Organic Pest Control

Organic Home Pest Control Spray - click here to buy

This article is an follow up of my earlier article on organic gardening. I have already discussed what it means to be organic and the benefits of going organic. Most of us start with being organic in mind and start growing vegetables organically. But once they see some aphids or other insects in their garden all the initial hard work with organic manure or compost goes in vain and to prevent pest from eating away the vegetables they take the help of many chemical pesticides. I would request you before opting for that option, please give a try with organic pest controlling. And this blog will definitely help you to do so.

Your Garden is always full with life. A home where the door is always open for various insects and other critters as it is a source of food. I can always feel your frustration while you spot a bug on your favorite vegetables for which you have spent so many hours in the sun. But don’t worry, many insects which are in your garden is not necessarily bad for your Garden, rather some of them might help you in controlling or reducing the impact of other potentially threatening insects.

The first thing you need to understand while practicing Organic Gardening is that everything in nature are in balanced condition. So many garden plant have their own way of self defense and they are a lot tougher than what we might think. They can even tolerate little bit of damage and still produce good quality fruits and flowers.

A healthy plant is the first thing you should focus to grow. Good soil(or soil-less mix) produces good quality plant. Their carbohydrate, protein and fat ratios are in proper balance. If the soil is not proper it can result in plants which are undernourished. This type of plants usually produce more Carbohydrate(sugar) than other two components. More sugar always attracts more insects as they thrive on sugar.

Once you take all the necessary steps to produce good and healthy quality crops now its time to shift your focus towards protecting those. But spraying pesticides on plants is not an option if you also want to protect the environment you live in. In a dilemma like this organic pest controlling techniques comes as a savior to us. By following these techniques we can battle most of the destructive insects and protect our food.

As it says preventions is always better than cure. Build up barrier such as collars, and netting to prevent pests from attacking the plants. You can also handpick some of the bugs and remove it in case they are shown on the plant.

It is always a great option to try companion planting. Some plants have beneficial impact on other plants in terms of pest removal and so planting them close by can definitely reduce or eliminate the pest attacks. Find the details of companion planting here.

There are several insects like lady-beetle, ground beetle and wasps in your garden who fed on many aphids and worms. Don’t make use of mass killer and destroys those beneficial insects also.

Don’t water your plants in the evening it can increase the pest infestation in the plant. For detail guide on watering your plants click here.

You can use neem oil to remove pests. It is a very well known organic mode of pest control. Apart from neem oil, insecticidal soap, different horticultural oil are also helpful. Garlic, tobacco and several other plants have strong smell which deter pests.

Using sticky and light traps are helpful to catch bigger insects and moths. Some birds also fed on those insects.

These are some of the steps which are most popular tricks in controlling pests organically. There are so many other steps which have been n practice for different countries from ages. Please let us know if you are currently using or aware of any such technique.

If you found this blog helpful please share it with your friends.

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IBC Tote!

A few weeks ago, I saw a post on reddit.com/r/aquaponics where someone was offering to sell an aquaponics-ready IBC tote.  I had to drive down to Alexandria, VA, but it was worth it.  I was able to get this awesome 330 gallon tote, already cut in half, including plumbing and a pallet, for only $180.  Im going to set it up at my parents house in Wilmington, DE in the Spring.  Its pretty much ready to be set up, and just needs a pump.  This will be my biggest aquaponic system to date, and Im excited to see how it turns out.  I have a few months to plan the system, but Im thinking about building more grow beds to link into the large fish reservoir that well have.  I might even set up some strawberry towers.  Super exciting!

This is what it looks like now.

 

This is what it will look like in a few months, hopefully.

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Algae The Worlds Most Important Plants

Believe it or not, your life depends on algae!

Join Scripps Institutions Russell Chapman as he discusses the important roles algae have played in the development of life as we know it.

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Update to Apartment Windowfarm

I added more plants to my windowfarm today and fiddled with the airlift to get it working a bit better.  The water wasnt syphoning out of the fish tank very well, so I got the syphon working better, and now more water is flowing.  I added some a rosemary plant and a strawberry plant.  The green onions from a week ago are still growing strong.  I started them from supermarket green onions.  I kept the root after using the green part in a recipe, and the root grew more green onions!  Im also trying to start some basil and parsley from seeds in the fish rock media.  Im pretty sure that Ive seen other people having success with starting from seed directly in the grow media.  Heres the update video:

The Windowfarm in front of my kitchen window.

Strawberries!

Rosemary!

Ive also had some lavender seeds laying around, so I planted them in the potting soil left over from the strawberries and rosemary.  When that grows some roots, Ill switch it out with the green onions, which should be done growing by then.

