It turns out that the food you grow in your backyard might not be that climate

friendly after all. Are you really telling me that if I go to a raise bed and I

grow the food that that has a higher carbon footprint than shipping something in from a distant farm.

And the short answer is yes.

It's Wednesday, April 17th, and you're listening to Science Friday.

I'm Cyphrai producer Deep Peter Schmidt.

If you have a backyard garden, you likely want the food you grow to have less of a carbon footprint than the food grown on large

commercial farms? Well, unfortunately, new research shows that food grown in urban settings

produces six times the carbon emissions per serving compared to commercially grown food.

So where's this extra carbon coming from and what can a home gardeners do to reduce their footprint?

We'll get to that in a minute, but first, guest host Kathleen Davis finds out who decides if there's a

super bloom and why there wasn't one this year in California.

We're talking about wildflowers. Head out to California and they are blooming.

Last year you may have heard about a super bloom,

which is when colorful wildflowers cover the barren desert regions of the state.

About a month ago, I was excited to read a few news articles hinting that maybe just

maybe we might be in for another super bloomier. It turns out that we're not quite

there yet.

But it made me think who decides when there's a super bloom anyway?

And why did this year turn out to not be a super bloom after all?

Joining me now to answer those questions and update us on the state of California

wildflowers is my guest.

...