Weeds are like sin

Those of you with whom I've had conversations about weeds have probably heard me utter some variant of "I'm still developing my philosophy on weeds."  This is because weeds are a very complex subject.  Various disciplines each have their own say on the origin, definition, and value of weeds.  And since these disciplines, which include ecology[1], horticulture, production agriculture, organic farming and theology[2] aren't all on close speaking terms, very few interdisciplinary "weed paradigms" have been developed.

These past few weeks I've had the privilege of doing a lot of weeding in the sweltering Florida sun which, when combined with the torrential Florida rains, makes weeds magically appear overnight.  Weeding is, incidentally, a great chance to ruminate on philosophical cellulose, and I've been noticing a lot of similarities between weeds and another subject I struggle with, namely sin.  So here's a list of 7 ways in which weeds are like sin.

1. Most weeds aren't inherently bad: it's all about context.

As a horticulturist it is easy to see just two categories of plants: "good plants" and weeds.  The former are encouraged, the latter expunged on sight, from every pot, in every context.  Dandelions aren't part of a well-kept lawn; therefore, any self-respecting home gardener develops a distaste for them and dutifully sprays, pulls, or curses them out of existence.  Never mind that they have pretty flowers or taste good in salad.  If they're sometimes a weed, they're always a weed.

An uninvited purslane (Portulaca oleracea) plant made it through the mulch on a rooftop tomato bed.  Purslane is not only a tasty green, but is one of the few plants on earth known to contain significant levels of Omega-3 fatty acids.  Once a weed, always a weed?

Here at ECHO I've found myself with an interesting dilemma.  I oversee the urban garden, where we develop and demonstrate various rooftop container gardening techniques using limited resources.   I was weeding the roof of my chicken coop[3], and realized that most of the weeds I was pulling out, many of which were quickly outpacing the vegetables I had planted, were both edible and nutritious.  In an environment where getting plants to grow at all is a daily challenge, it seemed insane to be fighting delicious, productive plants in favor of spindly vegetables just because I didn't plant the "weeds."

One oft-quoted definition of a weed is "a plant in the wrong place."  This is still one of the best definitions I've come across.  All plants have some value: if not in their fruit, then in their aesthetics or their ability to cycle nutrients, provide food and habitat for animals, serve as a living mulch, and so forth.   In the right context, then, every plant has a place, and becomes a non-weed.  This means that a weed in my garden might not be a weed in my neighbors, and, more applicably, a weed in my own garden might cease to be so if I recognize its value and cultivate it in such a way that it complements, rather than destroys, the rest of my garden.

The purslane on my chicken coop? For now, it stays.

2. If you ignore weeds long enough, they will destroy your garden.

My neglected velvet beans (Mucuna pruriens), a robust leguminous cover crop.  See them there, in the back?

The negative impact of true weeds aren't always apparent immediately.  In fact, studies show that during the first few weeks after planting, weeds usually don't compete with your crop for resources, and thus have little negative effect on yield.  At this stage it is easy to become complacent.  However, if you deny the existence of weeds, attempt to minimize their impact, or fail to take action against them, they will simply outcompete your garden plants.  Weeds are so successful in the Darwinian sense because they are tough, aggressive, and multiply quickly.  They will suck your soil dry, deplete it of nutrients, shade out your favorite plants, and give you back nothing but more of themselves.

3. The war on weeds is won before they come to fruition.

When the time came to take over the rooftop garden from my predecessor Kim, I wrote down a list of principles and practices for myself to guide my care of the garden.  One of the first strategies I penciled down was this:  Don't let weeds flower.  I can't catch every weed the day it germinates, much as I'd like to.  But if I don't catch them the day they flower, every weed I miss will mean a dozen new weeds next spring, and every spring thereafter until the soil seedbank is depleted.  There's no doubt: making the time investment now is totally worth it.

