An island within an island

Island Botanicals, located near Bokeelia in Pine Island, truly is an island of sustainability, sound agricultural practices and smart, diversified production. Owner Mike Wallace was inspecting some onion starts he was about to put in the ground today as I arrived, and was glad to give me a tour of his 4+ acres, where he grows a dizzingly diverse variety of crops, ornamentals, exotics and natives, fruits and herbs. If you're interested in seeing some pictures of his place, you can find them here.

We actually started inside, as he was cooking some bacon for his dogs - yeah, that's some pampered dogs he has there! I checked out his Pine Island digs while he finished cooking, a typical house on pillars in the island style, beautifully blending with the vegetation all around it, and decorated with much taste inside, in an Oriental style, with many objects brought from Mike and his wife's travels around the world.

As Mike guided me around his property in his usual laid back style, we picked a healthier breakfast for ourselves, a couple of ripe bananas from one of his trees. We discussed the fact that commercially grown bananas are very prone to getting contaminated with pesticides, because of the porous nature of their skins. And what a shame it is that more bananas are not grown in SWFL instead of being imported. Put two green guys together, a rant is sure to follow!

Food production is the main focus of the place, from basic staples -sweet potatoes, beans, tomatoes, peppers, onions- to tropical fruit -mangoes, bananas, papayas, starfruit-, greens -lettuces, bok choi, mustards, chard, arugula and many others-, and herbs -basils, cilantro, kafer lime, used for the fragrant leaves and not for the fruit.

There's also room for ornamentals -palms, bromeliads, orchids- and one of a kind specimens: Madagascar chestnut, Ling Ling, which is the national tree of Thailand, very fragrant, smells a bit like a gardenia, also called golden shower tree for the cascading yellow flowers it produces, different kinds of ginger, passion fruit, bamboos... most of it keeping with the Oriental theme, as you can see!

There's several Moringa trees spread around the property. This is a "miracle" tree that could solve the problem of hunger, especially in Africa. According to treesforlife.org, the leaves of the Moringa tree contain 7 times the vitamin C of oranges, 4 times the calcium of milk, 3 times the potassium of bananas, 2 times the protein of yogurt... you get the picture. Mike says they are very easy to grow, literally just put a branch in the ground, and it will start a new tree. He showed me a tree on a corner of his property that he tried to eliminate on several occassions, and it kept coming back. The nuts of the Moringa are also edible, and it has many medicinal properties as well as the nutritional value, according to ancient Vedic and African lore. If you look at the map of world malnutrition, it coincides almost exactly with the tropical range where this incredible tree can be grown. So I think this is one of the examples of areas where our humble local farmers can be on the cutting edge of contributing to the solution of massive problems, Mike experimenting with Moringa trees is one case, just like Ken Ryan of Herban Gardens in N. Ft. Myers trying to grow Jatropha for biodiesel with the help of Roy Beckford of IFAS Extension is another.

As for techniques for growing the more traditional herbs and veggies Michael brings to the Green Market at the Alliance for the Arts every Saturday, he employs organic and pesticide free methods, including crop rotation, fallowing, planting in many small plots where pests can be isolated and controlled without spreading to other areas, Diatomaceous earth — also known as DE, TSS, diatomite, diahydro, kieselguhr— a naturally occurring, soft, chalk-like sedimentary rock that is easily crumbled into a fine white to off-white powder (according to Wiki) for slug control, composting, manures and even hair from local salons as fertilizer, really a wide variety of sustainable methods for growing healthy, delicious food locally.

Island Botanicals is also one of the few local growers that consistently delivers during the summer months, making it a valuable assett for keeping residents supplied with locally grown produce year-round.

Plans for the future include intensifying the production of sprouts with a partner, and introducing escargot (edible) snails to an area of the property.

I have to apologize if I'm missing something here, as Mike's beautiful dog Ramsay took advantage of a moment of distraction while I was checking out the cashew tree and tried to eat my notes (and my clipboard) for lunch! See, the "my dog ate my homework" excuse is true after all, in some cases!

We're very proud to have Island Botanicals at the Green Market, Mike always brings interesting stuff and is very knowledgeable, customers love him, he's a one-of-a-kind fellow, and I was very impressed at his wonderful groves, grounds and gardens.

After visiting him, I still had time to stop at Andy's Island Seafood for a locally caught lunch, and at Billy Sol's place to check out his experiments in vermiculture (worm produced fertilizer), edible flowers, and the production of Neem. But those stories will have to wait, as they both warrant blog posts and photo galleries of their own.

An urban community garden in Fort Myers

When Green Coaches was created, a few months ago, one of the decisions we made was to not advertise in the traditional sense - for one thing, our budget was (and is) too small, but there's other reasons as well. We are drowning, choking, in advertising. Sometimes it seems that we are approaching a sensory overload, where every single second of our lives and every available square inch is taken with a commercial message. The folks at Adbusters have been exploring this subject for a while.

So it was decided to do things differently, away from marketing & advertising: instead of claiming to be good at something, we just try to be good at something and hope that word spreads around. Doing a good job is the best advertising. Also, being reliable and honest, not using pressure tactics to force a sale, that kind of thing. Totally old-fashioned, I know. Besides, not a lot of landscaping companies do edible and organic projects, although I'm sure that's about to change, fast.

