Category Archives: gardening

Pets in and out of your garden

Posted on July 1, 2011 by | 1 Comment

 Eco Lassie has been following the garden exploits of the rest of you with great interest.  We’ve done a bang up garden this year, with sixteen raised beds, a first, that is giving us a huge bounty. That led to remembering the time we had keeping our pets out of ours in previous years.

 

There’s no question we love our pets and also no question that even the cutest of cats and dogs can trample, dig, crush, tear and leave their little presents in our nice rows of fresh veggies and flowers. What to do that doesn’t mean using the very kind of commercial repellent we’ve been trying to avoid?

Try soaking cotton balls in citrus (or mint or menthol) essential oils and place around the garden perimeter. Many pets are repelled by these scents. You may have to change the balls weekly or after a heavy rain until your pet figures out the garden is a no-go area.

Use rose prunings, if you have them, around the base of larger established plants. Paws, especially those sensitive cat pads, will not relish these thorny clippings and quickly find a new pathway.

The visual image of a barrier works wonders for cats and dogs. Try using floating row covers, which some of you may already by using to prevent insects and birds from feasting on those tasty shoots of budding plants and flowers. Planet Natural has the most reasonable I could find, and there are many other sites that sell the garden material on rolls. You can water and fertilize right through this light, breathable barrier without removing it.

Of course, there ARE some benefits to having our pets near our gardens. Cats will reduce the amount of mice, voles and moles if they are in your area; dogs scent and barking will keep deer and groundhogs at bay, or at the very least, in your neighbor’s yard!

Happy Gardening~

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Posted in eco pets, gardening

Can it or Freeze it?

Posted on June 27, 2011 by | 4 Comments

Food preservation is a dandy way to make the most of summer’s bounty for the long winter months.  It’s also a dying art as fresh produce is available everywhere at a low cost.  And if it’s not?  We can buy food that somebody else has canned or frozen for us.  So why bother?  Why stand over a kettle of boiling water on a hot August afternoon?

The best food is fresh food, but if you garden at home you’ll find that a crop of zucchini or beans or strawberries soon exceeds your immediate needs.  You look with pride at your pile of homegrown veg and it strikes you:  Why NOT save this for another day? After all, you’ve grown the food, it’s practically free, it’s not laden with chemicals and it’s sitting on your countertop inducing guilt.  Or perhaps you’re at the farmers market and there are bushels of tomatoes marked down if you buy them in bulk.   These situations naturally lead to deciding whether To Can or To Freeze.

Freezing is easier, Enviro Girl isn’t going to lie to you.  She’s made jam both ways and freezer jam takes half the time.  But the jars of ruby-colored jam in her pantry make her much prouder than the plastic containers of jam in her freezer.  More produce can be frozen than canned–in most cases you simply boil, blanch and stick in the freezer.  The problem Enviro Girl has with freezing produce has to do with the energy use involved.  Frozen food requires a freezer’s energy all year round, in addition to the energy needed to heat the water to a boil so you can partially cook it.  Plastic freezer bags or containers can be reused, but it’s a tricky and time-consuming proposition to clean them and keep them good from one year to the next.  It’s dicey to freeze things in glass because if you overfill, broken glass will explode all over your freezer.  Most of the time, one year in a frozen environment between slabs of meat and a gallon of ice cream is enough to wreck a plastic container for any future use.  Freezing makes plastic brittle and susceptible to cracking.  And weak plastic?  Effectively freaks Enviro Girl out.

But canning requires fully cooked food, which means fully mushy food and Enviro Girl doesn’t care for that–at least if she freezes green beans she doesn’t compromise texture.  Canning takes more time and a modest investment in a canner, jars and lids–but these are all reusable from year to year.  Canning requires energy initially, but once those jars seal they can be stored anywhere dry and dark and cool–like in a kitchen cupboard or on a basement shelf.  Canning got Enviro Girl’s ancestors through hard winters and if it was good enough for her German brethren, by golly it’s good enough for her.  But the beans taste mushy.

