Feeling experimental?
In partnership with Steel City Biofuels and GTECH, the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy invites you to come learn whether garlic mustard, one of the most serious ecological threats in our parks, can be turned into something useful! On Saturday, June 28, from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., we’ll be in Highland Park pulling garlic mustard and collecting its seeds. Then, on Sunday, July 13, from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m., we’ll be at Blackberry Meadows Farm pressing the seeds and watching a demonstration of how biodiesel is produced from seeds to the gas tank. Our hope is that garlic mustard, like other plants in the brassica family, will be a useful source of biofuels.
Garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) is a non-native, invasive plant that puts stress on ecologies throughout the Midwest and Eastern United States, including our parks in Pittsburgh. Brought to the U.S. as a culinary herb, it has no natural enemies in North America and, if left unchecked, can crowd out native wildflowers, destabilize soils, alter soil chemistry, and threaten ecological balance. If we want to maintain healthy parks and support strong biodiversity, we must curb the spread of garlic mustard!
Biodiesel can be made from any source of fat or oil including soy, palm oil, hemp, fryer oil, and other brassicas like mustard and canola. The efficiencies of these sources vary depending on the amount of oil and other factors. How does garlic mustard stack up? We don’t know! Biodiesel can be made safely at home in small quantities and used in cars with diesel engines with no modification required. It is cleaner-burning, can be locally produced, and reduces our impact on global climate change.
If you’d like to participate in any part of the event, please RSVP to Erin Copeland at ecopeland@pittsburghparks.org. If you’re planning on coming June 28, wear sturdy shoes and long pants you don’t mind getting dirty. And if you have a pair of scissors, bring those too (they’ll be handy for separating the seeds from the rest of the plant)!
(Thanks to Jake at the Parks Conservancy and Asa at Steel City Biofuels for providing info and image design!)
