Canadians have a powerful new online tool to help them cast a vote for the environment.

VoteForEnvironment.ca provides a recommended pick for every riding in the country for the Liberal, NDP, Green or Bloc party candidate most likely to overwhelm their Conservative opponent.

“At a time when we need urgent global action on climate change, Stephen Harper seems to be the only national leader in North American who just doesn’t care,” said Kevin Grandia, co-founder of VoteForEnvironment.ca. “Yet now the pro-environment vote looks like it’s splitting again among the four environmentally conscious parties, creating the possibility that Harper’s Conservatives may win a second term – maybe even a majority. The best way to block that win is to vote strategically – to vote for the environment instead of for any political party.”

The website gathers the latest polls and cross-references them against the 2006 results. It then adds some on-the-ground analysis to predict the likely outcome in each of the 308 ridings. Voters can plug in their postal code and instantly see the last election results modified to show which party is likely leading. The site currently identifies 63 ridings where a Conservative victory can be stopped if progressive voters unite behind a single candidate.

VoteForEnvironment.ca is party-neutral, looking only for the pro-environment candidate with the best chance of blocking a Conservative in each riding. In the analysis stage, the website collects relevant details – such as the retirement of an incumbent – and then searches to identify “swing” ridings, those in which an NDP, Bloc, Liberal or Green candidate could win if at least one-third of the opposition party supporters voted for them.

In other words, anything but the Conservatives.

I have these euphorbias (E. amygdaloides) in my front garden bed that get crippled by aphids every spring. Despite their aphid problem, they’re quite lovely, which is why I’ve kept them this long.  (I’m not sure what variety of euphorbia they are; they are the developer’s last remaining contribution of my garden.) For the last two springs, I’ve used a homemade pest spray to deal with them. This year, I don’t have time to be vigilant with the spray bottle, so I decided to buy some ladybugs.

I’ve always wanted to try using ladybugs to control aphids. I’d heard mixed reports on their effectiveness (the main complaint being that they just flew away once released). Of course, I had to try it myself.

Considering that a single ladybug can eat 5,000 aphids in her lifetime, the bag of 250 I purchased from my local nursery was probably overkill for my small garden.

I
was curious: would they all just fly away, making a break for it as
soon as I opened the bag?
Keeping them refrigerated until use (it keeps them semi-dormant), I
released them after sundown (you can also do it before sunrise; they
navigate using the sun.) Following the instructions on the bag, I covered the euphorbia bed with an old sheet (it helps keep the ladybugs around long enough to figure out that there’s food to be had) and set the open bag in the garden underneath. Seconds later, they were on the move. Let me tell you: ladybugs are cute, but when they’re everywhere, it’s just creepy.

So, did it work? Well, the next morning, I couldn’t find a single aphid. I also couldn’t find most of the ladybugs: apparently they’d done the job and moved on, which was okay by me. Not all of them took off, however.

Want to change the food system? Here are 40 great ways everyone – from individuals to the government – can do so.

Some of my fave’s:

For individuals:
#6 Establish community canning workshops where people can work together to can food.
#8.Establish a Young Farmers Institute for the next generation of farmers.
#12 Encourage Community Fruit Tree Projects to harvest unwanted fruit, and have it juiced for sale and for fundraisers.
#13 Create a “Buy Local” label for use in retail food stores.

For municipal councils:
#18 Prioritize the use of local organic food at all city-owned events and facilities.
#23 Require the provision of food gardening space in all larger
development proposals. In smaller developments, require a development
cost charge payment to a Community Gardens Fund.

#25 Integrate ornamentals with edibles, bio-remediation, fiber and medicinal plants in city landscape planning.
#26.Establish a community-wide composting program.

For provincial/state governments:
#31 Prohibit the removal of land from the Agricultural Land Reserve without replacement with equivalent quality farmland.
#33 Remove regulatory barriers that prevent local stores from selling
locally grown dairy and meat products, and other barriers to producers
processing and distributing their products locally.

From Guy Dauncey and Carolyn Herriot via the 100 Mile Diet.

I met Hartley and Anne-Marie (above) at the farmer’s market last year, because, well, they were selling plants – need I say more?

Early in the spring, there are always more vendors selling plants than fresh produce. Mostly it’s pretty basic: pots of herbs, annuals and a few cottagey perennials. But there’s also Otto with his Japanese maples, someone who sells bonsai, and another booth that focuses on water plants.

Hartley and Anne-Marie’s sign read, “Gone Wild: native ornamental plants for the urban habitat.” I think I probably squealed when I saw it.

It’s exciting because it’s tough to find retail sources for native plants here in Vancouver. Many carry some of the more marketable plants like ferns or the more ornamental shrubs, but just try to find Salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis) or Vanilla leaf (Achyls triphylla) at your local nursery!

Hartley happens to live just around the corner from me, so, yesterday, on the way back from the greenhouse, he kindly dropped off a snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus) and an evergreen huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum), which I’ll add to my “mostly-native” plant bed. (Despite James’ plea for me not to plant snowberry, it’s not an invasive plant here – so I’m planting it anyway!).

Gone Wild carries a great selection of native and ornamental trees, ferns, perennials, shrubs, and groundcovers. You’ll find them at the farmer’s market come April – or contact Gone Wild directly.