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Urban Agriculture vs Conventional Agriculture

I just read a great article that I wanted to share.  On the Vertical Food Blog, this article describes the benefits of Urban Agriculture (local and sustainable) compared to traditional agriculture methods.  Even more motivation!

http://verticalfoodblog.com/urban-agriculture-and-better-food/

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World Bioenergy

The mission is to develop cost effective and environmentally attractive means of generating fuels, chemicals, materials, foods and feeds from bioenergy.

Why Do We Think This Mission is Possible?

Because of people.
This is how we will accomplish our mission.

Scientists    Bob Blankenship, PhD, Professor, Washington University; Director, PARC Goran Berndes, Chalmers University David Bransby, PhD, Auburn University School of Agronomy & Soils Dr. David Bressler, University of Alberta Robert Brown, PhD, Professor, Iowa State University Shulin Chen, PhD, Professor, Washington State University George Church, PhD, Professor, Harvard University Keith Cooksey, PhD, Professor, Montana State University Charles Cooney, PhD, Professor, MIT Bruce Dale, PhD, Michigan State University Jim Dumesic, PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison Tom Foust, PhD, NREL; Director, National Advanced Biofuels Consortium Professor Alexandre Donato Gomes Aranda Peter B. Heifetz, Ph.D. Principal, Heifetz BioConsulting Dr. Rafael Hernandez, Professor, Mississippi State University Dr. George Huber, University of Wisconsin Steve Kay, PhD, Professor, UCSB Jay Keasling, PhD, Professor, UC Berkeley   Lee Lynd, PhD, Professor of Engineering, Dartmouth College Stephen Mayfield, PhD, Professor, UCSD Bernard McMahon, University of Minnesota Greg Mitchell, PhD, Professor, Scripps Instituion of Oceanography Dr. Karen Rodgers Newell, Professor, Texas A&M Jose Olivares, PhD, Director, National Alliance For Advanced Biofuels and Bio-Products Philip Pienkos, PhD, NREL Dr. Susan Pond, Adjunct Professor, Center for U.S. Studies, Dow Sustatinability program, University of Sidney. Kristala Jones Prather, Assistant Professor, Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Tim Rials, Professor and Director, Univ. of Tennessee Center for Renewable Carbon Pamela Silver, Harvard Chris Somerville, PhD, Professor, UC Berkeley Director, EBI Glenn Steele, Director, Sustainable Energy Research Center David Tilman, PhD, Professor, University of Minnesota Stefan Unnasch, Managing Director of Life C Guido Zacchi, PhD, Professor, Lund University ycle Associates, LLC Emile Van Zyl, PhD, Professor, Stellenbosch University Larry Walker, PhD, Cornell University, Co-Editor of Industrial Biotechnology Magazine, Dir. of NE Sun Grant Institute Michael Wang, Section Leader, Systems Assessments, Argonne National Laboratory Charles Wyman, PhD, Professor, UC Riverside

Association/ NGO executives 

Andreas Ablaev, President, Russian Biofuels Association Rich Altman, Exec Director Emeritus, CAAFI

Bliss Baker, MD, Global Renewable Fuels Alliance

Heather Brodie, CEO, Biofuels Association of Australia

Tom Buis, President, Growth Energy

Matt Carr, MD, BIO

Wesley Clark, Co-chairman, Growth Energy

Bob Cleaves, President, Biomass Power Association

Barry Cohen, Executive Director, National Algae Association

Bob Dinneen, President, Renewable Fuels Association

Doug Durante, Clean Fuels Development Coalition

Brent Erickson, VP Industrial Biotechnology, BIO

Rafaello Garofalo, Secretary General, European Biodiesel Board

Michael Goergen, President, Society of American Foresters

Julio Guillen, President, Asociacion Peruana de Productores de Azucar y Biocombustibles

