4 Cool Bike Accessories

It's Bike to Work Week, which means you have the perfect excuse to spruce up your bike with these unique accessories!

Wearable Bike Planter:  We've seen an old bike repurposed as a giant flower planter, but what if you could just strap a plant to your bike and take it with you on your daily adventures? Well, now you can! Check out this petite bike planter and other adorable planters that you can wear as accessories.

Bicycle Wine Rack/Beer Holder: We don't advise drinking and biking, but this gadget could come in handy if you're headed to a party or barbeque this spring. Don't bother trying to squeeze these beverages into your purse or bag, just head over to Etsy and get your bicycle wine rack or beer holder for under $30!

Green Careers: Urban Farming

For Green Lifers seeking to align their career compass, we've dedicated this week to profiling different eco-professions. Yesterday we learned about environmental journalism. If you took our quiz on Monday and scored mostly b's, then read below to learn more about urban farming, your green career fit.

Green Careers: Urban Farming

Urban farmers grow, process, and distribute food in or around a city, allowing its residents easy access to fresh, seasonal produce. Some farmers raise animals, such as chickens or fish. Often found on rooftops, patios, formerly vacant lots, and even indoors, urban farms can play a crucial role in improving food access and food security in underserved neighborhoods with few grocery stores. Farms also add greenery to stark cityscapes; reduce harmful runoff; and help counteract "urban heat islands" —  metropolitan areas that, due to human activity, are significantly warmer than nearby rural communities. Community farms can provide income and build job skills for disadvantaged, at-risk youth.

An urban farmer’s day usually begins early in the morning and could include feeding animals, delivering food to restaurants and caterers, selling food at farmers’ markets, bookkeeping, marketing to potential clients — and of course, watering seedlings, fertilizing, weeding, planting, and harvesting. Some urban farmers are involved in local food justice advocacy and policy, which might involve planning and participating in meetings.

Spring Gleaning: The Best Herbs to Grow at Home

Herbs can be lovely—but if you're looking to buy the organic, locally sourced kind, prepare to leaf out a lot of green. We propose a fun, economical alternative: Grow your own, either indoors or out. These are some of the best types to harvest at home. 

MINT

Many experts recommend growing mint but warn against letting it run amok—best to keep it in pots. Elise Bauer, who runs Simply Recipes, says she prefers spearmint because it's so easy to grow and maintain. "Once it's established," Bauer says of the hardy herb, "you never have to plant it again. It keeps coming back every year." Mint is happy in shade, so she plants it along the side of her house, which also prevents bugs from coming in—they hate the stuff. And its culinary uses abound: Slice mint leaves into a chiffonade, mix sprigs with spring peas, or steep them in tea or lemonade. Also: Juleps! Mojitos!

ROSEMARY

Isaac Eliaz, an integrative doctor and herbalist at Northern California's Amitabha Clinic, appreciates rosemary for its rich folkloric history. "Its elegant, needle-like leaves impart a delightful piney flavor to complement meats and savory, garlicky dishes," he says. Eliaz adds that you can steep it in hot water for 10 minutes to make a soothing tea. Rosemary is an easy but slow grower and thrives year-round. Mature plants like full sun and well-drained soil.

The Gentle Gardener: Healthy Habits

Today, we're wrapping up our week of gardening tips from George Gibbs. Yesterday we covered composting. Today, we'll help you find your gardening zen. 

Tip #4: Care for every element.

“You have to have the right conditions for almost anything.”

That includes measuring soil pH and lead levels, and perhaps using a raised bed. That includes observing your garden’s sun exposure — Gibbs has a northwest-facing space — and working with plants that thrive in your garden’s available sunlight. And that includes having a healthy gardener.

Gibbs recommends the “great, great, great book” Gardener’s Yoga: Bend & Stretch, Dig & Grow by Veronica D’Orazio. He practices the illustrated poses for about an hour every other day, and it stretches every joint.

The Gentle Gardener: Composting with Critters

This week, we're sharing a series of tips from organic gardener George Gibbs. Yesterday we pondered furry and feathered pests. Today, we're talking about compost. 

 

Tip #3: Compost with critters.

Gibbs did use fertilizers while working with his dad’s New Jersey landscaping and lawn-care company growing up.

“I never liked the way they smelled,” he said. “They didn’t smell like the earth.”

Now he lets the littlest guys do the work.

“I knew that I wanted my yard and garden to smell like the forest, like nature,” Gibbs said. “I wanted to encourage as much of the natural world as possible to be here.”

Remember the snail and slugs that Gibbs says you should put work in the compost bin? Instead of a rotating compost bin, Gibbs uses one with trays, so the mollusks on top and the worms in the middle can work unperturbed. Like this 5-Tray Worm Compost Bin, for instance.

Gibbs avoids adding animal manure, which he says can harm new, young plants.

“The concentration of uric acid in factory-farmed animals is high. Without water diluting it, you’ll burn the leaves and maybe even kill the plant.”

The Gentle Gardener: Furry and Feathered Pests

This week on the Green Life, pro gardener George Gibbs is sharing a few practical tips for organic gardeners. Yesterday we discussed small pests. Today, we're pondering bigger critters. 