4. You can't just remove weeds; you have to replace them.

There's a large truck tire in front of my rooftop chicken coop that probably used to overflow with vegetables.  Since I got here, it has stood empty.  Or rather, it has stood full of weeds. While I was concentrating on developing the other end of the garden, I let my chickens out for a few weeks to weed this and other empty beds around their coop, which they did admirably.  Now that the chickens are back to being confined to their cage and I still haven't planted anything in the tire, the weeds are back in full force. It really doesn't matter if I weed them... they'll be right back, and will keep coming right back, until I cultivate other plants to replace them.

Sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas)

Weeds seem to thrive in a vacuum.  Compare that tire with the one on the right, which I haven't had to weed once!

5. Mulch and a healthy crop combine to stifle weeds

You know what's easier than fighting weeds?  Not letting them fight!

After the first few weeks of pulling out weeds just before they flowered, I realized that new ranks of weeds were quickly replacing the ones I was removing.  So quickly, in fact, that I knew that if I kept fighting them at this level, I'd be exhausted in no time.  Anywhere sunlight hit soil, weeds appeared out of nowhere like mushrooms after spring rain.

Sunflowers growing on top of one of our slum style, tin-roofed huts. Inaccessible, but well mulched, so no weeding necessary.

Then I started mulching everything, and the tide turned.   Wherever I covered the soil with a thick blanket of mulch, the weed problem virtually disappeared.  I simply stopped giving the weed seeds access to the light of day.   And what doesn't get light doesn't germinate.  What doesn't germinate, I don't have to fight.

This is so much easier!!

6. The goal of a garden is not to reduce weeds.  The reason we reduce weeds is so that we can garden.

I love gardening.   This makes removing weeds well worth the considerable effort.   And because weeding is not the point, but gardening is, the following truth becomes completely okay:

7. Complete weed freedom is unattainable on this earth.  Rejoice in progress and small steps.

It's fascinating that the Genesis narrative cites man's rebellion against God as the source of both sin and weeds.  And just as our sin has turned out to be beyond our human capacity to eliminate, so weeds and invasive plants will be our constant companions as long as this earth remains.  But the knowledge that both are conquered, that God will restore both us and the rest of creation to a fullness we've all but forgotten, means that neither our weeds nor our sin need be causes for despair. Which is good, because I still have a lot of weeds!

So my question to you is not "Do you have weeds in your garden?" but "If I visit your garden, will I find you there?"  I hope so!

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[1] Ecologists would use the term "invasive plant," a term that carries less value but, usually, the same sentiment.
[2] Or at the very least, ancient religious poetry.
[3] Yup, I'm growing food on top of my chicken coop.  Gotta maximize space use efficiency in an urban context.

Projects on the rooftop

This past month has been my first full month of managing my own area here on the farm. Most of ECHO's 10 interns oversee a section of the "global farm," an intensively managed 5-acre sector of the farm used for training, demonstration and experimentation. This global farm is divided into 6 "climatic zones," each with a unique set of constraints and challenges, and each demonstrating techniques that can be employed to meet those challenges. The monsoon, tropical lowlands, semi-arid, tropical rain forest, and mountain gardens are differentiated primarily by water availability (here approximated through irrigation schedules) and topography. While none of these model gardens replicate the exact challenges found in their real-life counterparts, they suffice as environments to demonstrate appropriate cropping systems and for some rough experimentation.

Brandon, growing corn on the side of his mountain.  Which is actually a sand dune!  Photo (c) Brandon Lingbeek.

The sixth section of the global farm, and the one put under my charge, demonstrates urban gardens.   Nearly 50% of the world's population now lives in cities.  The migration to urban centers is far from over, especially in developing countries where cities offer a false promise of prosperity.  Many of Africa's large cities contain sprawling slums built by former agrarians who were unable to secure the easy life they had hoped for in the city.  Nearly 1 billion people are now thought to live in slums[1], and with little infrastructure and even less money, access to fresh vegetables, herbs or flowers is often severely limited in these populations.  Growing food in such crowded conditions is possible, but offers some significant challenges, the foremost of which is severe space constrictions. Part of my job at Echo is to maintain and develop this demonstration area, seeking ways to overcome these challenges using materials that are commonly available, even to the urban poor.

