They started during times of war when there was not enough food. Planted in lawns and in backyards. This one was planted in a bomb crater. A Victory Garden planted in a bomb crater in London. 

When a parking lot was bombed in London during World War II they planted a garden. When there was not enough food in America because the farmers were off at war, Uncle Sam told them to plant and Americans had food. Growing veggies in times of crises is not a new idea, as so-called Victory Gardens have been around ever since World War I.

Victory Gardens were popular in both world wars; and the produce grown in them not only helped to supplement war time food shortages for families, but were a great morale booster as well. And we dug up an amazing old handbook for those who might want to follow the 1943 US Government plan. 

The concept of home gardens has carried on to the present time, with both individual household garden plots as well as community garden projects such as the one I have been involved in for over a year now.

In my small 8×5 foot plot I grew large quantities of tomatoes, peppers, string beans, eggplant and other veggies like lettuce, kohlrabi and herbs like mint, lemon grass, parsley and thyme. You can also do this on your windowsill or at home, and here is a great list of medicinal herbs to start with. 

In fact, so much was produced last summer in my little plot that a lot of veggies were given away to family, friends and even neighbors.

This small plot is now producing winter varieties conducive to the milder winter climate found in Israel. These include kale, Swiss chard, various herbs, carrots, cabbage and broccoli. 

With the current Coronavirus (COVID-19) world pandemic crises now ravaging most countries, securing ample food supplies is turning out to be as serious as contracting the virus itself. As supplies of fresh vegetable produce become difficult to obtain, largely due to disruptions in supply lines, having a small Victory Garden is again making a lot of sense as it did for our grandparents during WWII. 

There is only one small problem, however. The continual increase of people becoming infected by the virus and the resulting stay-at-home directives by governmental authorities is now preventing amateur farmers from working their garden plots; especially at a time when these fresh organic veggies and herbs are needed most.  

Hopefully, the self-quarantine orders will ease soon, so we can plant our Spring and Summer crops. As I experienced last year, there’s nothing better and healthier than freshly picked garden veggies from one’s own plot. The rewards speak for themselves, as it did for our grandparents more than 70 years ago. In the meanwhile, if you can, dig in and get growing the old fashioned way. 

Download the Victory Garden Handbook here (links to PDF).

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These oddities may appear to be the ultimate in personal vanity, including selling gold bars in vending machines. Perhaps the ultimate vanity extreme in the UAE is a new trend for restaurants in Dubai and Abu Dhabi to serve edible gold in foods ranging from hamburgers to steaks and seafood.

This bizzare foodie trend includes foods with actual gold dust sprinkled on or mixed in them are selling well to those who can afford to purchase them. Examples include 24K prime steaks or “golden” sea bream dinners running at about $90 per person. Even desserts like ice cream often come available with gold-laced flower toppings at appropriate prices.

Gold still appears to be a favored and sought after commodity in the UAE, especially in uncertain times. The opulence shown in this region, where luxury hotel suites can run as much as $25,000 per night, is often a topic for social protests; especially when construction workers and domestic servants there work in near-servile conditions for mere pittance wages
while those more fortunate live luxurious live.

In Dubai, for example, one can order a gold-laced cappuccino coffee, served in the lounge of the Burj Al Arab hotel.

From an environmental viewpoint, overbuilding and overconsumption and desalination has caused considerable damage to the already fragile ecosystem of the Arab Gulf region, which still claims to have one of the world’s largest populations of dugong aquatic mammals.

Obviously, money wasted on foodie trend opulence which serves zero health benefits could be better spent on trying to save what’s left of the region’s natural environment. The big question is who is concerned enough there to do this? 

Read more on Arab World opulence:

Gold and Armored Rolls Royce is Most Ungreen Luxury
How much gold goes into a white gold Mercedes sports coupe?
Wild Animal “Pets” still Commonplace in the Gulf

Photos of gold covered sea bream and gold laced coffee, The National

The post Gold instead of cinnamon on cappuccinos in Arab states as poverty reels on nearby appeared first on Green Prophet.

Local community gardens growing organic veggies like tomatoes are certainly nothing new these days. Many large cities, such as New York City, have had community garden projects for years. Even obscure locations, such as the Wadi Rum desert region in Jordan, have organic vegetable projects grown by local inhabitants.

My own experience with these “home grown” veggie projects only began this Spring, when I signed up to participate in a community garden project being sponsored by the Netanya Municipality. After living for years in apartments and having less than satisfactory results growing veggies and herbs in window sills and balconies, I jumped at the chance
to have my own small plot to grow garden vegetables and fresh herbs.

