Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
June 12, 2008
5. Agencies, Programs, People –
How do his veggies grow? The no-dig way
The
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How do his veggies grow? The no-dig way
The
By Lisa Boone, Staff Writer
PAT MARFISI carries bales of alfalfa hay and straw into the center aisle of his Hollywood Hills vegetable garden and begins tearing off pieces of the stuff. He doesn't have any animals to feed, just his "no-dig" landscape: raised beds using lasagna-like layers of fodder, bone and blood meal and compost -- and remarkably little water.
Now that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared a statewide drought, Marfisi's 300-square-foot patch seems more relevant than ever. It's his personal horticultural laboratory for a low-water, sustainable technique he learned working on organic farms in
Since he began gardening in this fashion, he says, he has been "inundated" with food. With the exception of some recent losses to raccoons drawn to the soil's abundant grubs and earthworms, Marfisi's garden is thriving with beets, collard greens, chard, celery, tomatoes, chives, peppers, basil, chives, lettuces and leeks. He estimates he grows enough food to feed three people daily.
When asked how much he waters, Marfisi shoves his hand deep beside some Swiss chard and pulls out moist, decomposed soil laced with remnants of straw. "I haven't watered in 10 days," he says. "This is what I want people to know: You can have beauty and abundance without a lot of water."
The retired Marfisi came upon the method while working as a volunteer farmhand Down Under, where the technique has been used since the 1977 paperback, "Esther Deans' Gardening Book: Growing Without Digging," promoted it as a solution to poor soil, rampant weeds, water shortages and costly food.
"Today,
He points out that noted food and science writer Michael Pollan, author of the recent "In Defense of Food," estimates that the distance traveled by food to the plate of an average American is 1,500 miles. "This number is 150 feet for most home gardeners," Marfisi says. "That is a huge reduction in transport cost and pollution."
UNTIL HE had time for hands-on yard work, gardening was a passionate intellectual pursuit for Marfisi, who likes to sit for hours studying bugs with reference books in hand. But after leaving his job as a management consultant, he enrolled in UCLA Extension's horticulture program, which inspired him to dump water-hungry annuals and replace them with
At age 60, Marfisi became a WWOOFer -- he joined World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms ( www.wwoof.org), an international cultural exchange program that provides organic farmers free labor in exchange for providing workers with food and lodging.
The former consultant for big-name clients such as Sun- America thought it would be the ultimate work-study program to learn about sustainable farming and lifestyles.
"The attraction was to get into the heart of the world of permaculture and biodynamics and experience it firsthand," he says. "Being retired, I had the time. I thought, 'I'm still healthy and strong.' I figured now is the time to do it." (He hopes to join WWOOF again next year in
He started on a farm in
"Here is a guy who made the transition from corporate board rooms to the deserts of
"But tracking him through his e-mail messages, it seemed to be a real change of pace and it took on a kind of a meditative quality. Everything seemed to be slower, simpler and clearer. He got a lot out of it. Now he's come back and put it into practice," Parks says.
THOUGH there is some debate over the origins of the no-dig method -- Ruth Stout's "How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back," first published in 1955, and Masanobu Fukuoka's "One Straw Revolution," translated to English from Japanese in 1978, are other references -- one thing is certain: It is easy and it works.
Veteran gardeners will say that the greatest amount of work in creating a successful vegetable garden goes into soil preparation. One of the best things about this sustainable alternative: You don't have to break your back digging and pulling roots.
"It's a wonderful movement," says landscape designer and garden writer Rosalind Creasy, author of "The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping." "So many gardeners presume you have to start with a rototiller. That only destroys the soil structure and burns the organic matter."
No-dig beds are created by layering organic materials above ground on newspaper. Marfisi starts with alfalfa hay (Deans recommends
Marfisi says no-dig is more efficient, water wise, because once a plant has a 10- to 12-inch root system, the layers of compost and straw keep moisture around the roots. And you can keep layering it over and over again as the organic matter breaks down.
