- from Amateur Gardening Magazine (January 19, 2008.) Article by Martyn Cox.
Photos (and special thanks) to Garden Monkey who sent these photos.
Comments Off
ARCHIVE
Monthly Archive
Entries posted during February 2008.
Books by Gayla Trail
Michael Pollan – Ted Talk
Unfortunately when it comes to Mr. Michael Pollan I can not seem to get past an unfortunate and debilitating case of “teenage fan girl ridiculousness” (squeal!) to write about his work with a modicum of professionalism. If you haven’t heard of his writings and work already I would highly suggest running out and getting a copy of what I think is one of the very best books about gardening ever written, “Second Nature.” The Ted talk (above) leads off from ideas conveyed in his book “The Botany of Desire.”
I highly recommend exploring the Ted talks in general since it is a fantastic resource of intelligent and thoughtful ideas and people.
Leave a commentTomato Seedling ‘Sophie’s Choice’
I grew ‘Sophie’s Choice’ for the first time last year and it turned out to be a favourite mid-size determinant. ‘Sophie’s Choice’ is a very hardy and very productive, heirloom variety said to hail from Edmonton, Canada. Despite the dull orange-red appearance this variety has something for everyone. As an early season producer it’s a great choice (har har) if you’re looking to stagger your season and get the earliest taste of fresh tomato possible. Northern gardeners will appreciate its preference for cooler temperatures. And container growers will love it because you get a lot of average-sized tomatoes from a fairly small plant.
Leave a commentSpring T-Shirts – PREORDER
With t-shirt weather just around the corner (so “they” say) two of our popular shirts are back. We’ve decided to offer them as a pre-order since this system allows us to make a much, much wider selections of sizes available for a limited time. It also means more colour options. Last year we replaced the popular olive green “What Would Nature Do?” tee with natural organic cotton but so many of you have complained that we’ve decided to offer it in the olive green during the pre-order period only. Oh, and we’ve reduced the price too!
Pre-ordering is available until March 3, 2008: I HEART Dirt | What Would Nature Do?
Leave a commentCompostable Coffee Bag
I discovered this message on the bottom of the 1lb bag of coffee beans I purchased about a month ago and thought I would look into PLA and try my hand at composting the bag to see how easily it could be done. The issue here isn’t the paper itself (although that is an issue all its own) but the plastic coating used to line coffee bags. I often save my coffee bags to be reused for storing dried sea kelp for the garden, dried herbs, or flower petals. I’m not a heavy coffee drinker but one can only use so many coffee bags — composting had never occurred to me as an option.
To compost I simply removed the metal tie, ripped the bag into 4 pieces and put it through our shredder before adding it to our kitchen scraps bin (the bin that sits in our kitchen before being dumped into the outdoor composter). We’ve been stuffing the small rooftop cold composter with greens all winter and could really use some browns* in there! This process was easy enough although our as-cheap-as-they-come shredder that is constantly blocked up with stuck bits of paper pulp in the corners, did not appreciate the corn plastic, refusing to shred some of the pieces completely.
It’s been about a month since I put the scraps in the bin and while they aren’t completely composted (because it is winter and our bin is shallow) the “plastic” corn part seems to be dissolved and I have not noticed any sticky residue, unusual growth, or general weirdness inside. I have written on at least one occasion about compostable products, and my thought is that in the end, while it is great that we now have more environmentally responsible items to replace plastic, what I should be thinking about is how to reduce or replace consuming the item in the first place. This exercise in composting a bag is a good reminder that rather than buying my coffee in a bag, albeit a compostable one, I could be bringing a container with me on the days I know I will be stopping in for a lb of beans, saving the paper, the growing of the corn, and the production of corn plastic completely.
*Browns are the dry, carbon-rich ingredients like dry leaves, hay, or newspaper that are added to the bin to balance out the process and keep your bin from becoming too wet and stinky.
Leave a comment