I just finished reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. Subtitled “A Year of Food Life,” it’s a personal account of back-to-the-land living crossed with an inquiry into the (big) business of food. It’s not a new book (it came out last spring), nor is it a new concept. But whether Kingsolver’s arguments for eating locally are old hat or big news to you, this is one compelling read.

On one hand, it’s an account of how one family spent one year with the aim of getting their food “so close to home, [they'd] know the person who grew it.” Often, Kingsolver writes, “that turned out to be us.”

On the other hand, the family narrative is interspersed with an examination of corporate agriculture, the impending food crisis, oil dependency, and the effects of each on our planet, our children and communities. Sound heavy? Well… it is, but Kingsolver manages to take such weighty topics and make them not only relevant but digestible. And she provides steps everyone can take to improve the situation, even if you’re not planning to grow your own food.  

As a gardener, I loved the way the author organized the book around the calendar, which, because the Kingsolver family was living so closely in tune with nature, echoes the growing cycle – from asparagus in April to (frozen) zucchini the next March. I learned a lot that I’ll apply to my vegetable growing (without feeling like I just read a book on crop rotation or seed starting). I think Barbara would like that.

For recipes and more, visit the Animal, Vegetable, Miracle website.  

Have you seen The Story of Stuff yet? You can watch a teaser below, but I urge you to watch the full version here. 

What is it, you ask? It’s a 20-minute film that’s a provocative look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns; about “all our stuff–where it comes from and where it goes when we throw it away.”

If that sounds boring, it’s not. It’s really well-done, easy to understand, and in many places, eye-opening. Yes, it’s 20 minutes long – short for a film, but long to watch off the side of your desk – but I got so absorbed I wasn’t even tempted to shut it down. If you are, you can navigate through it so you don’t watch the whole thing. Or watch it on your lunch break.

It’s narrarated by Annie Leonard, an activist who has spent the past 10 years traveling the globe fighting environmental threats: 

Leonard examines the real costs of extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal, and she isolates the moment in history where she says the trend of consumption mania began. The Story of Stuff examines how economic policies of the post-World War II era ushered in notions of “planned obsolescence” and “perceived obsolescence” — and how these notions are still driving much of the U.S. and global economies today. 

I try to practice sustainable principles in my daily life, but consuming less is a constant struggle for me. Hell, I have a category called “Retail Therapy”! The Story of Stuff is a great reminder that consuming comes with a cost beyond the check-out till.

The most brilliant ideas are always the simplest, no? Take the PlantLock, for instance.It’s a bike rack and planter in one. No more unsightly bike racks, plus added space for urban greenery.

Imagine if these were used in cities nationwide…

Via NotCot.

We’re in week eight of a municipal workers’ strike here in Vancouver, and a lot of people are pretty pissed off about the whole thing. But the tree hugger in me is kind of enjoying it. See, the City’s gardeners are on strike, as are the garbage collectors. Public boulevards haven’t been mowed, annual plantings haven’t been renewed, parks are looking a bit scruffy – and the resulting urban wilderness is kinda cool. Because lawn and garden clippings aren’t been collected by the City, Vancouverites are being encouraged to leave their clippings on the lawn (something we should be doing, anyway).

As for the garbage, well, our alleys and the Downtown Eastside aren’t looking so hot, but there is an upside to it all. No trash pick-up means less trash. Apparently composting has taken off, with compost bins sold out across the city. Hopefully many composting newbees will continue to compost long after the labour dispute is settled.

Although it’s what I strive for, I can’t pretend that I produce zero garbage. I always try to be conscious of the fact that placing trash in a bin isn’t the end of the story – that that bit of plastic will sit in a landfill for eons. And having your trash sit in your backyard or on your balcony for months certainly brings awareness to just how much garbage each of us produces. I hope each of us affected by this strike will take a moment to reconsider our relation to garbage, and rethink the rate at which we produce it.

Stumbled upon a cool site today that aims to help people beat their lawn addiction. Need a reason to kick the habit?
Here are a few good ones.

Ready to commit? Less Lawn can help you do it, either in baby steps or whole hog. There are lots of great articles – from methods of lawn reduction to low-maintenance lawn replacements.

Heavy Petal has a guest blogger today: Jessica Schessler, a college student interning for the summer with Sustainable Harvest International, a very cool non-profit organization that helps Central American farmers create sustainable alternatives to slash-and-burn farming. Jessica is helping to spread the word.

By Jessica Schessler

Becoming green and saving the environment has become quite the hot topic. Plenty of well-intentioned people and organizations try to remedy these issues at home and abroad as well, but where some fall short is making sure that the programs they place are not just good for the Earth, but for the people in the area as well. Sustainable Harvest International (SHI) has worked with nearly 1,000 families and 900 students in Honduras, Panama, Belize and Nicaragua implementing alternatives to slash-and-burn farming, the leading cause of rainforest destruction in the region since 1997.

As a result of these programs, SHI, along with the farmers have:
* Planted more than 2,000,000 trees.
* Converted 6,000 acres to sustainable uses, thereby saving 30,000 acres from slash-and-burn destruction.
* Improved nutrition through the establishment of more than 200 organic vegetable gardens.
* Increased farm income up to 800%.
* Built 165 wood-conserving stoves (saving 1,650 trees per year).