I use a lot of recycled plastic containers for my indoor garden. You Grow Girl advises sticking to these plastics for safety:
1 – PETE
2 – HDPE
4 – LDPE
5 – PP
and avoiding these:
3 – PVC
6 – PS
7 – PC
The numbers refer to the symbols pressed on most plastic products, indicating their makeup.
Terrific little article on beekeeping in NYC, with some fun quotes:
The citys urban bee mavens inhabit their own entomological universe, sharing useful information about mite cures or re-queening protocols that is, replacing a jaded queen bee. As might be expected, they are also given to apiary humor. There are puns about the, well, plight of the bumblebee and requests to lend me your comb; and, yes, there are questions about whether to bee or not to bee. Mr. Solomon, a graduate of the Harvard Business School, has been known to tell hive masters that he has a degree from the Harvard bee school.
On a recent afternoon on her rooftop, Ms. Goodman unhinged the hive cover and she and Mr. Graves began examining the individual wooden bee frames, wedging out big pieces of honeycomb. Being from New York, it boasts a bouquet that is more floral — sweeter — and has a lighter taste, said Mr. Graves. He noted that the bees forage in Central Park, at rooftop planters, outside florists shops and in community gardens, rather than at upstate clover fields or deep-South orange groves.
But it isnt the easiest thing in the world to sweet-talk skeptical New Yorkers into buying urban honey for $5 a pound. You would think that New York honey might have a rather strong flavor, said Judith Cramer, a computer-science teacher who had stopped by Mr. Gravess cart at the Union Square Greenmarket specifically to buy New York honey as a gift for a friend who lives in England.
Actually, its rather sweet, Mr. Graves said.
No, you’d think that New York honey would be quite aggressive as far as honeys go, Ms. Cramer said with a laugh. You know, its the honey that says, Whats it to you? …
I loved this closer:
Back on the roof, Mr. Bukiet sighed as he surveyed the spectacle of his wife and children poking into their two big-city beehives.You raise your children in Manhattan, you think theyll be the ultimate urbanites, and instead you get a bunch of naturalists, he said, deadpan. Where did I go wrong?
Nerve compression plus a total inability to tackle hills without getting off to push mean I never mount a bicycle unless I have to. Exercise in general is not a favourite pastime of mine. Laundry? Eh. It’s just one of those things you’ve gotta do.
Combine all three, though, and we have a multitasking device I could get behind.
Behold, the bike-powered laundry unit!
http://www.bikehacks.com/bikehacks/2012/01/green-power-bike-washing-machines.html
Mother Earth News always gets the gears turning in my head. Here’s a detailed essay from 1974 about their creation of a methane-producing anaerobic digester. One load of cow manure kept a gas-powered farm going for a few months, and even its waste provide useful to feed back into the soil. I’ll have to look at something like this if I ever own a homestead.
I’ve put aside readings and musings for doings of late: The weather has turned, so a-gardening I will go. The one huge benefit of living in an enclosed condo is the heat that builds up over the course of the day. Warm soil is what gives seeds a kick-start, and mine have demonstrated just how hot it can get in here: From planting to sprouts in 3 days!
I’m limited in space, so have restricted myself this year to planting things I think will bear fruit (in both the literal and figurative senses). I had great success last year with tomatoes – particularly the small varieties – so have started Sungolds, Matt’s Wilds, Dr. Carolyns, and Tiny Tims. Tomatillo seeds, scavenged from a single small fruit bought at the local market, are proving quite as robust as the tomatoes were, but if they’re anything like the ground cherries they so much resemble, I may have a repeat of last year’s bushy-but-barren plant upon which I lavished so much unrequited attention. My Serrano peppers have sprouted well, but it remains to be seen if I can get any to fruit – last year was similarly unsuccessful.
I’m growing chard and beetroot as greens (I don’t know if it was the heat or the confining pots, but all my previous attempts at beets and radishes have produced awful-tasting roots) and am crossing my fingers that I can get the mâche I love so much to grow continuously, rather than have it peter out quickly as it did last year.
