Archive for November, 2009

Embarased into taking action on Reusable Shopping Bags

Friday, November 27th, 2009

Of all things on Thanksgiving Weekend with the adult children home for the Holiday, we were reciting how much we had saved with our actions and what we were going to do with the savings….when our project leader complained that we not were using Reusable Shopping Bags.

Quickly we scurried around the house looking for swag from business shows which have been giving these Reusable Shopping Bags away for the last few years. We were lucky and found 5 of them so we are off the hook for now with our project leader, and we have taken another step towards conversation.

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Mulch and Planting Soil

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

As previously noted, we have a huge Moreton Bay Fig in the Back Yard which produces in an average week up to 9 55 Gallon Trash Containers full of what is mostly dry debris. We don’t fill the trash cans to the top because they get too heavy to easily move so they are more like 3/4’s full. Anyway, it is a lot of leaves and figs, etc.

The mulching pattern we have kind of fallen into (not a whole lot of thought went into it…more of practical reality) was to put about half of the debris up in the far back around the fruit trees to save water usage and improve the soil (basically alkaline clay over boulders). And, then the rest we pile up in the seedling area and we add the daily wet garbage from the Kitchen. This effectively adds the green mulch which are missing. The Bugs love this combination and the piles get reduced faster than I would have thought. We used to occasionally water the piles to help the mulching process, but that took more discipline than we had. It was easier to let the bugs do the work. Occasionally, we turn the stacks but far less than we should.

Given the uneven nature of our mulching process and a somewhat hap hazard approach to mulching, we need an easy way to exact the mulch we could use as planting soil. We took an idea from the basic History Channel on Egyptian archeology where the workers were using flexible sifting screens rather than the fixed screen mess box framed ones we often see used in the US. So, giving it a try, we used some old flexible plastic support webbing from the vegetable garden, we threw in a mix bag of mulch and rocked the webbing back and forth so the small pieces fell through and the bigger ones went back to the mulching piles. Seems to work. We do the sifting over an old wheel barrel and then fill the container from it.

A turned over trash can works as a make shift planting bench and we are good to go…..Now we need the energy to keep the pipeline full.

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Reuse Planting Containers

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

For the initial Planting Containers, we decided just to use Household trash to begin with…….Every week there are at least two Gallon Milk containers, 1 18 Egg Pack, 6 or more Cans, Styrofoam meat and poultry trays, and other miscellaneous plastic and paper containers. Basically, lots of containers for lots of seedlings. We get a bit lazy about planting for a few weeks and then madly try to get caught up with the supply of Reuse Containers. Here is a link to the Product Page on RecycledPlants.com showing some sample containers.

The process of converting the containers into Planting Containers is straight forward. The Household waste is sorted into four basic groups:

1) Plastic
2) Paper
3) Cans
4) Egg Cartons and Meat trays

1) For plastic containers with narrow tops, we use a box cutter to cut off the top sufficient to have a opening which makes it easy to add plants. Then I use a hobby soldering iron which I use to melt two or three holes in the bottom of the containers for drainage.

2) We do the Paper Containers the same way as the Plastic Containers. Cut off the tops if required and burn drainage holes.

3) The Cans just need Drainage holes, and for this we use a small Phillips Screw driver as a punch and a small tack hammer and punch two or three holes in the bottoms for Drainage.

4) Our Egg Cartoons are paper which makes them great for small seeds, but we found out they fall apart very easily so we started using the meat trays under the Egg Cartoons so I could move them around. Then we noticed the trays didn’t drain (obviously as they were plastic), so we burned drainage holes in them with the soldering iron and this combination made for nice seed trays.

Here is a link to our video on how to convert your household trash into Reuse Planting Containers.

We keep our eye out for nursery containers being thrown out and salvage a few every month or so. We reuse 5 gallon containers usually paint, and a local restaurant helps us out in several ways: they save the 5 Gallon Oil containers which we reuse, and they save CRV containers which we turn in to help with our 15 Gallon Container purchase fund.

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