What’s in the ground:

This will be the last garden related note I post, as the season is slowly winding to an end and I would like to spend the weeks before the holidays helping turn all of your hard work into great presents. Your garlic should be planted, your greens sheetmulched and everything else pulled out of the ground. In those vacant spots, it is good to give the soil a rest, leaving it fallow. But just like humans catching up on reading in the winter, even when soil is resting it still needs to be stimulated. This means planting cover crop. There are a multidude of crops you can sow. The ones I usually use are clover and rye grass. The seed is cheap and easy to maintain and fixes some great nitrogen in the soil. Just turn up your soil one last time, sow the seeds by broadcasting (by hand) and let nature do the rest.

What’s going on in sustainability:

Sometimes I fret to focus too much on Philly issues, as I know there are readers from around the country who read this blog. But Philadelphians are learning a lesson that needs to be passed on to the rest of the country. Just as most Philadelphia political issues tend, the city council will ignore an issue until it explodes, and then pass sweeping uni-lateral legislation that negatively affects all parties.

This is going on right now with the issue of city biking. After two people were killed this year in bike related deaths (one due to jay walking), the city chose to ignore the oblivious pedestrians, the aggressive cars and the lack of biking infrastructure and instead attempt to pass a mandate that all bikes will need to be registered and follow traffic laws closely related to that of cars.

The first issue is that although a bike is much faster than a pedestrian, the sheer power and force of an automobile greatly outweighs any attempt to classify bikes in the same category. These two bike related deaths have gained huge traction in our city media. Yet nothing is said of the countless bikers who have been injured by cars or pedestrians. I have a deep scar running up my hip after being doored in the city. Luckily for me the people involved were extremely good Samaritans and took care of everything outside of courts. But an uninsured friend of mine who was hit by an uninsured driver and broke his hip was not so lucky.

The second issue is that making people register their bikes that may cost less than registration fees is an undue burden that will be impossible for the city to enforce. I know people with six bikes. What needs to be done is logical, fair and pragmatic accountability of systems already in place.

Now if you live in Davis, CA or Seattle or if Hoots and Hellmouth is really getting huge and you live in Germany, you are probably taking pity of our city’s inefficiencies. But if you live in a town where biking is becoming popular but has not been recognized by the local government aside from a bike lane or two, I warn you to not rely on flying under the radar. Take our lesson and take these actions.

1. Create a community bike education group to inform riders of proper riding techniques. We have that in Philly, but that does not stop people from riding against traffic, on sidewalks and taking unnecessary risks. These kinds of riders are what ruin our good cause of treading lightly on the earth. Put a a stop to them with education.

2. Be a presence in city hall. Don’t wait for the legislators to address bike issues. Demand status and recognition for bike riders by lobbying your representatives with well thought out campaigns.

3. And finally, work with pedestrians and cars, not against them. Our main goal as riders should be to get more people out of the cars and onto bikes. And that will not happen if we are racing against cars rather than riding with them.

As I said, the worst thing to do is wait until the issue comes to you. Take action now and control where the conversation goes. We have a lot of backtracking to do in Philly, but don’t worry, we’ll get it done.

Until next week, this is the note from the Urban Homestead.