? It becomes public fruit.

Three local professors; Dave Burns, Matias Viegener, and Austin Young came across this archaic law and began mapping where this fruit was. Lemons, figs, loquats, avocados, persimmons, bananas, peaches and the list goes on.

The public can add trees to their map or use it to locate fruit that's in season.

Link 1, Link 2

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Described as the hybrid saint of soil-based gardening and hydroponic gardening there are many gardeners who profess to this style in the same way that devout followers of Islam espouse their religion.

But is it a veritable gardening method or just another way to sell a heap of DVD's and books?

If you want to know the truth, you need dig a little below the surface because the proponents of the Mittleider Method are the ones making the most from it.

To understand the method you need to understand the man. Dr. Jacob Mittleider was certainly an enigma in the sustainable gardening world and his efforts have helped families, communities and nations. He transitioned traditional gardening practices into a method that did more than become another alternative.

Mittleider understood that food production was more a management system than it was an environmental rape and pillage. Fruit and vegetables required minerals in the soil to produce better yields and healthier foods and that crop rotation, while it's good, cannot give everything back to the soil. So he developed a 13 mineral formula (which you obtain when you buy the books and DVD's) that fertilised the soil and continued to build it up regardless of what was being planted.

History has proved Mittleider's methods and I would certainly advocate on behalf of implementing his philosophy. Whether you need all the books and DVD's to start practising his methods is another question entirely.

So where does Jim Kennard and the Food For Everyone Foundation come into the picture? Kennard has been a Mittleider gardener for more than two decades, even teaching courses with Dr Mittleider. He started the FFEF in 1998 with the aim of helping gardeners implement better gardening practises.

Dr James Mittleider took his method throughout the world, especially developing countries where good gardening knowledge was in short supply. There have been projects in more than 30 countries and currently the Food For Everyone Foundation is working in Madagascar.

I'm really intrigued to know who has had experience with this method and what results they have had with it. If you have implemented the Mittleider method in your garden please share via the comments.

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I was chatting with David from Snappy's Gardens Blog last night and complimenting him on his wonderful gladioli. David agreed that it was a beautiful flower but then commented that there were a couple of things missing which could really enhance this plant and make it awesome.

The proverbial 'light switch' went on and I thought maybe other gardeners have plants they wished they could just tweak a little. Perhaps I could invite them to write their own posts about this and they could email me with the link. Then I would create a post of all their links and display it to bloggers to read as a group writing project.

So, if you think you could share with the gardening blogosphere about a plant that needs enhancing write a post on your blog and send me the link. Then on Saturday (Busselton time) I will post a page of all these links for everyone to peruse.

By the way, David wanted to add two things to his glad's. Firstly a fragrance, and secondly more plant support so that they didn't fall over when they flowered.

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I
was contacted a couple of weeks ago by a representative of Sierra Club TV asking whether I would do a review on a DVD they wanted to send me. I explained that they could send me a copy and if I found it useful to my readers then I would post something - but no guarantees.

The DVD arrived in the mail yesterday and I sat down to watch it not knowing what it was about.

For the next 28 minutes I was engrossed in the plight of New York's citizens who were facing the extinction of their community gardens. These gardens had been established on council land in the middle of a city sadly lacking in public open space. Most of the city's residents live in high-density apartment buildings and therefore have no garden of their own so these community gardens became a way for them to grow plants and produce their own fruit and vegetables.

After years of hard work relationships with the city's disenfranchised ethnic groups were built in harmony along a common thread - the garden. People worked together, helped each other with garden tasks, talked about their methods and related as organically as human nature can.

Then, the city council decided to remove the community gardens to make room for more apartments. They destroyed some of these gardens in their bid to capitalise further on a shortage of land and line the city coffers never contemplating the wealth that these gardens were already generating the city of New York. Alas, in the eyes of business people wealth can only ever be measured in dollars.

I found this short DVD more disturbing than watching Minki Whales being killed of the coast of Iceland. Why? Because this is the human spirit that is being crushed, a far greater sin that killing an animal. I'm not a greenie by any stretch of the imagination but I easily get riled when I see people treating others badly for the sake of the Almighty Dollar.

If this stirs your conscience head over to Sierra Club TV and view the episode. You can join their email list for further updates or even get a House Party together to view the DVD.

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