This project began in early April when I received my 2.5 X 1.5 meter plot next to the Ir Yamin cultural center in south Netanya (above photo). In this location, each participant also received seedling starter plants such as tomato, pepper, cucumber,kohlrabi,lettuce, kale, eggplant; and a variety of herbs from the Municipality. The plots are irrigated from drip irrigation systems already in place. The gardens are organic in nature with no pesticides or commercial fertilizers being used, other than natural compost material.

Malcolm, an employee of the Municipality and in charge of Netanya’s 6 community plots (photo) was on hand to give advice and assist plot holders in planting and tending their crops. Being a former immigrant from Ethiopia, Malcolm has been especially helpful with members of his own ethnic community, many of whom are enthusiastically involved in group garden plots in several locations.

“The idea of the group community gardens was formulated to help encourage a feeling of community and of belonging to the particular community where the gardens are located” says Lou Hammer, who previously immigrated to Israel from the USA and is involved in a community garden project in the Dora neighborhood in southern Netanya.

“We have brought people with disabilities here to see the gardens and to participate in planting and growing vegetables. Just seeing the happy expressions on their faces when their ‘crops’ are ready to harvest is proof enough to the success of these community garden projects,” adds Hammer.

Malcolm hopes to write a book on community garden projects and tailor it to school children to increase their interest in agriculture and ‘working the land’. “I also would like to teach kids to grow crops, which will hopefully give them more community awareness as well” he says.

Read more on community and home garden projects:

Harlem Grown grows greens and girls in New York City

How to grow an olive tree in a container

Wadi Rum Bedouins Defy Nature by Growing Organic Veggies

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Sodastream, the Israeli company manufacturing devices producing soda gas beverages in reusable bottles (which sold to Pepsi Co for 3 billion last December), has been on a continuing upswing since  featuring actress Scarlett Johansson to be its anti-BDS advertising queen in 2014.

Since then, the company has been a rising star in Israel’s manufacturing community, as well as being a friend of the environment and an advocate of peaceful co-existence between peoples.

RELATED: See Sodastream CEO gets into cannabis.

Sodastream manufactures devices producing CO2 gas beverages in reusable bottles. The company’s new plant in the Bedouin town of Rahat, outside of Beersheba hires a diversified workforce of 2,000  including Israeli Arabs, Jews, Druize and Palestinians.

Following the company’s purchase last year by Pepsi Cola for $3.2 Billion, company CEO Danny Birnbaum gave a bonus of NIS 18,000 ($5,000) to all Sodastream employees who had been working at the company for at least one year.

The plant in Rahat has 84 specialized injection machines to assemble and fill its unique sparkling water devices. Since the plastic bottles used can be refilled over and over again, the environmental benefits are enormous as this results in less disposable bottles being sent to trash dumps or finding their way out to sea.

(Israel is the world’s largest user per capita of one-time use plastics – Andreas Weil, EcoOcean)

SodaStream’s fortunes since inception have been a long roller coaster process with the company sometimes on the verge of bankruptcy due to economic and political concerns (the company was once located in the West Bank, near Jerusalem).

Birnbaum’s feelings pertaining to peaceful co-existence and equal opportunities can be partially attributed to his father, Rabbi Erwin Birnbaum, a Holocaust survivor and partisan fighter who brought his family to Israel in the late 1970’s after serving as a Conservative Rabbi in the USA for many years.

Rabbi Birnbaum has long advocated peaceful co-existence between peoples in the region and elsewhere; an attitude that has certainly influenced his son Danny in his position as CEO of SodaStream.

When interviewed on Israel’s Channel 12 in Israel we caught Birnbaum saying: “this is one of the best ways to promote peace by giving people in Gaza more economic opportunity. We don’t talk politics here; we only talk peace. Birnbaum recently took 30 journalists from all over the world on a media tour of the SodaStream plant in Rahat.

Joint manufacturing projects between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza have been tried in the past; with less than satisfactory results. Birnbaum hopes to change this with establishing the new plant in a “peace zone” between Israel and Gaza.

“This project is for the benefit of everyone, including my own family. I have two sons in the army now and don’t want them or any other Israelis to have to be living in Gaza,” says Birnbaum.

Read more on SodaStream and issues regarding disposable plastic wastes:

Throwaway plastics and ignorance are killing our oceans

Sodastream’s stock rises as Scarlet Johansson’s banned ad sizzles

The post Sodastream to build Gaza factory for “peace” appeared first on Green Prophet.