Here are a few examples of recent projects:

Rebuilding a wading pool garden

Most of what I work with on the "rooftop" portion of the urban garden is basically glorified container gardening.  The containers are all recycled from other uses (cement mixing trays, tires, etc) and other external inputs are somewhat limited.  In this case, I had an old child's wading pool that needed to be rebuilt.[2]

I recently purged hot pepper plants from this bed that were suffering not only from old age (they were into their 3rd year of production) but from a bad case of parasitic nematodes.  As a result, I decided to try to rid this bed of nematodes before planting and rebuild it from scratch.[3]  I emptied and washed the wading pool and its non-soil contents, spread the soil out on a tarp, and let everything lay around in the sun for a few days to solarize[4].

I then added, in order, old aluminum cans[5] and plastic grids[6], weeds, chicken manure[7], hay, solarized soil[8], and more hay mulch:

The aluminum cans act to provide a water reservoir without saturating the soil.   The weeds, chicken manure, and hay will hopefully decompose slowly over the coming year, acting as a slow-release fertilizer of sorts.  The actual soil layer is thin, no more than a few inches thick.

This bed was intended for Malabar spinach (Basella rubra), a vining edible green that requires a trellis.  I wanted a round trellis with a large accessible surface area that required only one pole, since long poles are not always in ready supply.    Here's the result:

The Malabar spinach are transplanted and growing - I'll try to post an update picture later in the year.

Replanting a carpet garden

Many visitors ask if we do any hydroponics, having heard of the many benefits these systems offer[9].  However, most hydroponics systems are complex, requiring many plastic parts and expensive water testing equipment, and are therefore far out of the reach of the average poor urban dweller.  Then again, hydroponics does offer to reduce the need for soil, which can be difficult to acquire in paved cityscapes.  Moreover, feedback from ECHO's network members has indicated that city residents are often concerned about the weight of soil on top of their roofs.  So while hydroponics systems are unfeasible, we've developed several soil-less systems that are decidedly more crude, but still effective.

These 2 m.+ Lagos spinach were grown without soil!

A carpet garden uses a carpet (or other wicking mat or fabric) to deliver water and liquid nutrients to the plant's roots.  The water is supplied by an inverted bucket.  A small hole in the bucket's lid allows water to seep into the carpet throughout the day.  Evaporation is reduced using a mulch (in this case we're using corn cobs, aluminum cans, and pine cones to cover the carpet, but virtually any solid material can be a mulch).

Corn cobs - or virtually any other inert substance - can serve as a mulch

The plants are rooted directly into the carpet

Previously, this bed contained yellow eggplants, habanero peppers and Lagos spinach (Celosia argentea var. argentea), a west African green leafy vegetable.  Of these, the Lagos spinach flourished most, providing lots of vegetative growth, attracting a myriad of pollinators and producing copious seeds for the seedbank.  If anyone wants any seed, send me a SASE.[10]

I tore out these plants to make room for a fall crop of lima beans (Phaseolus lunatus 'Hopi Red')[11].  My first attempt, a direct seeding of soaked beans, failed miserably as the germinating beans were eaten by tiny yellow snails.  I'm now trying again, this time using transplants.

Lima beans in the greenhouse, ready for transplant!

Hanging gardens

Where horizontal space is limited, vertical space is often not.  If you have a sunny wall or overhang, a hanging garden can allow you to intercept underutilized sunlight and turn it into food or flowers!  One Saturday morning I decided to try to make one, so of course I headed to the nearest rubbish bin to look for supplies.

The first trash receptacle yielded two empty fertilizer bags; some rusty landscape stakes and a piece of rope soon followed. As this is a first attempt, I opted to plant cherry tomatoes, since they're known to respond well to hanging containers.  I filled the bags, secured the tops with landscape stakes, and hung them up with the rope.  I then punched four holes in each bag and gently maneuvered a bare-rooted tomato seedling into each.

