Friday, April 17, 2009

Earth Month

My buddy the Indoor gardener tagged me for earth month. My wife and I sat down and talked about all of the things we do on a regular basis and things that we would like to do more. I was a bit confused at first, I thought I was to come up with ways on how to save the environment and that in itself became very complexed. But thank god the tag is just for my soap box. So here it goes:

1. We are going to use everything in our refrigerator before we buy anymore food. We budget every month for food and have gotten into the habit of purchasing food and overlapping into the next cycle even though we have plenty of food still available. So by using all of our food and being creative with what we have we can save more money and produce less waste.

2. Unplug my friggin PC when I leave for the day. Along with my televisions and microwave. The major appliances still need to be hooked up, but cutting back inches can add up to yards in the future.

3. Go dumpster diving. Im sure there are many things that are thrown out in the trash that can be recycled and re-utilized in the garden.

4. Volunteer at my local community garden. The more people that get involved with community gardening the stronger our communities can grow. By working together we can all appreciate and work toward a common goal and as my grandmother always stated from an African proverb," many hands make light work."

5. Develop a more efficient way to utilize chicken droppings in an urban environment for my composting needs.

I think I'm to much of an introvert to tagg anyone for earth month. However, I would love to get ideas from people that frequent the blog. Most of my new habits have come from the actions of others. But I thank the Indoor gardener for giving us something to think about.

3 comments:

ChristyACB said...

Great ideas and I so hear you on the unplugging! I couldn't believe the difference just unplugging chargers, toasters and computers made. Huge!

Another idea is re-fashioning clothes. That is more of a hobby thing, but it is fun to do. Instead of throwing out clothes that get a ding, re-fashion them into something else or keep them to cut up for quilt squares.

joco said...

Hello there,
Like yourself, I am also too bashful to tag others :-)

That haybale bed idea? Well, I gave it a go two years back.
Big mistake. In no time at all it rotted from below, even though it was on concrete, and next thing it was literally heaving with woodlice, working their way rapidly through everything that had rooted.
And it reeked to high heaven.
But I have to admit it looked lovely in the picture in the RHS magazine "The Garden". Is that where you saw it?

BTW, are their many Urban chickens were you live :-)

My water management won't help you much probably, although rainwater is very good for your plants. Take a look
here if you have time.

For the rest we have split our electricity inlet into 12 circuits and switch all of those off at night bar one for bedside lamps and fridge on one circuit. So we have no inadvertent stand-by loss.

Do you have shops that sell reclaimed materials? Old furniture and things like that? You can use a lot of that as raised beds or seed beds.
jo

ATW said...

Christy- I like the clothes idea. Although I don't know how to sew, I shouldn't say that to loud because Im actually required to know. But anyway, being from the NYC area one of my favorite past times is going to the thrift shops and second hand stores to find used clothes. Im so not the "whats in now type of guy"

.- Thanks for the advice on the haybale gardening. I will keep a close look watch for any of those signs and at first sight of any danger I will get rid of them. For now it's truly experimental and hopefully it works. I will keep the posts up on both it's success and failuers.

And pretty interesting on saving energy. Thats pretty awesome! I have defiantely have to keep that in mind.

And yes I head to the reclamation stores all of the time. Bed frames make great raised beds. My issue is finding what I want that has great use and also looks cosmetically pleasing to the surroundings. Its a tough mix but I always keep a close look out. Thanks for the post.