The “greener” choice is to can.  There’s no weird risk of plastic leaching chemicals or glass storage breaking, it requires less energy and jars are reusable.  Green Girl has decided to can the bulk of her fruit–applesauce, jam and tomatoes this season.  It frees up a lot of freezer space and makes her pantry look darn impressive.  She’ll freeze her vegetables and a few bags of berries and zucchini for muffins and breads.  Maybe when she’s older and prefers softer food, she’ll go full throttle on the canning.

Whatever your choice, by preserving your own food, you’ll reduce your footprint by reducing and reusing and home preservation is a cheap way to keep your family fed.  Learn more about freezing and canning at the National Center for Home Food Preservation.  This website addresses canning, freezing, drying, smoking, fermenting and pickling!  The site is categorized by foods, making it an easy resource to use.

pantry-de

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Posted in 3 Rs, food, gardening, living green on a budget

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8 Ways to Repurpose Your Trash

Posted on June 20, 2011 by | 2 Comments

1.  Pot scrubbers–those plastic mesh bags you buy onions and apples in?  Wad them up or tie them up with fishing line and you’ve got a nonabrasive scratchy plastic pot scrubber (or pan scrubber or casserole dish scrubber).

2.  Use a tube from an empty roll of toilet paper as a seed starter–fold down on end, fill with soil and plant your seedlings.  When it’s time to move your plant outdoors, you can leave it in the biodegradable cardboard tube, unfold the folded end and plant the entire business directly into the ground.

3.  Repurpose old wire hangers as picture or wreath hangers by bending them into the appropriate shapes.  You can cut one end of an old wire hanger and use it to organize spools of gift wrap or craft ribbons, too.

4.  Old tights or nylons can be used to tie tall plants to stakes in your garden.  For convenient clean up, stick a sliver of soap in the toe and tie to an outdoor faucet–great for scrubbing down after doing yard work or for taking along on a camping trip.  Old tights or socks stuffed with coffee grounds make an excellent deodorizer for cars, coolers, suitcases or freezers.

5.  Never buy Ziplock Takeaways or Rubbermaid storage again.  A stash of clean empty food containers (with lids!) make great “to-go” cartons for leftover food, craft supply organizers, office supply organizers or pots for plant swaps.  Enviro Girl uses empty yogurt containers to bring gift meals to new moms/homeowners (salads, granola, cookies, any cold dish) alleviating any need to return her dishes.  She uses smaller containers (sour cream or cottage cheese) to store her sons’ mouth guards in their gear bags.

6.  Empty liter bottles or milk cartons make great “greenhouses” in the garden.  Cut off the bottom and settle over young seedlings–leave them until the plants outgrow the space.  The plastic will retain heat and protect plants from late-season frosts while keeping the soil moist for growing roots.

7.  Lint is incredibly flammable.  If you’re not composting it, you can wrap it around a toilet paper roll and use it as a fire starter in your fireplace or fire pit.

8.  Those tall bags wrapping your drycleaning?  Don’t throw them away!  Tie off one end and you’ve got a giant trash bag.

 

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Posted in 3 Rs, fast facts, gardening, house stuff, living green on a budget, Uncategorized

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5 Easy Ways to Combat Rising Food Prices

Posted on June 13, 2011 by | 6 Comments

It’s no surprise to learn that food prices are on the rise.  Severe weather prevented many farmers from planting and harvesting as usual and that, combined with rising fuel costs and demand, will make it more expensive than ever to feed our families.

Enviro Girl has to feed three growing boys, her husband and herself, so she’s vigilant about looking for ways to shave their food costs.  Here are 5 ways she’s found to save money while eating healthy:

1.  Buy in bulk in season.  It’s a lot cheaper to buy anything when there’s a surplus of supply.  When strawberries are in season, they’re $2 or less for a pint, off-season they cost $4 or more.  If you can buy seasonal fruits and vegetables in mass quantities and freeze or can them for the rest of the year, you’ll save bundles of money.  Enviro Girl buys a few cases of blueberries and peaches directly from a farm when they’re in season and freezes the contents — here’s the math on the blueberries:

$26 for a case in season is the equivalent of 30 pints that sell for $4 off-season, or $120.