Algae as superfood? Countries like Japan have already known for years about the possibilities of using algae as a nutritious food product, as any sushi fancier will attest to. Growing algae to feed the world’s hungry may soon become a viable reality as some forms of algae like spirulina, actually a form of cyanobacteria  and up to now much more expensive to produce as a food source.

This cost factor may now be reduced significantly due to a project being conducted by high school students at Israel’s Gymnasia Herzliya in Tel Aviv. The school program actually began back in 2013 when the high school students began experimenting with growing the algae in plastic bottles in what they referred to as the Algeed Superfood Project.

Spirulina has been found to contain as much as 70% protein and as such can be a tremendous help to feeding countries such as those in Africa whose large populations suffer from high levels of malnutrition. Since its original inception, the Tel Aviv high school project has expanded to actual involvement with African countries like Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

“The idea is to find a low cost nutrition solution to feed the world’s hungry,” says Ben Berger, the project head. Congolese Agricultural representatives recently visited the high school, whose students took on the project six years ago to find a way to reduce significantly the cost of producing the highly nutritious algae at a lower cost than had been done up to now when spirulina was mostly sold in health foods stores at a much higher cost.  Spirulina in its natural state, usually looks like the photo below:

Dr. Zeev Degani, the school principal, is very happy that the project is taking place at his school which has expanded it to the point where some of the students have actually visited African locations to see the progress being made to produce the algae there. The Gymnasia Herzliya students have developed a way to grow the algae in plastic drink bottles, an item that is plentiful all over Africa and usually discarded in trash dumps. The program was aired recently on Israel’s Channel 13 news program.

Beginning originally on South Africa, the project is also being tried in Rwanda, Ethiopia, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where more than 1.5 million children suffer from various forms of malnutrition. “Instead of being dependent on aid programs, which usually end after a period of time, why not focus on something that will enable countries to provide their own nutrition solutions?” said a representative of the Lwiro Research Center of Natural Sciences in the Dem. Republic of the Congo.

More about algae as a food and fuel source:

Adding spirulina to felafel could yield the next superfood

Algae returns as fuel for our future

Israeli Teens Bottle Algae in “Algeed” Superfood Project for a Hungry Africa

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Israel’s recent Passover holiday period, which also included opening season visits to beaches and various picnic sites, is still being dealt with by national park and forestry employees long after holiday goers returned home. Whether it be national forests, rivers and beaches, or city public parks, the amount of trash and food waste left behind is staggering, to say the least.

Employees of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority , in charge of watching over forest lands and national parks, estimate that as of Sunday, April 28, more than 700 tons of trash is still “onsite” and not yet been picked up from locations where holiday goers visited during the 8-day holiday.

The following video (in Hebrew) from the Channel 12 news site gives some indication of the amount of trash left behind, including picnic grills, folding chairs, and mountains of throwaway plastic dishes and utensils.

According to Channel 12 News reporter Guy Veron, literally tons of waste items of all types are still being picked up from these sites in an ongoing operation that is expected to take several days to complete. Environmentalists dealing with the problem of picnic trash left in these locations, including the country’s beach fronts, point out that much of the problem is simply a lack of education in environmental issues the country faces, along with a sheer disregard for protecting Israel’s fragile environment.

Although trash bins and dumpster containers are often available to put the trash in, many holiday goers simply do not use them; often leaving their trash on the ground or on beach areas where they spent their holiday time.

Spokesperson for the environmental organization Zalul say that litter by beachfront visitors is a constant problem; especially on weekends and holidays. As much of the beach litter includes throwaway plastic bags, bottles, straws and dishes, some of it gets washed out to sea, resulting in a danger to marine life.

“The Mediterranean Sea contains so much “micro-plastic” waste that literally all fish and other marine animals, including birds, have these waste particles inside their stomachs, resulting in eventual death for many of them,” a Zalul spokesperson once told me.

It is a shame that environmental awareness is not taught more in the schools. Parents pass their lack of environmental knowledge and concern on to their children, who continue their parent’s bad habits in respect of concern for the country’s natural resources. Protecting the environment should be considered an important school subject, since the country’s future depends on it.

More about trash accumulation and recycling:

Israel’s Beach Season Opens With Litterbugs

Drinking Beer in Cans and Other Middle East Recycling Problems

Jordan Talks Plastic Waste: Action Wanted!

Photo of Kinneret lake shoreline : Gil Eliau/Haaretz

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Wolves are largely a protected species in Israel and are not creatures that one would expect to find in this part of the world. However, a sub-species of the northern grey wolf, originating in India is actually thriving on the Golan Heights, causing local farmers and cattle herders to literally be at war with these furry cousins of domestic dogs.

