From The Old Farmer's Almanac.
Earlier in the week, jodi from Bloomingwriter (or should it be "jodi from Blotanical" - hard to tell where she spends her time these days :-) pointed out a site that had been scraping gardening blogs and using the content for their own purposes.
Now I'm not one to complain about other sites using my feed, provided they credit me with a link back to my blog. But this site wasn't even prepared to do that. While it all looked above board showing clickable links under each blog's name, the links just led to another page on this person's site.
Not surprising, when I tried to find some way to contact the owner, the Contact Us link was also bogus. So off I set for some moral justice trying to locate some info about the site's owner. After checking out the Whois data (most of it kept to private - surprise! surprise) it did list the dns data (or hosting service).
A quick email and a fast response indicated that the Host was happy with the site and that they hadn't contravened their Terms of Service. I pointed out that the links on the site were not external - therefore not crediting any individual blog - and while I didn't get a follow-up email, it was only a few hours later that this site no longer existed.
One small victory for garden bloggers!
On the other side of the world jodi was already reporting the site to Google's Adsense team to try and discredit the site's advertising potential. A quick reaction to bringing down a scamming opportunist.
While it may only be a small victory, it's still one step to ridding the web of people who are willing to scrape others hard work and efforts.
BTW - the host, which I would certainly recommend if they're willing to lose a customer for the sake of a better web, is NetJaguar.com. Kudos guys. And a big kudos to jodi for finding the offending site in the first place.
What to do with the excess plastic containers that are used to grow plants in has always been a dilemma. This has been addressed before, with one company in England taking the lead. After talking to our garbage/ recycle company Sierra Disposal I have been told that we can recycle our plastic nursery pots with them. We have a dumpster that in the past was just for cardboard. Recently it was changed to a recycle bin that can take card board, plastic, aluminum, etc. They have told us that we can place the pots in the container and they will recycle them.
This is great news. In the past we just couldn’t take back the pots people wanted to return. We would end up with a giant pile of pots we just couldn’t use quickly enough. Now we can offer to take back the empty cell packs, gallon, and larger pots from the customer once they have finished their planting. I would like to encourage that they only bring back the pots from plants they have bought from us, but we won’t get upset if a Home Depot pot or two shows up.
I don’t know if Sierra Disposal realizes the amount of plastic cans a nursery can end up with. For now we will see if we can fit them in the hopper we have, but I could see having a dedicated container just for the pots. Will start with this and see what happens.
Do other waste collection companies offer this to nurseries? What do other nurseries do with the empty pots they can’t use in their operation?
“There’s many a strong farmer
Our vegetables and fruits and grains are mostly grown in fields doused with pesticides, hormones, antibiotics. Our harvests are tainted by chemical fertilizers, laced with pollutants, and possibly carcinogens. Our children eat produce grown for its looks rather than its nutritional value. Our food is selected by laboratory chemists whose mathematical formulas include how far the product will be shipped, and how long it can be stored without sacrificing its youthful good looks. What we buy to eat is often wrapped in stiff cellophane and vacuum sealed with an inert gas to retard spoilage. 