My next challenge was watering them.  One of the advantages of this design is that evaporation is virtually eliminated - most of my water loss will be through transpiration from the plant's leaves.  However, this also means that the system must be hydrated by an IV line.  I ended up settling on a gravity-fed siphon system from a gallon-sized milk jug placed above the hanging bags.  I used drip irrigation tubing, but any kind of small-diameter tubing should work.  To water, I merely suck on the drip tubing to start the flow, then insert it into a hole in the sack.

Apologies for the length of this post... I'm trying to move toward shorter posts with better regularity, but this is obviously a step in the wrong direction.  If you're still reading this... well thanks. I'll stop now.

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[1] According to this 2007 UN-Habitat report.
[2] "Rebuilt" because soil is a living system that doesn't usually thrive in containers.  Mixing in organic matter occasionally feeds the soil, improves its structure, and gives you a chance to combat diseases that are normally regulated by soil life.
[3] While gardening in containers restricts the amount of soil and soil life you have providing water and nutrients, buffering against fluctuations in pH and regulating disease organisms, it does give you slightly more control over your variables.  If I had the choice, I would choose the ecosystem services of a healthy natural system over the increased control of an artificial one, but I'll take what I can get. :)
[4] The sun can be a sterilizing agent in at least three ways: 1) Through heat released by absorption, 2) UV destruction on life in surface material, and 3) through dessication.  In this case, while the wading pool is probably near-sterile, I have no idea how well I sterilized my soil.  Since some nematodes can undergo cryptobiosis, I doubt simple dessication was sufficient to wipe them out.  Likewise, my soil was probably not spread out thinly enough for UV sterilization to have been complete, and I didn't have enough clear plastic to cover the soil and achieve the high temperatures necessary for heat sterilization.  But the method is simple and worth trying.  We'll see how it goes.
[5] Aluminum cans would rarely be a trash item in the developing world, considering the income-generation of their superior recycling systems.  But they are trash here, so that's what I used.

[6] I think the plastic grids originated  as the bottoms of plant trays.  Any kind of water-permeable material that supports soil would work here.
[7] From chickens raised on my rooftop.  More about nutrient cycling in a later post.
[8] The downside of sterilizing soil is that it also wipes out the beneficial soil life, without which soil becomes a dead system with no future, also known as dirt.  I added a few handfuls of healthy compost to this soil to try to reintroduce life.
[9] These being, primarily, the ability to divorce production from the climate, weather, soil, and other independent environmental factors.   Hydroponics cashes in a relationship with a vibrant soil life system for the control offered by a fully artificial system.  Why anyone would want to choose power over life is beyond me, even if it means boosting "production".
[10] SASE = Self-addressed stamped envelope.  My address is 17391 Durrance rd., North Fort Myers, FL, 33917.  While supplies last.  They won't run out.
[11] Everything at ECHO seems to be some sort of experiment, and this is certainly no exception.  I have no idea whether the nitrogen-fixing bacteria necessary for root nodulation are already present in the wet carpet, or whether they'll even survive and form symbiosis if I inoculate it with them.  I guess we'll find out!

Dragon fruit!

Mamey sapote. Wampi. Longan. Atemoya. Dragon Fruit!

It seems like every week, a different fruit is ripening at Echo. Avocados ripen 10 months out of the year[1]. Lychees in July, mangoes in August, papayas in September, and citrus all winter! These well-known mainstays of the American fruit palate are accompanied by a myriad of lesser-known tropical fruits, many of which are new to me! Here's one:



Dragon fruit, also known as Pitaya, is the fruit of a night-blooming cactus (Hylocereus undatus) probably native to central America. It is widely cultivated in southeast asia, and can occasionally be found in supermarkets around the world, though not cheaply. Someone told me these sell for $6 a pop in New York City markets!

Andrew shares some dragon fruit from his rainforest.

Inside, they look much like a white kiwi, complete with lots of small, black, seeds. The taste and texture is surprisingly reminiscent of that fruit as well, though not nearly as tart.

