Showing posts with label waste not. Show all posts
Showing posts with label waste not. Show all posts

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Happy Curb Day!

I first read about today's first-ever nationwide Curb Day in the Buffalo News earlier this week and have been excited about it ever since. (This link will likely expire in a day or two.) Sounds like a terrific idea--but the kind of thing that will only work if it truly goes viral offline as well as on, so I'm doing my bit to help spread the word (at the last possible minute, granted, but better late than never).

The predicted crappy weather around here may put a damp-er (sorry) on the fun in WNY, but it's worth a try. I meant to gather up some curbworthy donations tonight and then it slipped my mind. We've got a copy machine up for grabs if the rain lets up. This all strikes me as an ideal use for what Yankees call "the hellstrip" and Louisianians refer to as "the neutral ground"--that no-man's-land between your home (reservoir of clutter that it is) and the street. Here's a chance to turn it into every-man's/person's-land.

CURB DAY BONUS LINKS:
Nike will take your old sneakers (any brand) and transform them into material for playgrounds
Radio Shack will recycle old rechargeable cell phone and laptop batteries
•UPS will take back all those obnoxious styrofoam packing peanuts they use.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Seed time


I know I've promised not to provide any actual gardening advice here, but that won't stop me from passing along items from other people that look worthwhile, if only to bookmark them for my own future reference. Let's start off with this collection of several annotated lists of favorite seed catalogs and companies by Gardening Gone Wild contributors.

Last winter was the first time I'd attempted to grow anything from seed since the ever-popular Lima Bean Experiment in grade school. Exactly one seedling I started indoors--an ornamental pepper (NOT from a package, but instead the offspring of one I'd planted, which ought to earn me a few bonus points)--actually made it all the way through the summer, and even then it was pretty scrawny. Since the whole endeavor cost little more than $10 (including seeds, peat pots, and plastic mini-greenhouse) and a minimal investment of time, I chalked the experience up to Lessons Learned. (Main lesson: I probably need a heating pad after all. But I enjoyed trying to use the secondary heat from various appliances around the house instead.)

Guess I'll try again this year.

PS. Last year's dismal results only applied to the plants I tried to start indoors; seed sowed directly in the ground fared quite a bit better, particularly the Swiss chard, love lies bleeding/amaranthus, and a tall, yummy kashmiri mallow called sonchal that looked and tasted great, even though I can't seem to find it listed in any book or website on either gardening or cooking. The source for all of these was the Upstate Faerie Herbal Collective, a local seed-saving operation I discovered through my favorite used bookstore, of all places, and I hope to sample more of their wares this coming season.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Hacking IKEA aloe vera, and other rainy day fun

I probably shouldn't make a habit of simply reposting all the cool stuff I find on Arthur every day, but goshdarnit, this journal of "Homegrown Counterculture" has been on a roll lately--it's like a cross between Pitchfork and BoingBoing with a little Whole Earth Catalog for good measure. I was intrigued by the subject line "Repairing is the new recycling", except that I tend to stockpile broken stuff and never quite get around to repairing or recycling it. Nonetheless, I can certainly get behind the following manifesto. (Click on it for a readable version.)



Turns out the text is the work of a Dutch art and design collective called Platform 21, and judging from their various projects, they seem to have a pretty playful approach to their mission. There are a lot of artists around the world doing work along these lines lately, and I haven't really seen enough of P21's to get a good sense of how effective or thorough their particular approach may be, but I like what I see on their site. My eyes went straight for "Hacking Ikea" (2008):

Around the world, for a variety of personal motives, professional and nonprofessional designers are making individual alterations to off-the-shelf products. In the process, they pay little or no attention to a product’s original function. Some do it for fun, others out of necessity, and still others out of a critical attitude toward mass production. IKEA hacks--the appropriation, adaptation and transformation of standard IKEA products--are among the most noticeable expressions of this movement. IKEA is a very successful and consumer-friendly multinational, with a large fan base all across the Western and Asian world. But it is also a cultural entity, an economic force and an icon of global change. Therefore it is not surprising that numerous artists and designers as well as the general public, have a special relationship with IKEA. ...