Tip #2: To deter bigger pests, irritate them.

"I always try to encourage people to not kill animals," he said. "We're all inter-related. I think we all have a purpose."

Still, you gotta guard your garden. For the furry and feathered, Gibbs tries to repel them through the art of vexation.

The Gentle Gardener: Organic Pest Control

For professional gardener George Gibbs, organic gardening is a practical application of his general philosophy of treading softly. Gibbs eschews pesticides, herbicides, and killing creatures, in general. For him, human prosperity isn't separate from protecting the planet and its other inhabitants.

This week on the Green Life, we're asking Gibbs to share a few practical tips for organic gardeners.

Tip #1: Relocate and redirect pests.

If a snail or a slug is munching on one of your plants, pick it up and put it in your compost bin. According to Gibbs, whatever they eat, “they excrete compost for you. It makes sense: Put them to work for you.”

If even gloves can’t make plucking up mollusks palatable, construct a barrier. Rimming planters and beds with copper foil deters slugs, but only if the foil gets enough sunlight. Warm foil turns slugs away; otherwise, they’ll just scoot over your miniature blockade.

Profile: Gentle Gardener George Gibbs

Professional gardener George Gibbs is more of a Buddhist who practices organic gardening than a small-business owner with a gentle touch.

Gibbs, 58, has run his eponymous gardening and landscaping business in San Francisco since 1981, and he maintains 20 organic gardens throughout the city. Gibbs works with nature, and he doesn’t like to kill things, even bugs.

“When you grow things organically, you’re going to have to share it with nature,” he said.

It takes delving into the flora surrounding Gibbs’s 142-year-old house, swathed in Virginia creeper and flanked by a “spittin’ plum” tree, to appreciate his gardening ethos.

“Kind of an eco-gingerbread house, I guess you’d call it,” Gibbs said. He laughed. As for the tree: A bird ate a plum, excreted the pit, and later out comes a tree. And so, a “spittin’ plum.”

Gibbs introduces a few of his backyard’s myriad green beings, explaining which plants are which, that plants have moods, and that, like people, they need an environment to be just right in order to flourish. Gibbs talks and runs his fingers along one of his crocosmias like it’s a cat’s tail. The plant's alive — it just won’t purr.

Asking him why organic gardening matters feels silly. Gibbs looks confused.

“Why would you want to buy something that’s coated in poison?” He said. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Q&A: Kemba Shakur on Urban Reforestation

When Kemba Shakur moved to Oakland, California, in 1990, there was not one tree on her block. So she began to plant them herself. Now her organization, Urban Releaf, has planted over 15,000 trees throughout East Bay communities, working to improve the quality of life in ecologically disadvantaged neighborhoods and enhance community involvement and employment, especially among at-risk youth. Sierra Magazine sat down with Shakur, locally known as “Tree Lady,” at her quaint neighborhood office in Oakland. 

When you first started planting trees on your block in Oakland, did community members think you were crazy?

When I first told people that I wanted to plant trees, I don’t think they realized the power of trees. But we kept planting. Now since there has been a new awareness of the environment, people are beginning to see the benefits of trees — air quality, water quality, energy.

What motivated you to start this program and invest your time in the reforestation of Oakland?

When I first moved to this city, I moved to 30^th and San Pablo and there were no trees — not one on my block. It was very bleak, concrete, not a lot of vegetation or greenery. You could see that there were issues of unemployment and young people being idle. I wanted to do something to green the environment but at the same time invest in the young people within that environment. Although volunteerism is an awesome thing, you need to invest in the people in that community — to solve their problems and to give them a voice in their solutions.

I called the city and was like, “Hey! We don’t have any trees.” And they said it would take a year. So I called Friends of the Urban Forest in San Francisco — I remember being like eight years old and watching them plant a magnolia tree in front of my grandmother’s house. So when I called and spoke with Milton Marks, he said “just do it yourself.” And it was those words, “just do it,” that made this happen.    

Christmas Trees: Real vs. Fake

Aside from the American tradition of playing continuous Christmas music the day after Thanksgiving on local radio stations, we also know that the tradition of putting up a Christmas tree goes in tandem with the passing of Turkey Day. 

But before you purchase your Christmas tree, we've provided some information as to why a real tree is more sustainable than its fake counterpart. 

Pros and Cons of Fake Christmas Trees

The obvious advantage of a fake Christmas tree is that you can reuse it every year. This not only saves you time and money in shopping for a tree and having to haul it onto your car, into the house, and leaving a trail of pine needles behind; it also prevents many trees from being cut down and wasted. However, there is a very real and serious disadvantage in the way these trees are produced that are both hazardous to the environment as well as our health. Many fake trees are made with polyvinyl chloride (also known as PVC), a non-renewable and petroleum-based plastic, and lead. Making PVC produces carcinogens that are emitted from such factories that further puts people in neighboring neighborhoods at risk for cancer while lead exposure can lead to neurological or reproductive problems.

Pros and Cons of Real Christmas Trees