Sustainable Living
One of the silver linings of our current drought in San Diego is that it has gotten more people thinking about sustainability and the big picture issues surrounding our use of water and other natural resources. This is a great thing! Thinking leads to talking, and talking leads to doing something. The more we start integrating cutting edge sustainability strategies into San Diego’s buildings, homes, and communities, the more we can improve our well-being.
This is something I write about a lot on this blog. In September, I’ll get a chance to talk about it at the third annual San Diego Green Building Conference on Saturday, September 22 at the SDG&E Energy Innovation Center.… Read More
Getting Rid Of The Fungus Gnats Among Us
House plants bring life and freshness into our homes, transforming dull spaces into vibrant green sanctuaries. But let’s talk about a not-so-joyful aspect of plant parenthood: fungus gnats. Those pesky little insects can turn our indoor oasis into a buzzing nuisance faster than you can say, “Hey, where did all these tiny flies come from?”
Picture this: you’re peacefully admiring your thriving green friends when suddenly, you notice tiny, winged intruders darting around your beloved plants. It’s like a miniature airshow, except you didn’t buy tickets and you certainly didn’t invite these uninvited guests!
Of the six pests (spider mites, mealy bugs, thrip, scale, white fly and fungus gnats) Good Earth Plants deals with, fungus gnats are the biggest pain for plant parents in San Diego.… Read More
California’s Trees Are Worth Saving
Have you noticed changes in the landscaping along San Diego’s freeways? Caltrans has cut a lot of trees down, replacing them with low profile, low water use landscaping. I bet Caltrans is doing this in other areas of California as well.
Caltrans isn’t alone. KPBS Radio reported 100 trees have been removed from the Torrey Pines Preserve, which is a lot more than the yearly average. Twelve MILLION trees died in California state forests in 2014 because of the drought. Almost 90,000 of those were in San Diego County.
All over the state, our urban and suburban street trees are being removed due to drought, disease, and because they’ve become street hazards raising sidewalks.… Read More
Ripping Out Your Lawn? Consider Foodscaping
Homeowners in drought-stricken California have gotten serious about making changes in their water consumption. They are ripping out their water-guzzling lawns in record numbers.
What they don’t always do is give a lot of thought about what will replace that lawn. So we end up seeing a lot of mulch and rocks as a quick fix.
Consider a tastier alternative: Foodscaping.
The simplest definition of foodscaping is landscaping with edible plants. It embraces the concept of growing food in place of lawns on private or sometime community property. It’s something in between farming, where you are growing food in a way that maximizes output, and landscaping that is meant to be decorative.… Read More
What Have You Done For Me Lately?
Some days the news is a little hard to take, full of reports about shootings, natural disasters, and drought. I thought I would write about it, but then I realized the topic seemed familiar. Check out this blog post I wrote two years ago this month.
Not much has changed, has it? The location of the shootings is different, that is about it. As for our weather, it only seems to get drier and hotter.
My observations and my advice then wouldn’t change now either. We know what needs to be done and we have many of the solutions at our fingertips, even more than we did two years ago.… Read More
Honoring Our Founding Environmentalists On July 4
Happy Independence Day from General Washington from Mount Vernon on Vimeo.
I recently made a trip to Washington D.C. There is so much to do and see around our nation’s capital. No matter how many times I visit, there is always a new place for me to check out.
But there is one place I haven’t been to for a very long time. I joined my family to make a side trip to Mt. Vernon, the 400-acre plantation home of the first President of the United States, George Washington. The estate is right on the banks of the Potomac River in Fairfax County, Virginia, near Alexandria, and was built in 1757.… Read More
Explore Workplace Wellness at San Diego Workshop July 23
Can a workplace evolve to become a place where people are healthier after a day of work than when they arrive in the morning?
Good Earth Plant Company and GreenScaped Buildings is pleased to support “Wellbeing @ Work,” a workshop on making workspaces healthier, more ergonomically friendly, and ultimately more effective by allowing people to work at their very best.
The event takes place on Thursday, July 23, from 7:30 – 11:30 a.m. at the bkm OfficeWorks Showroom and is sponsored by Steelcase, the leading manufacturer of furniture for offices, hospitals, and classrooms.
Human Resources Professionals, Risk & Safety Managers, Corporate Wellness Officers, Facilities Managers, Corporate Wellness Consultants and members of the San Diego design community are all encouraged to attend.… Read More
Living Walls With An International Twist
Even though we’ve been installing living walls and vertical gardens in many forms for nearly ten years, there is always something new to learn and to work with.
GreenScaped Buildings installed its first ever project this month using preserved “moss” panels. These panels are imported from Italy, and there isn’t anything else like them. They are fire retardant, preserved and super easy to care for.
The panels are actually made of preserved lichens. Lichens are composite organisms, which include the properties of simple algae and fungi. They are similar to mosses but don’t have stems or leaves. The lichen is collected without any damage to the vegetation or environment and is hand applied to the panel backing.… Read More
Urban Agriculture: Why Eating and Buying Local Matters to the Planet
We get asked a lot to create edible walls and green roofs that are roof top farms. I recently ran across this thought-provoking article, thought-provoking for me at least as a person who thinks a lot about our relationships to plants, nature and the Earth.
This research in this article shows 90 percent of all the people in the United States could eat foods grown within 100 miles of home. The study was conducted by two engineering professors at the Sierra Nevada Research Institute run by the University of California at Merced. Read it here.
Many people have talked about the need to support local food supplies for many reasons.… Read More
Bite Back Against Mosquitoes This Summer
The recent rainstorms in San Diego County won’t end our drought, but I have enjoyed them anyway, it’s been a nice change after so many dry days.
Mosquitoes love a little spring rain too. Mosquitoes are opportunists and they need standing water to breed. Mosquitoes go from eggs to adulthood in water. Your yard could be a breeding ground right now for mosquitoes, and you won’t find out until they mature in about two weeks and start attacking you every time you walk outside.
Mosquitoes are more than annoying. Mosquitoes can transmit West Nile virus and malaria. Three hundred million people worldwide are inflected with diseases by mosquitos every year.… Read More