Looking around my home, it's safe to say I have one of those "special relationships," too. The site contains several examples of Platform 21's members' and guest designers' mostly tongue-in-cheek "hacks," complete with IKEA-style diagrams of the specific products being recontextualized. I've included a shoutout to another one on my music blog, but you won't want to miss this satirical response to a common phenomenon:

There is no natural daylight in IKEA, though it does sell plants. They are at the end of the route, where they fulfill the role of decorations to be quickly snapped up. This annoys Frank Bruggeman, who has therefore created IKEA GARDENING: an indictment of the plant as an interior accessory, but at the same time a positive influence. It makes people aware of cultivation: plants are given space, and decorative fruits have been planted as seeds.


The closest store to me is in Southern Ontario--i.e., on the other side of a border that doesn't look kindly on international plant trafficking--so I can't rescue those sun-deprived aloes whether I want to or not. Here's Bruggeman's hack, as photographed by Leo Verger:



Not a bad setup--my favorite part, which I may well be misreading, is the apparent call to plant the potpurri mix. Free the captives of consumerism!

Saturday, February 28, 2009

Appetite-spoiler alert (you have been warned)


I seem to have misread the opening line of the introduction to this post on Arthur magazine's blog and assumed that "mellow yellow" was the streetname of some cutting-edge alternaculture new energy drink mixing--you were warned, people--dandelion wine and urine. But no! Editor Jay Babcock was merely suggesting that in this earlier article by "radical ecologist, system designer, urban forager, teacher, artist and mad scientist of the living" Nance Klehm, those two liquids were discussed ... entirely separately. Klehm provides a relatively simple-sounding recipe for wine made from all those dandelions my husband always wants removed from our yard (and he's a homebrewer waiting for the hops I planted last year to take off, so he ought to be open to this latest experiment, too). She argues that the potassium-rich concoction is "one alcohol that actually helps your liver and kidneys!" (Are you listening, o intoxicated garden coach?)

A few paragraphs later, Klehm makes a compelling case for, uh, personalizing your compost with a handy source of nitrogen:

We humans pee on average a bit more than a quart a day, at a dilution rate of 1:5 (the recipe). Each one of us are producing more than two gallons of free plant fertilizer a day. Or around 750 gallons a year--which is enough fertilizer to grow 75% of an individual’s food needs for that year. ...


I can't seem to find anything about the practice in the index to Barbara Pleasant and Deborah Martin's Complete Compost Gardening Guide, but Klehm tells you everything you need to know, I suppose:

... Peeing directly into your compost pile is great. So is collecting it in a jar or a bucket and dumping it into the pile later. Not composting? Then just dilute it fresh (remember the recipe again, 1:5) with some water and use it directly on plants or let it oxidize and turn into a nitrate (i.e. leaving it out until it gets nice and dark) and then apply it undiluted. Not only is this something that has been done for ages around the world, it is still being done. Most people are just hush hush about it.


Given that several of the neighbors in my suburban neighborhood surely think I'm nuts for moving from lawn to flowerbeds, I don't see myself dropping trou in the back yard any time soon, but the jar? Hey, I'm open. (Hush, hush.)

Actually, the Klehm article is evoked in passing merely as a preface to a recent and related Op-Ed piece by Rose George in the New York Times. George is the author of The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters, which was itself discussed in the Times here. She extends Klehm's argument with an international perspective:

Consider that since at least 135,000 urine-diversion toilets are in use in Sweden and that a Swiss aquatic institute did a six-year study of urine separation that found in its favor. In Sweden, some of the collected urine — which contains 80 percent of the nutrients in excrement — is given to farmers, with little objection. “If they can use urine and it’s cheap, they’ll use it,” said Petter Jenssen, a professor at the Agricultural University of Norway.


There's plenty more to mull over in both articles, but I'll leave the remainder of discoveries to you while I sneak off to the Little Garden Blogger's Room, bucket in hand.