I love the shape and colors of this fruit. It reminds of something Theodor Geisel would have come up with.

Laura-Katherine models her new line of fruit-inspired earrings.

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[1] No single variety has this extended of a ripening period. However, by growing a range of varieties, the Avocado season can be extended to include most of the year. This is especially useful to small farmers, who don't benefit much from large harvests at the peak of market saturation, but could earn a reliable income by bringing fruit to market throughout the year.

'Brogdon' is a popular cold-hardy avocado that ripens Aug-Sep. Mmmm.

A life reconciled

One of the things I really like about working at Echo is how integrated life is. Rarely do I have to work to compartmentalize my time, brain or emotions. Let me give you three examples:

1. I work with my friends and live with my coworkers.

Some of the interns, dressed up as farmers and cows for a late-night trip for free food at Chick-fil-A

This actually makes it unnecessary, and nearly impossible, to over-compartmentalize our day. Often, the dinner table at the intern houses serves as a forum for discussing what we learned or experienced during the workday. I find this extremely useful, as it gives me a chance to further process challenging situations or ideas with others going through similar experiences.[1] There really is no need to leave our work at the "office"; for most of us, our work is a manifestation of our life passion as much as our recreation is. I'm reminded of a quote from the late James A. Michener[2]:

“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing both.”

I'm not saying we've all become masters at the art of living, but it certainly is not uncommon to see interns tending their work gardens on their free evenings, weekends or, in the case of Brian, at the intergluteal cleft of dawn. Because we enjoy our work so much, there's little distinction between work and play,[3] and none at all between friends and coworkers. We work together, play together, eat together, and pray together. I love it.[4]

2. We eat what we grow and grow what we want to eat. Not everything we eat comes from the farm. Most of our crops are grown in demonstration-size plots, so there's no way we could produce all of our own staple grains, for instance. However, most of what we do produce ends up in our kitchen and, when we're proactive enough to work it into dinner before it rots on the countertop, constitutes the majority of the vegetables, fruits and herbs in our diet.

Laura and some of the pumpkins from her lowland berms (rice and bananas in the background)

These roosters were raised as part of an alternative chicken feed/forage trial

This level of integration is especially new to me when it comes to meats. I've always held that it is healthy to know where your food comes from, and to be aware of how it was grown and processed. Man is conceded animals as a food source,[5] but for us carnivores it is still imperative to be aware that a life was taken so that ours could be sustained. Before coming here I rarely had, or sought out, the opportunity to fully put this philosophy into practice. This has certainly changed; in my two months here, I've already witnessed or participated in the butchering of chickens, ducks, and a goat named Oliver.



This is not an easy experience for any of us. Taking a life is hard even when you aren't emotionally attached to the animal in question. Doing so when you've named and cared for them for months is all the more difficult. It was a few days after we'd killed, plucked and gutted a few dozen chickens and ducks before any of us wanted to see one on our dinner plates. Now, however, when I pull those frozen drumsticks out of the freezer, they are no longer just a product from "the store". They really do take on a different and deeper value. Butchering my own meat is not, and probably never will be, an easy experience. But it's one I'm glad I've had.

Katie skinning Oliver

3. Everything is spiritual, and everything is physical.[6]

Western culture has long been plagued by dualist philosophies that have sought to distinguish between, and separate, the physical and spiritual aspects of our lives. This has often led to a disparaging of the former or, in the case of materialism, a complete denial of the latter.

In the Christian story this dualism has sometimes manifested itself in presenting faith as a sort of insurance service for our spiritual selves. Salvation becomes a ticket stub we cling to as we wait expectantly to escape the physical bodies that trap our souls, ready to fly off to a spiritual heaven. As beings that are as fully physical as we are spiritual, children of a God who himself took on a human form, this kind of salvation is shallow and fake.

I'm thankful to be living and working in a community which values both the restoration of the spirit and the manifestation of this restoration in the nitty-gritty of our daily lives. Discovering new ways to grow food is not just a utilitarian pursuit, or something we do to pay the bills. Rather, it's a reflection of the love we've been shown ourselves; a love for the whole person, soul and body.