In fact, the wolves have so much lost their fear of humans that they are often seen coming into Golan Heights towns and settlements to raid garbage bins in search of food. They are also something to be feared due to the risk of spreading rabies and other diseases as well as the danger of their snatching domestic animals and even small children from campsites as part of their food search.

Golan Heights wolves are larger than a smaller cousin Canis Lupis Arab, that lives in Israel’s southern desert region and stand around 26 inches (65 cm) high and weighing around 45 pounds (20.5 kg) fully grown. Golan wolves weigh around 70 pounds (32 kg) when fully grown. Despite being larger, Golan wolves are often found living happily in minefields that are still considered as unsafe for humans to enter into.

Although the wolves are a protected species, the Israeli government has been paying a bounty of NS 2,000 or $500 for each one that strays out of its protected “conflict” area. Farmers complain that they lose at least 200 cattle and sheep annually to these predators, whose light weight prevents them from exploding still lethal mines. Wolves are the largest predators in their Golan habitat; and normally prey on animals such as gazelles, wild pigs and small mammals like rabbits and hyrax (a small rodent-like animal that is actually related to elephants). But hoofed livestock are often on their dinner menus as well; especially when wild game is scarce.

Besides occasionally shooting them, other measures such as illegal poisoning are used to control the wolf population. Nature authority staff members are trying to find ways to keep the wolves under control without having to resort to killing them. Being highly intelligent and having lost much of their fear of man, their only real enemy, the conflict between man and wolf appears to be an ongoing problem, with a viable solution still to be found.

Read more on endangered wolves and other animal species:

CNN: The sixth mass global extinction has arrived

Only Two Countries in the Middle East Protect Wolves

Kuwaiti Kills Wolf then Shows off

Photo of Arab wolf on the prowl: Times on Israel/Wikipedia commons

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Israel’s Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinneret) was still at critical water levels as recently as January, when a previous article depicted the then dire condition of the biblical lake. So critical in fact was the crisis that the lake’s water level had decreased so low that it nearly reached the dreaded “black line” of 214.7 meters below sea level  when the water becomes saline, due to underground salt springs.

The overall situation of the Kinneret has now improved significantly due to recent heavy rains which have also fallen on the Golan Heights, one of the Kinneret’s sources of fresh water. This situation prompted me to go on a day trip to the “Heights” and check out the situation there; especially the beautiful waterfalls of the Saar Stream, also known as Nahal Saar.

Starting out from central Israel on a rainy April 1, a virtual April fools joke in itself in drought plagued Israel, our group’s first nature stop was none other than Nahal Saar itself, to view the now swollen stream and truly spectacular water falls. As we approached the stream on foot, a near-deafening noise of rushing and falling water was emanating from it, as shown in a close-up view  of the top of the falls (photo).

The sheer power of the rushing water in this stream gives an indication of how much rainfall and snowfall has occurred on the Golan Heights and Mt. Hermon, a mountain range located on the northern section of the Golan . The cascading water in Nahal Saar flows eventually into the Jordan River and then into the Kinneret. The falls are located below the ruins of the Nimrod Fortress, built originally in 1229 by Al-Aziz Uthman, the younger son of the Muslim
Mamkuke conqueror Saladin.

Before reaching the Jordan, Nahal Saar flows through the historic site known as the Banias Nature Reserve, itself a natural wonder with smaller waterfalls and ruins of ancient settlements; including a site said to have been a place of worship to the Greek god Pan.

Mt. Hermon, the Golan Height’s highest mountain range, is a major source of water for the streams that eventually feed into area rivers, including the Jordan and Yarmuk rivers. This season’s precipitation have added considerably to the snow accumulation atop Mt. Hermon, from which the melting snowfalls feed into these streams.

Our tour included a visit to a small lake called Birkat Al-Ram, called Bherkat Ram in Hebrew. The picturesque lake is actually the flooded cone of an extinct volcano. The lake has been in danger of drying up due to excessive pumping for agricultural use.

The tour ended with a visit to a site called Mizpah HaShalom or Peace Vista, which gives visitors a spectacular view of the entire Lake Kinneret below. Viewing the lake after this season’s above average rainfall indicated that while some parts of the shoreline are still exposed, the rising of the lake’s water level by nearly three meters has
greatly improved the Kinneret’s situation over what it was previously.

Currently, the lake is only supplying water to neighboring Jordan, as part of the 1994 peace agreement with Israel. “Israel’s fresh water now comes from mountain and coastal aquifers and desalination” our guide said. The current lake level of -211.8 meters below sea level is still about 3 meters short of being completely full and reaching the “upper red level” of -208.8 meters below sea level, when excessive water is sent into the lower Jordan River.