But the best thing we are doing so far is getting involved in neighborhoods and communities, volunteering to help with starting community gardens everywhere they'll let us. Community centers, private homes, churches. If they want a garden, we'll help.

A few days ago, I had the opportunity to spend the morning helping set up a large community garden on Cuba St, just off of Martin Luther King, Jr, Blvd, sponsored by a great community organization, Quality Life Center. Many volunteers showed up, both from the neighborhood and from groups like SW FL Coalition For Change, to work under the direction of QLC memebers Ms Vonda Curry and Mr James Matthews, as well as local environmentalist and community organizer Kim Trebatoski. 13 raised beds were created, and planted with tomatos, beans, greens, okra, lettuce and carrots. Home Depot donated most of the tools, including two wheelbarrows.

This was so much fun, my mood improved even more in the following days (I say "even more" because I've been pretty happy since I don't work in an office doing graphic design -advertising- all day long anymore, and since I quit smoking several months ago). Someone needs to work on a theory of how doing stuff that you really enjoy can have enormous health and mood benefits; or perhaps it's been done already and I don't know about it.

In any case, there was so much crammed together in one morning that is positive and enjoyable, that I can't think of a better way to spend my time: not just the satisfaction of seeing the garden take shape, but also teaching a bunch of kids how to plant stuff, and learning from neighborhood old-timers that showed up, as well as exercising, cracking jokes with everyone and promoting my business in a sustainable way.

I can't post photo albums here, but if you'd like to see some more pictures from that day, they are here. And don't forget to contact Green Coaches if you have a garden project yourself!

a Green Punk reflects...

Back when I was younger, people like Joe Strummer, Iggy Pop, Jello Biafra and Henry Rollins were my heroes. I was into punk rock. It wasn't just the music and the left-of-center politics. It was this concept, that punks borrowed from tinkerer-dads of the 50's and Popular Mechanics magazine: Do It Yourself, or DIY.

The music industry won't publish anything other than bloated, self-indulgent, more-of-the-same crap like Pink Floyd, Eagles and Elvis in his 19th comeback tour in Vegas? Put together cooperative efforts to make and promote new records without waiting for the big companies, and use word of mouth and alternative channels to spread the message. Do it yourself. You get the idea. Let the rest of the world catch up to what you're doing now, later.

The classic-punk era of Britain and NY in the 70's and the California hardcore of the 80's may long be over, but you can see the legacy everywhere, from anti-globalization protests to the slow-food movement to Naomi Klein's "No Logo". In music, one of last year's biggest hits was British-Sri Lankan avant-garde extraordinaire M.I.A. singing over a sampled Clash track. "London Calling" has definitely aged more gracefully than Elton John, and the urgent message of the Dead Kennedys music is more relevant today than, say, Poison's.

While the System's message seems to be "go shopping or the terrorists have won", people of all walks of life, young and old, Black, White, Latino, Asian and every hue in between, are once again embracing the DIY ethics in their everyday life. I see it more and more, and the economic downturn is nothing short of a blessing in that respect. Why go along with the planned obsolescence of Burberry logos and Chinese-made junk, designed to be replaced next year? "Make it do, or do without" was the mantra both during the Depression and the punk rebellion, and it's here again.

This rather lengthy intro is to comment on the fact that your favorite Green Coach spent a number of hours the other day introducing young citizens from the "wrong side of the tracks" as the cliche goes, to some DIY concepts, including: grow as much of your own food as you can, learn a useful skill and don't waste your time pursuing the chemical mirages offered by the corner dealer and McDonalds, be yourself, it doesn't matter that your jersey isn't P. Diddy's brand if you're gonna get it dirty working in the garden anyhow. The message was "you're young, don't take no shit from nobody, growing this tomato plant to fruition is gonna teach you more about life than countless hours in front of MTV or BET, the mall sucks, and I may be an old fart but I know what I'm talking about here", and generally, I must say it was well received. I felt really good, I felt like some seeds were sown on fertile soil, which is a good description of what I like to do every day.

If people like us, who are social and environmental activists, can learn to reach out and speak the language of 10-year old kids and use it to give a positive message, then there's hope. Never mind the millions and millions of fops and airheads, the Wall St. vampires, the TV zombies and mall rats. DIY is cool. Riding your bike is cool. Not having any money is OK as long as you have friends and skills and a sense of humor. That's the message. The fops and dandies don't have any message other than "be like me, spend all this money buying stupid shit that's not gonna make you happy" - if we old punk warriors can convince a kid, who lives in a different part of town and has a different skin color, that you can create your own reality completely on the margins of what the System expects you to do and be, then we have the upper hand. Then, the torch gets passed to the next generation. That old Black Flag of punk looks Green to me these days, and there's kids out there ready to pick it up. Right on...

Short blurb on the Cape Coral Daily Breeze

First Edible Garden, installed by Green Coaches, will be at 3815 Palm Tree Blvd. Santiago De Choch, owner of Green Coaches, is looking forward to installing more of the vegetable gardens throughout the area. Stop by and have a look. For information, call 839-1239.