On a side note it's exciting, and perhaps a little strange, to discover the connections between the physical dirt and plants around us and the spiritual truths they manifest. But more on that subject in a future post.

And finally, a mystery image! Does anyone know, or can anyone guess, what these are?



Post your answers below!

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[1] While doing problem solving and farm planning at the dinner table is convenient for us, it can be a stretching experience for our guests, who aren't always used to having their spaghetti and meatballs accompanied by a lively discussion on which roosters to breed or slaughter.
[2] Thanks Amanda H. for this quote!
[3] That isn't to say that there isn't a distinction between work and rest. Rest for the mind and body is definitely a good and necessary thing.
[4] For the more introverted among the interns, occasional escapes to coffee shops for a "third place," separate from the home-and-work "1st-and-2nd place", are necessary to maintain sanity.
[5] Genesis 9:2-3. There's some debate as to whether God intended man to eat meat, or whether, witnessing our appetite for it, He merely conceded it and gave us regulatory laws to limit cruelty and food poisoning.
[6] The truth of this principle is, of course, not affected by time, place, or community. However, our awareness of it can be.

A wet sheet and a flowing sea

A wet sheet and a flowing sea,

A wind that follows fast,

And fills the white and rustling sail,

And bends the gallant mast--

And bends the gallant mast, my boys,

While, like the eagle free,

Away the good ship flies, and leaves

Old England on the lee.

"O for a soft and gentle mind!"

I heard a fair one cry;

But give to me the snoring breeze

And white waves heaving high--

And white waves heaving high, my boys,

The good ship tight and free;

The world of waters is our home,

And merry men are we.

There's tempest in yon hornèd moon,

And lightning in yon cloud;

And hark the music, mariners!

The wind is piping loud--

The wind is piping loud, my boys,

The lightning flashing free;

While the hollow oak our palace is,

Our heritage the sea.




-Allan Cunningham

Last year I was privileged to spend a few blessed months living on a sailboat with my good friend and captain, Joshua Falconer. Joshua had called this hollow oak his palace for four years, while he studied how to make books and what to write in them at UCSB. I parted ways with our wide-winged bark this January, and Joshua followed suit this past week to continue his studies in Santa Fe.

We'll both miss the salt air, the roar of the breakers, the call of the gulls. The cozy evenings spent philosophizing by lantern light while the raging storm outside seemingly drowned out the rest of the world. The breaking of clear mornings, offering the thrill of adventure just outside the safety of the harbor.

Joshua (r) and my brother Adam enjoy an evening meal

Joshua, if the day comes when once again you sail west,
and I hope it may,
send me a pigeon straight away,
and I will swab your decks once more!

TO sea, to sea! The calm is o'er;

The wanton water leaps in sport,

And rattles down the pebbly shore;

The dolphin wheels, the sea-cow snorts,

And unseen mermaids' pearly song

Comes bubbling up, the weeds among.

Fling broad the sail, dip deep the oar:

To sea, to sea! The calm is o'er.

To sea, to sea! our wide-winged bark

Shall billowy cleave its sunny way,

And with its shadow, fleet and dark,

Break the caved Tritons' azure day,

Like mighty eagle soaring light

O'er antelopes on Alpine height.

The anchor heaves, the ship swings free,

The sails swell full. To sea, to sea!




-Thomas Lovell Beddoes

Legolas Greenleaf long under tree
In joy thou hast lived. Beware of the Sea!
If thou hearest the cry of the gull on the shore,
Thy heart shall then rest in the forest no more.

- Galadriel, Lady of Lórien

A childhood dream come true

When I was a kid, my family had access to a fantastic public library. As home schoolers, visits to the library were a weekly tradition, especially during the summer months when the southern California heat made sprawling across living room furniture with a book a favorite pastime.

Joseph reads Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy, 2004

Along with mainstays such as the works of Jacques and Hergé, I remember being absolutely fascinated by a particular book about clumping bamboos.[1] I'm pretty sure that, from the time we discovered this treasure until we moved out of the area years later, my family checked this book out more often than did all the other library patrons combined.