Often you’ll find farmers selling bulk quantities of in-season produce at farmer’s markets — tomatoes by the bushel, cucumbers by the grocery sack to people looking to preserve it for winter.

2.  Learn how to can or freeze produce.  If you can put up 4-5 food items over the summer months, you’ll have food on hand to use when it’s out of season and you’ll save money because even if you buy that produce in bulk in season, it’s much cheaper than buying it processed at the grocery store.  Enviro Girl doesn’t think you’ll become Ma Ingalls overnight, but she assures you that freezing strawberries, peaches, beans, tomatoes and peppers is a cinch — the prep time involved is minimal for these foods and they’re easy to add into one’s weekly diet year-round. As you learn how to put up a few foods each year, you’ll gradually add to your repertoire and soon have a pantry to rival any pioneer wife.

3.  Grow your own.  A 2 foot by 10 foot strip of dirt running along the back side of your garage or yard can produce enough tomatoes, beans, onions, peppers, cucumbers and carrots for a family to eat for a year.  A tomato plant costs $1.50 at a greenhouse, a vine-grown tomato at a grocery store costs $1.50.  You’ll pick at least 15 tomatoes off a healthy tomato plant, more if you nurture it well.  By growing your own food to supply your groceries, you’re able to save money and reduce the impact of rising food prices on your family’s budget.

4.  Join a CSA.  For $25 a week (on average), you can buy locally grown produce every week in season.  CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) is a kind of farm business where the farmer sells “shares” to customers.  Customers buy into the farm by purchasing “shares” and they get a portion of the farm’s production in return for their investment.  This is the most direct way to support local farmers if you’re not inclined to grow your own food but want fresh-grown produce.  It’s also less expensive than shopping at a farmer’s market.  In Enviro Girl’s experience, her $25 share was the equivalent of $50 of grocery food, she hauled home a huge box every week and had plenty to feed her family with leftovers to freeze for later.  Her money supported a local farmer, invested in organic food production and fed her family for less than any other resource around.

5.  Get back to the basics on your table.  Certain processed or “convenience” food only seem cheaper, but are really more expensive.  Let’s compare a few foods:

container of oatmeal:  $1.50   OR   box of cereal:  $3.50

gallon of milk:  $3.50    OR   gallon equivalent of bottled water:  $5.00

5 lb. of potatoes:  $3.00     OR   5 lb. of potato chips: $25.00

3 lb. of apples:  $2.90   OR  1 48-oz. jar of applesauce:  $1.78

1 lb. carrots:  $1.00    OR  can of vegetable soup:  $1.30

Feeding your family isn’t going to get any cheaper.  The best way to avoid extra expense is to cut out the middle man by buying directly from a farmer or grow it yourself.  Learning how to preserve food while it’s in season and learning how to shop for raw foods instead of processed foods will also cut costs.

Tell us, readers, what are you doing to cut your grocery bill?

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Posted in food, gardening, living green on a budget, Uncategorized

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Wheel of Fortune

Posted on May 27, 2011 by | 2 Comments

Or a wheel that won’t cost you a fortune? The Green Queen thinks free is a very good price and she believes in trying to find new purposes for old worn out items. This is one example of thinking outside the . . . tire.

The Green Queen knows it’s not for everyone but if you can come up with ways to repurpose old items, share them in the comments section because we could all use some inspiration for keeping garbage out of the landfills.

This is one idea that the Green Queen just had to share with all you eco friendly folks out there. All you’d have to do is slash a tire, and this time you could take out a little aggression and it could be for good…

Then simply plant your flowers in the “pot”. What a cool way to reuse a little rubber…

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Home grown tomatoes

Posted on May 10, 2011 by | 5 Comments

Now that it’s May, gardeners everywhere are starting to dream of tomatoes.

