Sustainablog

With spring bringing out the gardener in many of us — veteran, rookie and in between — my household has been expanding our growing. Last year, we had a couple of small vegetable plots that maybe totalled 15-20 square feet. Plus, we created a wildflower and native grass section that stretches to a slim 40 square feet.

This year, we have turned nearly half of our backyard — tiny as it is — into a vegetable garden, adding 125 square feet, or so. I built a wooden-pallet compost bin. And our front yard — yes, tiny front yard — is quickly becoming garden space, too (more flowers, native grasses and such). We’ll soon have a rain barrel. I’ve torn up a 50-foot stretch of sidewalk, and will replace it with a more drainage-friendly, more attractive solution. My wife also has started dozens of vegetable seedlings, which she is giving away for others’ gardens.

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This year, I’ve undertaken a new endeavor: I’ve started a vegetable garden. It’s an ongoing process — no harvest yet, of course — but I’m already looking forward to fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, cantaloupe, and beans that will be transported about 15 feet from garden to kitchen.

In the process, I’ve come across a number of intriguing DIY projects for growing your own food. Here are five that can help make gardening easier and, maybe, more productive.

The raised bed planter: This project is at the heart of the method I’m using for my garden — Mel Bartholomew’s Square Foot Gardening system. I used leftover bricks for mine, but there are lots of different materials you could (re)use to build a garden space (and avoid the digging!). GO’s Kelli Best-Oliver contributed one great plan for this.

The upside-down planter: Yes, I’m fascinated with the Topsy Turvy, but am going to try making my own out of reused 2-litre soda bottles. I’ve found a number of different plans available online that make use of a variety of containers.

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Earth Day provides us with an opportunity to both reflect and act on our desire to use the planet’s resources in a sustainable manner. As we’ve noted in numerous posts, water may be the one resource we should focus on more, individually and collectively. No doubt, many of you have water-saving activities planned; a few of you may already be at work installing low-flow shower heads, faucet aerators, or even rain barrels.

Rain water harvesting makes a lot of sense: the initial investment can be quite low (especially if you do it yourself), and your plants love rain water.  Unfortunately, as Rachelle Carson Begley once noted, an awful lot of commercially-available rain barrels are, well, ugly.

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Are you worried that an organic garden on the White House grounds might cause some Americans to start eating a wide variety of chemical-free, locally grown produce? The Mid America CropLife Association, a lobbying group for agribusinesses giants, is.

Just a few days after Michelle Obama invited local fifth graders to help plant the White House Kitchen Garden, the MACA, a group which represents and is comprised of former executives from Dow AgroSciences, Monsanto and DuPont Crop Protection, sent the White House a letter (which can be viewed in its entirety here) expressing their disappointment that she had not “recognize[d] the role conventional agriculture plays in the US.”

But that’s not all. The group went on to provide a dose of propaganda educational information, including little known fact that “technology allows for farmers to meet the increasing demand for food and fiber in a sustainable manner.” Drawing a clear line between technology, undefined, and sustainability does not, in the strictest terms, suggest the group’s total disapproval of organic farming methods.

That outright statement came in an email MACA sent their members shortly after sending the first lady aforementioned letter, in which they said that the idea of an organic garden “made Janet Braun, CropLife Ambassador Coordinator and I shudder.” [italics mine]. Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s note: This post was written by Jason Pelletier, and originally published at Low Impact Living on March 28, 2009.

If you’re one of those folks out there who is suffering from a bit of carbon fatigue, then a post in the NY Times’ Green Inc. blog this week could either provide additional motivation for green projects or increased fear of another jargon-laden debate. Green Inc highlighted the growing trend of striving for “water neutrality”, as highlighted at the Fifth World Water Forum in Istanbul last week.

The idea is gaining ground within a group of companies looking to understand and reduce their consumption of water, including Coca Cola, whose chairman has pledged to eventually balance out all of the water used in its products and manufacturing processes through conservation elsewhere (over 80 billion gallons worth!).

This got me to thinking: what would it take to be water-neutral in our own homes, meaning that we don’t import any net water? If we include all of the water that goes into our food and the products we consume, then it gets ugly real fast (see this post on the water content of food, for example). But what about our direct water use - showers, irrigation, toilets, etc?

Now, this would require some significant changes to a home and to local building/health/safety codes, since the only way to go water-neutral is to reuse graywater and harvest/store rainwater. Both of these options now face numerous permitting and legal obstacles around the country (including some pretty counterintuitive ones, like Utah and Colorado bans on capturing ANY rainwater at your home). Assuming we could, though, how much rain would it take to provide a family’s annual water needs?

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ABC news’ Brian Hartman has reported what many have been wishfully waiting to hear for months: the Obamas will soon plant an organic vegetable garden on the White House South grounds.

Following a 60 Minutes interview with Chez Panisse chef, renowned slow foodist and activist for improved national eating habits in the US, Alice Waters, on Sunday March 15th, wherein she called with continued clarion for an organic garden at the White House, First lady Michelle Obama talked of her plans for the garden in an interview for Oprah Winfrey’s O Magazine that will feature in its April issue.

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Think back to the last direct-marketed product you saw on television. You probably remember the hyped-up pitch person, the “special offer” for buying now, the price that ends .95.  You may also remember thinking “Why would anyone want that?”

Yes… most of the products marketed on television border on useless crap.  They’re symbols of conspicuous consumption.  The sales pitch feels cheesy. And, yet, as I mentioned in Five Greenish Products You’ve Seen on TV, a small handful of them appeal to values we promote here at sustainablog: conservation, re-use, and efficiency.

I’ve come across a few more that strike me not only as appealing to these values (and perhaps a few others that are positive), but also as a great way to spread sustainable practices… even if they’re not necessarily labeled that way.  Again, I don’t know the lifecycles of these products.  I assume most of them are made in China. I wouldn’t call any of them “green,” or endorse them outright (or try to sell them through affiliate links here).  But they’re definitely “greenish”… and if direct marketers are selling products by appealing to some of the values mentioned above, that’s an ever-so-small step forward. Here we go…

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Need a venti-size jolt of positive enthusiasm amidst these dire economic times? Think one more round of the nightly news will tank you into a depression coma? Get out of the gloom scene and go where chicks grow green. Green acres, that is.

Rural women ecopreneurs continue to germinate new businesses across the countryside, running enterprises that blend livelihood with stewarding the landscape and a passion for good food. These stories serve up inspiring hope, a needed nutrient to dive media messages.

What’s different about rural women ecopreneurs? Think about a blend of Laura Ingalls, Arianna Huffington, Alice Waters with a dash of MacGyver on a farm. A pioneering, political and tech savvy foodie with a talent for making do with a roll of duct tape, these women follow the glass-half full school of opportunity, thinking “what if” versus “why me.”

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Urban food growing is not a new concept, but in recent years it has, perhaps, enjoyed a resurgence in popularity. As people look for lifestyles that return to basics — local, reasonably self-reliant, organic — many are picking up a seed packet and a trowel.

But what defines “urban” when it comes to farming, homesteading, gardening? Read the rest of this entry »

Spring is coming. In the Midwest, as in the other currently cold areas of the United States, that makes a difference.

As I think about expanding my own, as of yet, modest urban food and plant growing efforts, it’s a massive inspiration to review the work of the Dervaes family in Pasadena, Calif.

The family has popped up here and there on sustainablog.org in the past several months. You can listen to GreenTalk Radio host Sean Daily’s conversation with them, or read about the family’s 100-Foot Diet Challenge, as posted by sustainablogger Brian Baughan last month.

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