The book started out by describing the many and obvious advantages of "clumping" bamboos over "running" bamboos[2] and culminated[3] with several chapters detailing construction techniques for everything from saxophones to building frames. In between was an overview of species and growing techniques illustrated with beautiful photos that sparked my love for clumping bamboos. Bamboos with towering culms[4] as thick as a tree, as graceful as they are strong, as supremely elegant in the color of their bark as in the quivering leaves of their canopy. My dream of some day living among such bamboos became similar to my dream of walking among giraffes and Acacia trees on the savannas of Africa. As exotic and as distant.


Imagine my delight, then, when I toured the ECHO farm last December and found not only a few, but dozens of well-established clumping bamboos growing there!



Bamboo is strong, lightweight, and grows quickly, so it makes an ideal construction material in many situations. Because the designers of ECHO's demonstration farm recognized the value of bamboo as an alternative to wood in the tropics, they planted it all over the place. Now, less than a decade later, we have a beautiful and steady supply of construction poles, and they sure come in handy!

An elevated strawberry bed, made from bamboo

Most of the bamboos I had previously encountered in landscaping were plain green and narrow, usually less than 4 cm. in diameter. However, this is not the limit of color or size in the genus. In fact, in our collection it's not even the norm!

Dendrocalamus minor

Bambusa lako

Most of our bamboos have been planted since 2004. This one is already producing culms over 10 cm in diameter:

Dendrocalamus latiflorus 'Mei-nung'

Occasionally, these clumps are thinned, and the culms placed on a rack to dry before being used, as needed, for construction projects on the farm.

Recently harvested culms laid out to dry

Sometimes it seems that every trellis, fence, stake, wall, railing and flower bed on the farm is made out of bamboo. But with such a fast-growing and sustainable source, why not?

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[1] It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure the book was Bamboo World by Victor Cusack, unfortunately now out of print.
[2] Clumping bamboos grow faster when they're young but don't take over your yard the way running bamboos do.
[3] No pun intended.
[4] That's grass for "stems."

Life in the ECHO understory

Most of us, upon seeing a colorful butterfly, are glad of its existence. Even gardeners and farmers, aware of the damage done by the caterpillar, rarely blame the butterfly or seek to destroy it in order to prevent the next generation of caterpillars from coming about. We value butterflies, because we know that they beautify our world and pollinate our flowers, like this Zinnia in ECHO's community garden plot:

Danaus gilippus

Just as it is easy to ignore the munching of a caterpillar once we've idolized its more charismatic self, it can be easy to ignore the value of the droves of insects that we vilify simply because they sting, smell bad, or look like they might get stuck in our hair.

Take this wasp, for instance, that Brian and I spotted yesterday in his semi-arid farm plot:



How would you classify it? If it was in your garden or patio, would swat it?

I remember once, while working in an orchard in California, walking into a portable toilet and closing the door, only to be swarmed by a hive of wasps that had taken up residence there. After soothing my arms in a nearby irrigation ditch, I went to inform my boss about the hazard in the loo. I assumed he would exterminate the wasps: they were clearly a dangerous nuisance, and were of little use to the farm, as far as I could see.

The owners of the farm, however, saw things differently. Every living thing on the farm had a place, and Greg and Coco tried to live in harmony with all life forms as much as possible. They recognized, as we do here at ECHO, that sustainable farming is only possible with the help of a healthy and diverse community of critters.

"These wasps aren't bad," Greg reminded me; "they just need a better place to live." So Greg pulled out a bee smoker and, after calming the wasps as best he could, removed their hives and placed them in a wood pile nearby where the wasps could find and reclaim them.

Often, bugs we identify as evil are actually quite the opposite!

Take another look at the wasp above. What is it wrestling with?

Is that a spider? Yes, and not only that: it's a black widow!