Fresh-from-the-garden tomatoes are truly one of the greatest foods ever.  Nothing can compare, especially not the cardboard orbs masquerading as tomatoes in grocery stores.

Recycla plants her tomatoes about this time every year. In 2010, she had Romas (8 plants), Yellow Pear (6), Better Boy (4), Old German (4), Yellow Brandywine (2), and Mortgage Lifters (2).

Yes, that’s a lot; however, Recycla has learned that it’s better to start off with too many, because you never know what will happen. The summer of 2010 turned out to be record-breaking for heat and lack of rain, so in spite of Recycla’s efforts, she lost a number of plants along the way. Still, the family was able to eat a lot of fresh tomatoes all summer, plus Recycla made lots of pasta sauce for the cold months. She loved reaching into her freezer in January and pulling out a reminder of the previous summer’s deliciousness.

For 2011, Recycla has thus far only planted four Yellow Pear tomatoes. Those are Recycla’s favorite tomatoes and she’ll snack on them from July until October. She’ll plant other tomatoes too, but hasn’t decided yet on the varieties.

If you’ve never grown tomatoes but are thinking you’d like to give it a try, now’s the time to get started. Tomatoes are incredibly easy to grow, whether it’s in the ground or in a pot on your patio.  Since Organic Gardening has articles on growing tomatoes (and more), Recycla is going to just list a few important things here:

  • Whether you plant your tomatoes in a pot or in the ground, you should plant basil and marigolds with them.  Tomatoes and basil grow well together and the marigolds help repel cutworms and other pests.
  • Tomatoes need regular watering, so water well on a regular basis.  If the plants swing from the extremes of too dry to too wet and then back again, your tomatoes will crack, plus your plants won’t be as strong and healthy as they should be.
  • If you grew tomatoes last year, if possible, rotate your plants to another part of your garden — or, if you grow in containers, replace the dirt — so as to minimize pest and disease problems.

The most important thing is to just get out there and plant some tomatoes!  You’ll be reaping the rewards from July until October.

Tell the Eco Women: Do you plant tomatoes? What are your favorite kinds?

Photo credits: Yahoo Images.

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Posted in food, gardening

Strawberry season

Posted on May 3, 2011 by | 4 Comments

Recycla lives in Virginia and one of the many great things about early May in her area is that it’s strawberry season.

Strawberries might just be one of Nature’s most perfect foods.  They’re at their best when they are eaten right after they’ve been picked.  Strawberries grown in California (or further afield) and then shipped to your grocery store in January just can’t compare.

Strawberries are easy to grow, but you do need to keep an eye on them so that they don’t take over your garden.  Or, you can keep them contained and grow them in a raised bed or pots on your patio.  For more information on growing berries, check out this article at Organic Gardening.

If you don’t have a garden, Recycla suggests that you get yourself to your local farmers’ market or a nearby strawberry farm to get some berries.  Strawberries freeze well, so you can save Spring’s bounty for future eating.  And, of course, there’s always strawberry jam…

It’s important to buy organic strawberries because they make the Dirty Dozen list of fruits and vegetables most contaminated by pesticides.

The best way to store strawberries is NOT in the fridge.  Yes, strawberries last longer when kept chilled, but they lose flavor rapidly.  Instead, leave them unwashed and unsliced at room temperature until you’re ready to eat them.  Be advised that they will only last a couple days this way, so be prepared to dig in soon.

What is Recycla’s favorite way to eat strawberries?  With this amazing fruit, simplicity is the way to go:

  • Strawberries taste amazing with plain or vanilla yogurt.
  • Angel food and pound cakes are also quite wonderful when topped with fresh strawberries.
  • Strawberries dipped in chocolate!

Strawberry season always seems too short to Recycla and then she has to wait patiently for it to roll around again the next year.  Luckily, blueberries and raspberries are right around the corner!

Photo credits: Yahoo Images.

