NOLA Notes

So, we all know I started a vegetable garden this Spring.  It has been a great new hobby for me.  I have been diligent on slug patrol, watering, tending, witnessing new growth.  I have also rekindled some of my aspiring do-good endeavors, namely, becoming more green.

Let’s take the slugs.  I got lots of advise suggesting which pesticide to use to kill them.  I didn’t want to use a chemical that would be dangerous for us to later eat the vegetables I am growing, or for my pets or child.  So I Googled it.  They sell “slug traps” that you fill with beer.  I called EVERY nursery, Home Depot, Lowe’s and specialty gardening center in the New Orleans area. NOT ONE had these.  They generally recommended a pesticide or salt. I’d have to go online if I didn’t want to make my own trap or if I didn’t want to continue to just use shallow bowls.  I am sill using the bowls.

One nursery, Laughing Buddha, the one that promotes itself as green, offered Sluggo, a non-toxic slug bait (its active ingredient is iron phosphate).  After researching what this product is and isn’t, I have added it to the slug-eradication equation.

In the course of battling the slugs, it slowly struck me what’s bothering me:  What the hell is wrong with our society that nurseries are NOT green?  I mean, really? You sell plants and vegetables and you aren’t green?  On the whole, nurseries have some serious chemicals in there stock, many that are dangerous to pets and children; many whose half-life will result in their being here decades after my garden is gone.

Prior to looking for the slug traps, I was looking for copper slug tape.  It is another non-toxic slug control product. Again, NOT ONE nursery or gardening center had it in stock. Most had no idea what I was talking about.

Laughing Buddha has the market on a “green nursery” in New Orleans, and they are wonderful. But even they don’t stock all the “green gardening” products that are out there.  I forgive them, however, because they are so knowledgeable and truly believe the products they have are the most superior in the market.  That may be true, but I guess I like options.

While at Laughing Buddha yesterday, the store owner, Grant, and I picked up a conversation we started a few weeks ago about composting.  He’s a huge advocate of the worm bin method.  I have slowly been coming around to that method over the traditional method.  As a matter of fact, he finally convinced me and I am going back next week to buy a worm bin!!

As I was leaving the nursery and we were wrapping up our conversation, I said that co-workers were teasing me about my garden and idea of composting, “They keep asking me if I am trying to change the world,” I said.  And Grant said, “Well, you are.  The first step is to change your own personal habits.”  Indeed, I thought, as I humbly walked to my car feeling a wee bit better about the footprint I will leave, or not, on this world.