Celebrate Earth Day – There's a Big, Wide World Outside the Door

The turmoil and noise in our lives at the moment can tempt one into a state of anxiety and discontent. There is an antidote. Turn off the television, walk away from the computer, ignore the 24-hour news cycle, and go outside. Even if you are not a gardener, go outside. Start by noticing one thing: nature is right outside your door.

Start walking. Look around. It's greener today than it was last week, isn't it? Listen. This is the time of year when bird activity seems to peak. The migratory birds are stopping to rest before moving on. The locals are staking out territories and getting ready to nest. In my yard, resident mockingbirds are working hard to chase all other insect-eating birds away from their territory. It would be funny, except that they are chasing bluebirds, kingbirds, and more. However, that's nature.

We've added many trees since we've moved here; most were added as seedlings courtesy of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Pennsylvania's 10 Million Trees Initiative, and the Adams County Planting Partnership. Most of them survived and are adding growth every year. The American Plums that we planted three falls ago are flowering this year. Daffodils and dandelions add color to the lawn and provide food for the early pollinators. In the garden, almost every shovelful of soil reveals earthworms and other soil denizens.

If I go a little farther, to the Battlefield or to South Mountain, there is lots more to see, hear, smell, enjoy. This is certainly an antidote for nerves and cheerfulness to cure the blues. Happy Earth Day!

Yes, Earth Day is still a few days off, but why not observe the day today, tomorrow, next week, next month – all year. Every day in the garden is Earth Day. Every day, the natural world is at work – from the soil bacteria and fungi to the vultures and even oak trees.

In nature, all waste is recycled. No one rakes the leaves in Michaux State Forest, but Nature takes the accumulated debris and uses her army of insects, mites, nematodes, and worms to make compost, a fertilizer for next year's growth. Some nutrients are released early in the spring before the tree's leaf out. Look for short-lived wildflowers we call spring ephemerals – Violets, Virginia Bluebells, Spring Beauties, and others, which use those nutrients to grow. After a few weeks of growth, they die, decompose, and release those nutrients back to the soil again. We do this in our gardens when we make compost using Nature’s army of decomposers.

If there is an opening in the forest where wind or ice storms toppled trees, the area grows back to resume its forest stature. In the meantime, there is a succession of perennials, shrubs, brambles, and small, fast-growing trees that will precede the eventual long-lived giants. The fruit trees and berry bushes in these openings provide food for birds and small animals to enjoy. Squirrels and blue jays living on the fringes "plant" acorns and beechnuts, mast they hoard and never recover. Indigenous folk who once lived in these areas ate freely from the bounty, too. Nature is generous with her gifts.

Ambitious gardeners can emulate this by planting a guild – one or two fruit trees, accompanied by some berry bushes, perennials, and herbs.  While the plants we choose to accompany the trees can feed us, they can be selected for their wildlife value as habitat and food for beneficial insects and birds. When Nature is generous to us, we can pass the gifts along.

This bounty is only one example of what environmentalists call "ecosystem services," the sum of Nature's functions that directly impact human lives. Living in a capitalistic culture where the value of things is measured in US Dollars, a group of environmental economists calculated the value of all the work Nature does for us.

• In 1997, a paper by Robert Constanza et al., published in Nature, stated that the total value of the world's ecosystem services was calculated to be $33 trillion, USD (US Dollars). The estimated global gross national product total was $18 trillion USD.
• In 2020, The World Economic Forum published a report called Nature Risk Rising, stating, "$44 trillion of economic value generation–over half the world's total GDP–is moderately or highly dependent on nature." Even hardened capitalists are obliged to admit that Nature is worth more to us functioning smoothly than collapsing.

Try to list all the ways Nature impacts your life, even those things considered inconvenient, like snowstorms, which really provide ground water, and in the days before computers and Zoom, an unscheduled day off. Start your list with fresh water, breathable air, real, unprocessed food, garden tomatoes. I hope you mentioned the conditions that make gardening possible. This is a gardening column, after all.

There is a synergy that developed in Nature over millennia. In your garden, you can see it directly – plants and other life forms have a myriad of interactions. For instance, many plants depend on insects for pollination; for the insect, plants might provide food, a habitat, or protection.

We now know that some plants emit chemical signals to call in predatory insects when they are being consumed by herbaceous insects. Plants form networks with fungi to help retrieve water and minerals, giving the fungi carbohydrates in exchange. Botany has really moved on since I was in school!

This Earth Day, spend some time outdoors. Take the time to observe, discover something new, and think about how Nature is working, even if you don’t notice she is providing gifts for you.

The Master Gardener Hotline is open Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, from 10 am to 2 pm.  Please send an email (with pictures, if possible) to adamsmg@psu.edu with your gardening questions or stop by Penn State Extension, 670 Old Harrisburg Rd, Gettysburg.

April 23, 6:30 PM: The Vegetable Patch, Summer Crops - Register for this class to cover best practices for successfully growing popular summer crops like tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and melons, addressing common diseases, insect problems, and environmental factors that impact their growth.

Debby Luquette is a Penn State Master Gardener from Adams County. Penn State Cooperative Extension of Adams County is located at 670 Old Harrisburg Road, Suite 204, Gettysburg, 717-334-6271.