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Posted in food, gardening

Earth Day Giveaway Winner & Spring Transplanting Tips

Posted on April 25, 2011 by | 3 Comments

Congratulations, Zeghsy!  You’ve won the Eco Women Earth Day Giveaway!  We hope you enjoy your loot and we hope you find it useful in your quest to live a little greener.

In her quest to lighten up for Earth Day, Enviro Girl spent a lot of her weekend unplugged.  She read a book, she watched a movie her family rented, she began puttering in her garden beds and she forced her kids to play with their toys instead of playing video games.

As the temps grow milder in Enviro Girl’s neck of the woods, she’s enlisting her kids as slave labor outside more, too.  Since any fear of frost has finally passed, they’re busily pulling out dead growth and hauling it to the compost bins.  Enviro Girl likes digging in the wet spring soil to dig out stubborn weed growth.  Before spreading a fresh layer of shredded bark to keep new weeds at bay and retain soil moisture, she also does some transplanting.

Spring is the best time to divide and conquer in the garden.  Many perennials benefit from division every three years or so.  Breaking apart your perennials gives them enough space to grow and eliminates that woody center common in some plants like asters and spiderwort.  Any summer or fall-blooming flower can be safely dug up and separated in early spring.  In fact, this is how Enviro Girl has populated most of her garden, through digging up, dividing and replanting perennials.  Hostas, daisies, asters, lilies, Sedum, Delphinium, coreopsis, bee balm, phlox, irises and speedwell are some garden perennials best divided in the spring.

You can start dividing plants when the new growth is less than 3 inches tall and wet soil makes the task a cinch.  Enviro Girl uses a sharp-edged shovel to dig out the plant she’s dividing, leaving a safe 4-5 inches from the base of the plant to avoid damaging the roots.  Once the plant is removed from the ground, she either pulls it apart by hand or slices it apart using her shovel.  The divisions go into freshly dug holes, where the soil has been loosened up for the plant to take root once more. Many new gardeners are afraid of killing a plant by dividing it, but Enviro Girl has never had a plant die on her from splitting it in half or thirds.  If anything, she’s seen them grow more vigorously, so if you’ve got a perennial bed over three years old, shake off your fear and get in there with a spade shovel.

Transplanted perennials require watering every 3 days or so, another reason why Enviro Girl prefers to do this in the spring:  abundant rainfall does the work for her.

By dividing those perennials, you can fill in the bare spots in a flower bed or trade with a neighbor for some new species.  After fifteen years of gardening, Enviro Girl can tell you she’s only purchased one Sedum, one hosta and one phlox plant.  Years of dividing those plants have multiplied their presence in her garden–that one hosta became twenty over fifteen years, one Sedum became a dozen.  As her garden has become more established, she’s weeding less (weeds struggle to take root and grow when crowded out by healthy perennials) and enjoying more color all season long.

One final tip:  Enviro Girl has transplanted annuals the same way–Sweet  Alyssum and Snapdragons grow abundantly from seed in her flower bed.  When those spring seedlings grow a couple inches tall, she gently removes them with a trowel and replants them in new places, spreading those seed-bearing annuals throughout her garden.

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The early spring garden

Posted on March 29, 2011 by | 4 Comments

For a lot of people, the weather in March is a mixed bag. In Recycla’s home state of Virginia, the weather was glorious (sunny and 70s) for a week, then they got snow on Sunday, and now things are chilly and in the upper 40s. Long-term predictions have the weather back near 70 by the end of the coming weekend. Definitely a mixed bag.

Regardless of the temperature, now is a good time to work in your garden.  In recent weeks, Recycla has been taking care of general cleaning up — raking the last of the leaves from the fall, picking up sticks, cleaning out the kitchen garden and flower beds, and so forth.  She also thoroughly turned the compost bins, which desperately needed it after three months of only minimal attention.

After that, she started planting — spinach, kale, lettuce, and peas, with more vegetables to come in April and May.  Recycla can already taste the fresh salads, baby peas with butter, and lightly steamed asparagus. Frankly, that asparagus bed is the only thing that kept her head from exploding when the snow arrived on Sunday.