Aside from its looking a little messy, Creasy finds few negatives to no-dig. She does urge novice gardeners, however, to learn about soil nutrients that vegetables need. "You still have to fertilize," she says. "You still have to renew the nitrogen. Peas are legumes and they have nitrogen-mixing bacteria. Broccoli is a heavy feeder. You [also] have to think about crop rotation."
Marfisi concedes that it is harder to get nitrogen and the acidity or alkalinity right in a fresh no-dig bed than in conventional soil. But once the organic matter has been in for two or three months and fertilizer is added, these imbalances seem to correct themselves, he says, and his harvests have been bountiful.
It seems Marfisi was destined to become a locavore from an early age. He clearly remembers the first seeds he planted as a 7-year-old in
"I was blown away that seeds manufactured flowers," he says of discovering pink and orange zinnias weeks later. "Even to this day it still amazes me. . . . That picture remained in the back of my mind, while I was working 80 hours a week."
Now vegetables provide that same fascination. "Reconnecting to earth is huge for people who are contemplating retirement."#
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environment/la-hm-nodig12-2008jun12,0,241591.story?track=rss
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By Susannah Rosenblatt, Staff Writer
Rocks bigger than basketballs were pushed into the ocean off
The artificial reef, to be made from roughly 125,000 tons of volcanic rock, is designed to anchor a swaying kelp forest, attract an array of marine creatures and help counteract the environmental destruction wrought by a nearby nuclear power plant.
After years of bureaucratic debate and delay, Southern California Edison is bankrolling the $40-million undertaking as part of an agreement with the state Coastal Commission.
The effort stems from a 1989 scientific report that found that the cloudy water discharged by the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station's cooling system drifts south, blocking sunlight from a natural kelp bed and damaging about 180 acres of that habitat.
The reef will comprise puzzle-piece patches of rocks, their locations painstakingly planned through sonar measurements of water and sand depth; the rocks provide the hard surface kelp needs to flourish. Located more than half a mile offshore, the reef will stretch 2.5 miles roughly from San Clemente Pier to San Mateo Point, said
Key to the design is the loose arrangement of rocks in a single underwater layer, said Steve Schroeter, a research ecologist with the Marine Science Institute at UC Santa Barbara. This allows the rocks to jostle with the waves, flushing out competing species such as the pesky sea fan -- which takes longer to recover from swells -- and keeping space available for future generations of kelp. Other kelp reefs, built with stacked rocks, have failed, Schroeter said.
Fast-growing kelp can shoot past 100 feet upward, drawing sea stars and sea urchins plus striped sand bass, yellowtail and halibut -- and the anglers who chase them.
"You're creating an . . . entire, complex marine ecosystem simply by laying down the foundation for the primary producers, the giant kelp," said David Kay,
Aboard
Scientists say the comprehensive five-year study -- the basis of the larger reef under construction -- was unique in its rigor.
"I would be surprised if there are many projects in the world that have been given as much thought and scrutiny as this reef," said Dan Reed, a research biologist with the Marine Science Institute; Reed and Schroeter studied the first reef for the Coastal Commission. The new reef will fill in around the initial one.
Pelicans lounged Wednesday on a barge piled 20 feet high with gray gneiss rocks quarried from
Planners are watching for oceanographic changes such as El Niño, which raises water temperature and kills kelp, and multiplying sea fans crowding out the giant plants -- which could force divers to remove the sea fans. Kay hopes to see a canopy of kelp atop the water next summer.
Scientists will monitor the kelp plants' growth for several years, Kay said. Observers will compare the sea life on the man-made reef with that of two natural reefs, and look for at least four adult plants per 100 square meters of reef.
In
Environmental advocates applaud the reef project, but some question whether it goes far enough.
The San Onofre nuclear plant is "the most destructive marine industrial facility ever built," said Mark Massara, statewide director of the Sierra Club's coastal programs. The 2,200-megawatt plant is the region's largest power source, serving as many as 1.5 million households at any time.
"This reef is really just the tip of the iceberg in terms of trying to restore the marine resources that this plant had destroyed," Massara said. "My only regret is that they're not doing a lot more."#
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-me-kelp12-2008jun12,0,5577379.story
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