The lower Jordan, now not much more than a thin trickle of “unholy water” from sewage and saline runoff, can use a bit of  Kinneret lake water as well.

More about the Sea of Galilee and Jordan River:

Sea of Galilee still critical water levels despite winter rains

Water crises at Sea of Galilee. What would Jesus say?

Unholy waters: the Jordan River is Nearly Dead

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Unusual winter rains in Israel give fuel to plants which feed millions of new “painted lady” butterflies

They keep coming, thousands of them, in what appears to be a south-north migration flight. Coming coincidentally on the first day of Spring, this “invasion” of ‘Painted Ladies’ butterflies caught our eyes in southern Netanya, Israel as a totally unnatural phenomenon not usually seen in such large numbers.

Known by their scientific name of danaus chrysippus these medium sized butterflies are usually seen this time of year, but never in such numbers.

The sheer size of the butterfly swarm this year appears to be a very rare phenomenon that has been assisted greatly by an unusually wet winter. The migration movement of the butterflies, also known as the “plain tiger” or “African Queen”, appears to have begun this year on the Arabian Peninsula and will end up far to the north in Europe.

The life-span of these butterflies is only around two weeks; meaning that at least three generations will be needed to reach their final destination. This butterfly migration is a bit different than the annual migration of the North American Monarch butterfly that migrates each year between southern Canada and Mexico. The present influx of Painted Lady butterflies passing through Israel is estimated to be “in the billions” and will continue until mid May.

The wet winter conditions have also been favorable to locations south of Israel; causing a much higher than usual number of butterflies to hatch, according to news reports.This year, the butterfly flights are being reported all over Israel. People wishing to see these beautiful insects will be able to so do for the next six or so weeks.

To see these beautiful butterflies, just go to where a lot of flowers are located, preferably in open spaces, between 9:00 and 12:00 am.

More articles on insects and insect patterns:

Swarms! Plague of locusts could be breeding near you

Israel Military Uses Mimicry to Design Butterfly Drone

Flying spark food-tech asks, “Do you want flies with that?”

Photo of Painted Ladies butterflies by David Cohen/flash90 

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Oil and natural gas, as investment opportunities, have certainly had their share of publicity; both good and bad. This includes market analysis data to entice potential investors to consider investing or speculating in either oil and gas futures or in stocks and investment funds that include energy companies specializing in the exploration and production of oil and natural

Notwithstanding the environmental issues such as global warming and climate change being tied to the production and use of fossil fuels, gigantic oil spills such as the Exxon Valdez spill and Deepwater Horizon well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico have opened a “Pandora’s Box in regards to the downside of oil and natural gas. This is only part of the entire problem, however.

In many countries, particularly the USA, a controversial technique known as fracking is now being used extensively to bring oil and gas deposits out of shale and other underground geological formations. Fracking involves the use of inserting a high pressure mixture of water and chemicals into underground formations to free trapped oil and natural gas to the surface.

While more certain than “hit or miss” drilling into geological formations, fracking is much more environmentally damaging to underground, as it involves the use of large amounts of water that contributes to drought in the areas where the fracking is being done. The tremendous amount of pressure used as well as a continuous pounding force also results in disturbance of the subterranean formations,causing numerous “mini earthquakes”, as well as noise pollution above the surface. Fracking is also a costly production method involving the use of very specialized drilling rigs and equipment; and as a result is very much affected by the local and international market price of crude oil and natural gas.

Despite the costs and environmental concerns, fracking appears to be one of the most successful ways to bring up oil and natural gas deposits. Even oil producing countries in the Middle East have now begun to use this method  including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE. The UAE is becoming so interested in using fracking that Abu Dhabi’s national oil company ADNOC has taken the lead by embarking on a big fracking project to extract natural gas its subterranean shale deposits.

Fracking in previous oil rich Mid East countries may be an indicator that their oil reserves available to be extracted by simply drilling into the earth may be now at a much lower level. With underground water reserves being a record lows, the large amount of water required for fracking will most likely have to come from desalination plants; resulting in even more expense as well as environmental damage.

With use of fossil fuels already top issues by environmentalists as being a prime cause of climate change and global warming, the added issues of fracking only confirms that investing in oil and even natural gas is not good for those really concerned with the future environment of planet earth.

More on oil and gas:

Should you consider investing in oil in 2019?

Golan Heights Slated for Oil and Gas Drilling…and Environmental Damage?

Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Opens Pandora’s Box at Alberta Tar Sands

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