If you are planning to have spring veggies, now is the time to plant.  Here’s what you need to do:

First, you need to work the soil a bit to aerate it and get it loose enough to plant in. Recycla prefers to use a manual cultivator (see photo at right), but rakes and shovels do the job just as well.  Recycla does not use a rototiller since it would upset the delicate balance of the soil. This is not a major chore — just loosen things up a bit and you’re good to go.

Next, while you’re working the soil, weed, weed, and then weed more.  Now is the time to get out the stuff that’s not supposed to be there or else you’ll be fighting the weeds all summer. Yes, it’s a pain in the rear, but it’s a little now or a lot later.

Then, if you’re going to use soaker hoses to irrigate your garden, lay them out before planting, so that you don’t have to disturb the plants later on.  Recycla  uses landscaping staples to keep her hoses in place. It’s very important to make sure your hoses are going the right direction before you put them in place — last spring, Recycla spent an hour on her hands and knees only to discover later that the end of her soaker hose that was closest to the faucet was not the correct end for attaching to the faucet. There’s a “male” end and a “female” end — don’t mix them up.

After you’ve done all that, it’s time to plant.  Spinach, lettuce, and other greens are easy to plant from seed.  You pretty much just plant them and walk away until it’s time to harvest.  Recycla tried carrots from seed for the first time last year and that was successful, so she’ll plant them again this year.  She usually plants broccoli and cauliflower from seedlings, not seeds.

Finally, after you plant, mulch.  This is a critical step that should not be skipped.  Mulching keeps out weeds, but also serves the dual purpose of keeping seeds and seedlings warm this time of year and then keeping plant roots cool and moist later on in the summer.

If you plant seedlings, make sure you protect them on the colder nights when the temps are around freezing.  Row covers or even plastic gallon milk jugs with the bottoms cut off should do the trick.

If all this seems like a lot, break your projects into smaller, more manageable chunks.  Recycla’s kitchen garden is divided into seven areas this year and so far, she has prepared five  of them.

If you need advice on specific things that you want to grow, check out Organic Gardening’s website.

And just remember, all this work now leads to fresh veggies later!

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Posted in food, gardening

KIWI – You Can GrOw Green

Posted on March 25, 2011 by | 1 Comment

As gardeners who want to “go green”, we can all think of kiwis as kudzu with fruit. The vines can grow 15 feet in two months.

Cut them back and they grow another 15 feet before the fall leaf drop. So what to do with all those vines?

A friend told me she was walking through an arts ‘n’ craft store and spotted some wreaths. “Hmmmm,” she said. “Those vines look a lot like my kiwi vines.”

And so she made wreaths.
Every year friends and family get wreaths. Sometimes she decorates them and sometimes she lets her artsy friends do the decorating.

You’ll want to make them in the spring before the leaves bud or in the fall after the leaves have dropped. First you’ll need to prune and separate the more flexible vines from the thicker, stiffer ones. Then twist the vines around each other and make a long rope. You can use an old yard debris bin to wrap them around or anything you have sitting around the house: a bucket, a bin, or try some different shapes and sizes.

It is nice to use bins that taper because when you are finished you can simply slip the wreath off the smaller end. After getting the basic circle shape, continue to wrap more vines around the base. You could even make two or three circles and then wrap them together to make one large wreath.

It is easiest to make the wreaths the same day as the vines are cut since they are more flexible. However, if it is a rainy week, the rain soaked vines will still have enough flex to wrap several days later. The Green Queen’s friend gave me three bases to play with and I’m planning to decorate them.

You could try different things: like stuffing some moss in between the vines and putting sedums in the moss. Or maybe some of the air-plants. Then you will have a living wreath for the front door.

Thanks to Roz for the ideas and after her kiwi is pruned, she might take another look at the wisteria. Maybe she’ll share her new wisteria baskets with us too.

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