All of a sudden, that wasp takes on a new value, doesn't it? Even if wasps aren't your favorite insects yet, you can probably still agree with Churchill and ancient tacticians who noted that:

Any enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Now, a friendship rooted in mutual distrust of a common foe is better than no friendship at all, but let me show you a little more of this particular wasp's story, so you can learn to value it for its own sake.

Brian and I first spotted this wasp in a cassava bush. It had just finished what likely had been an epic battle, one which ended only when the triumphant wasp stung the spider with a venom that paralyzed, but did not kill, the spider. After dragging the comatose black widow to a nearby patch of sand, the wasp dropped it and spent some time cleaning out burrows it had previously prepared in the ground:

Sericopompilus neotropicalis

Eventually, the wasp would stow the spider in one of these burrows, lay an egg in it, and seal the hole. The larva would hatch to a ready feast of not-quite-dead spider.

Unfortunately for this particular wasp, the chosen patch of sand was also home to a colony of small ants, who took every opportunity to try to steal the wasp's bounty while she was busy nest-making:



Consequently, the wasp kept having to retrieve the spider and drag it around until she found a spot safe from the foraging ants:



Sometimes, this meant getting off the ground:



In fact, at one point the wasp, seemingly exasperated by the tenacity of her thieving jackals, decided that I would make a good bush in which to hide her hard-earned treasure. She casually crawled up my pant leg, latched onto the strap of the camera I was holding, and hoisted her way on top of the camera, dragging the stunned spider the whole way. There she deposited the spider in the divet created by the viewfinder, and flew off to resume work on her nest. So entranced were Brian and I in the unfolding drama that the presence of two such fierce animals crawling together up my shirt caused neither of us to flinch; instead, we simply marveled at the opportunity we were given to witness this miniature but significant story within the community of life that makes up the ECHO farm.

Incredibly, not 15 minutes later, we came across yet another species of wasp, involved in a similar struggle to provide a food supply for its offspring. While the first wasp preferred spiders as its prey of choice, this wasp harvested grasshoppers.

Prionyx sp. (top), Chortophaga australior (bottom)

Here are two different wasp species which, while going about their normal ways of life, have quietly been reducing the pest pressure on our farm.[1] And by encouraging such critters, we have less need to spray pesticides, since a vibrant insect life helps keep everything in balance, the way the creator intended.

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[1] It is important to note that neither of these prey species are inherently "bad" merely because we label them as pests. Their roles in the ecosystem are as important as those of the wasps. It is only when an ecological imbalance allows their populations to go unchecked that they endanger us or our food supply.

Eastern Diamondback

Two weeks ago I moved to Ft. Myers, Florida, where I'm now living and working on a tropical agriculture farm run by ECHO (echonet.org). The farm exists to equip people and organizations who are working with poor farmers in developing countries. I'll be an intern here for the next year. I'll write more on that subject in a future post, but that'll suffice for now as a backdrop to this post.

Last night I had just decided to cook up some tomato-spaghetti-chaya soup for dinner and was trying to find something to make as a side when our CEO, Stan, drove up to the intern housing in a golf cart. He had a pail with him, and next thing I knew he was lifting the end of a long, snake-like rope out of the pail. It kept coming for quite a while, like when Mary Poppins pulled that floor lamp out of her carpet bag. It actually did turn out to be a snake, a 5' behemoth rattler that the neighbor had found in her chicken pen. Her organic, free-range chicken pen. She called Stan, who shot it in the head and was now headed home to skin his trophy. He was kind enough to offer us interns the carcass after he was done skinning and gutting it.

Stan and Brandon (a fellow intern) with the snake:


Eastern Diamondbacks are among the most dangerous snakes in the US.




It had three fangs!


Anyway, obviously, our dinner problem was solved. We chopped it up, dipped it in goat milk and duck eggs, and then rolled it in seasoned flour before frying it in a pan:


Snakes aren't very meaty and the meat is a little tough (or at least, tough to scrape off of the ribs), but this one sure had a mild and delicious taste. Though perhaps we have its diet of organic free-range chickens to thank for that!