Mustard greens, in the form of mizuna and a mix of yellow and brown mustards should grow fine, and even if they don’t I have a secret weapon for cheap sprouts. Digging through my seed packets, I found one from my first growing season from a local, expensive nursery that charged me $1.50 for a pittance of brown mustard seeds. Last year, for 27¢, I got ten times as many seeds from the bulk food store, and they proved just as viable as the foil-sealed packet!
My biggest experiment this year will be the Sugar Snap peas, already nearly six inches high and probing for a trellis. I’ve planted them in self-watering containers, so hopefully they’ll get as much water as they want, and have thrown some jute string around the curtain rod. If I can get even one edible pod off them, it’ll be worth the strange looks passersby are sure to give a 17th floor window filled with foliage.
A Dunkin’ Donuts in St. Petersburg, FL, has added an industrial-sized worm bin to its dumpster area, which it feeds with the waste from the coffee shop. That’s a big step up from the 3 Toronto Starbucks locations I visited this week; not a single one was aware of Grounds for the Garden. Come on, Starbucks! Get with the (corporate) program! My worms are jonesing for their caffeine fix!
http://www.ecobcil.com/blog/florida-dunkin-donuts-has-massive-solar-powered-worm-bin
Here’s an article on the founder of TerraCycle. This guy’s a personal hero of mine, as he mixes all of my favourite topics: environmentalism, entrepreneurialism, and savviness.
He learned about vermicomposting when a friend showed him the salutary effect worm castings had on pot plants, and has since built an empire based on the stuff others throw away.
TerraCycle collects organic waste to feed to their worms, whose castings and tea is sold in reused plastic bottles salvaged from the waste stream.
Szaky’s second “aha!” moment was “when we saw that the soda bottles people were discarding, or perhaps recycling, were also a perfectly good raw material. We had always been Dumpster diving for our office furniture, but that was the first time we realized that greatly expanding our Dumpster diving could fuel our production line. We had discovered that contemporary America is a vast Dumpster of industrial products that manufacturers are constantly throwing away or recycling — even when they’re in perfect condition.
One man’s trash is another man’s multi-million dollar fortune. More power to him!
http://www.princetoninfo.com/index.php?option=com_us1more&Itemid=6&key=05-13-2009%20terracycle
One of the few things I will sorely miss when I finally leave Toronto is the marvellous Toronto Public Library. The holdings are huge, and items can be ordered online and delivered to local branches for free. Its a rare thing when the catalogue lets me down, but I went into my search for Superbia! with little hope of its availability. Imagine my surprise to have a copy delivered to me within a few days. And imagine my joy to find the book was even more inspiring than I’d anticipated.
Be careful with this book: Its enthusiasm is contagious! The authors approach a topic that is the bane of eco-warriors with a pragmatism that is sadly lacking in much of the environmental movement: While new development can be done with an eye to green building, existing suburbs are entrenched, so we might as well work with what we’ve got.
And what work can be done if we put our minds to it! The authors lay out a series of steps undertaken by a fictional neighbourhood that start with small efforts and eventually lead to an actual community. The fictional aspect does gloss over some of the real-life problems (e.g. legalities, problem neighbours, and plain old human stubbornness) that would probably add friction to a path mainly depicted here as self-lubricating, but there’s no denying it helps build excitement in the reader, and show that even small steps can lead to big strides.
The idea of community-building is intoxicating to a pragmatist such as myself. Being able to pool resources such as cars, lawnmowers, toys and tools opens up space both in one’s home and one’s wallet. Being able to pool talent opens up possibilities and creativity in one’s neighbourhood. The Utopian community depicted in the book features a fenceless backyards transformed into gardens, a shared house where rooms are let out as home offices and weekly potlucks keep the residents close, and a labour exchange so an hour of babysitting can be traded for some renovation work, web design, or whatever other goods and services can be offered.
North American suburbs have a reputation – not unfounded – for being airless, unfriendly and sterile, but the colourful, vivacious and open community depicted in the book makes me feel right at home.