Jorge Gutierrez, Federacion Nacional de Biocombustibles

Richard Hahn, President, 25x25

John Heimlich, Chief Economist, Airlines for America

Bill Holmberg, ACORE Biomass Coordinating Council Steve Howell, Technical Director, National Biodiesel Board Joanne Ivancic, Exec Dir, Advanced Biofuels USA Joe Jobe, CEO, National Biodiesel Board Gene Jones, Exec. Director, Southern Waste Information Exchange Alwin Kopse, Exec. Director, Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels Anne Korin, Exec. Director, Set America Free Coalition Gal Luft, Exec. Director, Institute for the Analysis of Global Security Alfredo Langesfeld, President. Argentine Renewable Energy Chamber Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute Andrew Makenete, President, Southern African Biofuels Association Daniel Martinez, Presidente, ANCAP Michael McAdams, President, Advanced Biofuels Association Amilkar Acosta Medina, President, Colombian National Federation of Biofuels Sean OHanlon, Executive Director, American Biofuels Council Antonio de Padua Rodrigues, Acting CEO and Technical Director of the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA) Zeljko Serdar, President, Croatian Center of RES Mary Rosenthal, Exec Dir, Algal Biomass Organization Thomas Rotger, IATA Peter Schrum, President, BBK Jim Stewart, President, Bioenergy Producers Association David Tenny, President, National Assn. of Forest Owners D.K.J. Tommel, President, Netherlands Bioenergy Association Nivaldo Trama, President, Associacao Brasileira das Industrias de Biodiesel Tom Verry, National Biodiesel Board, Director of Outreach and Development Rob Vierhout, Secretary General, EBIO Carol Werner, EESI Exec. Director Philip Wolfe, CEO, UK Renewable Energy Association Nancy Young, VP, Environmental Affairs, Airlines for America Rolf Fiebig Zarges, Asociacion Chilena de Energias Renovables  Company executives   Brad Albin, CTO, REG Danny Allison, Sustainability Manager, Abengoa Bioenergy Bob Ames, Vice President, Fuels Commercialization, Solazyme Alex Aravanis, VP of Sapphire Energy Michael Arbige, PhD, Dupont Industrial Biosciences Carol Babb, Director, Renewable Generation Group R. W. Beck/SAIC Paal Bakken, CEO, Seaweed Energy Solutions Dennis Banasiak, CEO, Avello Bioenergy John Benemann, PhD, CEO, Benemann Associates Eli Gal, CTO, Primus Green Energy Nitin Baliga, ISB Bill Baum, Chairman, Genomatica Paul Beckwith, CEO, Butamax Doug Berven, Director, Corporate Affairs, POET Bill Brady, CEO, Mascoma Jeff Broin, Chairman, POET Mark Broses, Short Elliott Hendrickson Inc -- Principal Tim Brown, Renmatix VP of Corporate Strategy Tom Byrne, CEO, Byrne Company Fred Cannon, PhD, CEO, KiOR Tim Cesarak, Sr VP, Enerkem Read more Jumat, 27 Mei 2016 Indirect land use change ILUC Diposting oleh dengen , di 22.07 0 komentar Indirect land-use change (ILUC) means that if you take a field of grain and switch the crop to biofuel, somebody somewhere will go hungry unless those missing tonnes of grain are grown elsewhere. Economics often dictates that the crops to make up the shortfall come from tropical zones, and so encourage farmers to carve out new land from forests. Burning forests to clear that land can pump vast quantities of climate-warming emissions into the atmosphere, enough in theory to cancel out any of the benefits that biofuels were meant to bring. The European Commission has run 15 studies on different biofuel crops, which on average conclude that over the next decade Europes biofuels policies might have an indirect impact equal to 4.5 million hectares of land – an area the size of Denmark. Some in the biofuels industry argue that the Commissions science is flawed and that the issue could be tackled by a major overhaul of agricultural strategy to improve productivity or by pressing abandoned farmland back into action. Waste products from biofuels production can also be fed to animals, they say, so reducing the pressure on land resources. Conventional biofuels like biodiesel increase carbon dioxide emissions and are too expensive to consider as a long-term alternative fuel, a draft EU report says. The study ‘EU Transport GHG [greenhouse gases]: Routes to 2050’ estimates that before indirect effects are counted, the abatement cost of reducing Europe’s emissions with biofuels is between €100-€300 per tonne of carbon. At current market prices, this would make their CO2 reduction potential up to 49 times more expensive than buying carbon credits on the open market at €6.14 a tonne.    But the EU’s authors conclude that it “it is not possible (and useful) to determine cost effectiveness figures for [conventional] biofuels” because their indirect effect - measured in cleared forests and grasslands (‘ILUC’) - make it a CO2-emitting technology. The latest report will feed a growing unease about the reasons for the EUs original biofuels policy - justified in environmental terms - and the way it has developed since. “The truth is that policy makers inside and outside Europe are doing biofuels for other reasons than environmental ones,” said David Laborde, a leading agricultural scientist and author of key biofuels reports for the European Commission. “It’s a new and easy way to give subsidies to farmers, and it’s also linked to industrial lobbies that produce these biodiesels, and also what they will call energy security,” he told EurActiv. “They want to diversify the energy supply, and keep their foreign currencies instead of buying oil from the Middle East. They prefer to keep it for something even if it is not efficient or even green,” he added. The 10% target In 2007, the EU first set a 10% target for the use of blended biofuels in transport by 2020. Although the target was re-sourced from ‘biofuels’ to ‘renewable energy’ in 2009, analysts say that 8.8% of the EU target will still be provided by biofuels, and up to 92% of that will come from conventional biofuels like biodiesel. Industrial associations disagree, putting the EU’s ratio of sugar-based ethanol, one of the best-performing biofuels, to biodiesel, one of the worst, at 22%-78%. But both the original announcement and the Renewable Energy Directive two years later conditioned biofuel use on subsequently neglected criteria of cost-efficiency, sustainability and, where available, the use of second generation fuels.   “I don’t think we are there on cost-effectiveness,” said Géraldine Kutas, Brussels representative of the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA). “There are no monetary provisions to support this in the directive, and second generation biofuels are still a promise. They are not commercially available yet,” she said. Even trying to address the issue of indirect sustainability criteria for biofuels had gummed up the EUs policy-making process, she acknowledged.  French farmers Research by EurActiv has uncovered evidence that the EU’s original biofuels target was set as much for industrial and political reasons, as environmental concerns. Claude Turmes, the European Parliament’s rapporteur responsible for steering the Renewable Energy Directive into law, said that business lobbies had influenced his negotiations with the then-French Presidency of the European Council. “There were two lobbies, the sugar farmers lobby and the German car industry who tried to prevent the EU’s CO2 and cars legislation,” Turmes (Greens/Luxembourg) told EurActiv. “The origin of the 10% renewables in transport target was the fact that these two lobbies joined forces to impose it on the Commission.” EU insiders spoken to by EurActiv agreed, saying that biofuels had been a quid-pro-quo demanded for the imposition of ‘greener’ measures in the directive that would encourage wind and solar energy, and cut emissions.  European sugar farmers had suffered in the 2006 Common Agricultural Policy reform which reduced the guaranteed sugar price by 36% and opened up the European sugar market to global competition. A guaranteed market for agrifuel made from sugar-based ethanol held out some prospect of compensation. And the strength of the French farmers lobby made removing the 10% target “an absolute no go area” for Paris, Turmes said. “The farm industry was obviously interested in biofuels, biochemicals and the bio-economy more generally,” Kutas added. But Europe’s sugar farmers profited far less from the EU’s biofuels policy than growers of feedstocks for biodiesel, better suited to the continent’s diesel-based auto fleet.   Car industry EU officials say that the car industry was also instrumental in pushing for the biofuels target to be included as a compromise to bridge the gap between the 130g of CO2 per km that the EU wanted as a target for 2012 and the 140g that the car industry was prepared to offer. “It was no secret,” a source told EurActiv. “It was very clear what they were lobbying for and it went all the way up the Commission”. As a result, officials in the EU’s energy directorate responsible for biofuels did not treat research which questioned the fuel’s environmental credentials in the same light as that which supported it, multiple sources confirm.   The EU’s biggest error was “that we started to make a policy without knowing the effect it would have,” Laborde said. “We are now discussing the land use effect after saying for ten years that we need biofuels to reduce emissions,” he went on. “It was a serious mistake.” Indirect emissions proposal Brussels is due to publish a proposal measuring the indirect emissions caused by biofuels later this year, distinguishing between low-emitting biofuels such as ethanol and high-emitting ones like biodiesel. But the EU’s decision-making process has been paralysed by the ongoing dispute between its energy directorate – which does not want ILUC factors considered – and its climate directorate, which does. And there are other problems too.     Both the Renewable Energy and Fuel Quality directives contain ‘grandfathering’ clauses exempting all existing biofuels installations as of 2014 from further legislation until 2017. As the biofuels industry’s existing capacity is already on the cusp of meeting the 10% target, according to a new report by the environmental consultants Ecofys, this would create massive overcapacity.   The Institute for European Environmental Policy has calculated that on current trends, land conversion of between 4.7 million and 7.9 million hectares would be needed to accommodate the extra biofuels production, an area roughly the size of Ireland.  But the introduction of any ILUC factor would probably rule out high-emitting conventional biodiesels, the majority of Europe’s biofuels production. That would create a political backlash in EU states such as France and Germany, and potentially tear up the compromise which allowed the Renewable Energy Directive to be passed in the first place.   For now, the proposal remains stuck in the corridors of an EU that appears equally frightened of the political consequences of admitting a policy mistake and the environmental consequences of denying it. 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