Staying Green

August 31st, 2010 § 0

I suppose you could call this week’s column, Staying Fit in March.  The question is, how do you keep working on greening your day to day life beyond your initial start?  How do you prevent yourself from resorting to business as usual?  How do you stop yourself from tossing the cardboard toilet paper roll in the upstairs bathroom garbage, instead of bringing it down to the recycling bin?  How do you turn off the power strip on the TV every night, not just when you think of it?  How do you keep the lawn organic when the clover starts sprouting?

My guess is the answers are the same for making that January diet last.

Biofeedback – or energy feedback in this case.  Utilize a home energy monitor, not just during the time of changing your appliances and behaviors, but keep it around and review it constantly.  Have the whole family review the power usage, and go over your accomplishments and/or slips with everyone when you see your bills – both power and water bills.

Physical change – we cannot permanently change our habits for consumption without altering our physical plant.  Think about any or all of the following:

  • Add recycling bins on all floors of the house
  • Buy an attractive compost bin for the kitchen, or plan for composting in a kitchen remodel (you can now get built in bins that mount flush to the counter with pull out pails)
  • Go beyond powerstrips – think about motion sensor light switches for areas of your house, or outside lighting
  • Change out landscaping to permanently decrease water use

Change habits – With changes to your personal space, you will be better able to alter your consumption habits (energy, water, material)

  • Take a few minutes to think about all your energy use – can you alter your shopping schedule, your commute, the time of day you do laundry?  Can you walk more, or make your kids walk more?
  • Every time you plan to spend money, try to see if there are other options – reusing something at home, borrowing from a neighbor, repairing rather than replacing.

And lastly guilt – why not, it works for all kinds of sins.  Nothing wrong with fighting for the environment to keep you from feeling guilty.

Impatient in the Jungle

August 10th, 2010 § 0

Impatien growing on a wooden bridge in the cloud forest of Ecuador


Walking through the Ecuadorian cloud forest last month, I was amazed at the abundance and color variation in the Impatiens growing everywhere.  I stopped to photograph the one above, and couldn’t help but think of similar ones planted in gardens back home.  My next thought – this is a flower that grows wild in the cloud forest, so why is it being planted in Northern California’s climate.  These flowers want water, lots of it, but they get over four times the rain we get, plus the low hanging clouds keep the flowers moist every day.

On the Galapagos Islands we learned about the effects of non-native species of trees.  Whole hillsides have been taken over by elephant grasses brought in as something for cattle to graze on.  Turns out the cattle didn’t love it, but it spread too well.  At one point guava trees were introduced, and now they have spread like wildfire – eliminating many endemic plant species.

Lesson – when landscaping, seek out low water plants appropriate for this climate, and try to use native, Bay Friendly plant species.

Two large birds roaming in my garden

August 3rd, 2010 § 0

Baby chick - 4 days old


They turned four months yesterday.  Another month or so and we should begin to get eggs – one each, almost every day – at least that’s the plan.  Chickens – they arrived at our house as four day old chicks the day after Easter.  During the first six weeks, they grew incredibly fast, were reasonably quiet, and quite easy to keep.

For $50 we walked out of the pet store with two baby chicks, a four month supply of food, a heat lamp, a large bag of compressed wood chips, a plastic bin for water and another for food.  Back home we created their two room condo out of two large cardboard boxes – the heat lamp pointing into one, and the food in the other with a cut-out tunnel between the two.  The wood chips lined the bottom, and in they went.  Each day the kids tried to hold the chicks for a few minutes, and we changed their food and water a couple times per day.  Every few days we changed their wood chips, putting the old stuff into our compost bin.

Six weeks later, the chicks were ready to move out into their coop – a contraption the kids and I built last Fall.  We had collected as much recycled wood as we could find, and set out to make a house fit for two hens.  Ours is an odd shape due to the location we planned to site it; it’s 5 feet long and just under two feet wide, standing about 5 feet tall.  It could probably house three maybe even four chickens, but we’re just aiming for a dozen eggs a week.
The transition to the coop went well, as we were all ready to have them out of the laundry room.  Their run is alongside our house; however, during the day we let them roam throughout the yard – when we can keep a watchful eye on the dog.  The hens will stay together all day – making a steady lap around the yard, eating bugs, and depositing fertilizer in the flower beds.  One of their favorite places to roost has turned out to be on the wood lattice covering the compost bin – a perfect location for directly depositing their compost activator [chicken poop].

As they roam, they are very quiet – making noise only when people or the dog come near.  We’ve been amazed at how soft they are, and how gentle they are to hold.  I will report back when the eggs start to come, but meanwhile my compost is heating up more than ever before – I’m certain the addition will be great for next year’s vegetable garden.

Ant trails

July 20th, 2010 § 0

Yes, you can buy the store bought baits, but what is in them?  My dog loves the smell but I don’t want him eating the stuff.  Apparently we live in the middle of one giant supercolony of ants that stretches from Mexico to Oregon, so accept the fact that they are not going away.  However, this doesn’t mean you can’t keep them at bay.

Those baits that you buy are full of a poison that the ants bring back and feed to the colony, and the queen.  One less chemical you don’t need around the house.  Borax, available in large boxes at the hardware store, will do the same thing (and you can make some great cleaners with it).  The trick is to try to figure out how to make a concoction that they want to make this week’s royal take-out.  There are all kinds of recipes out there that basically mix Borax with something sweet or protein rich to attract the ants.  Put them out in plates, or better yet, a covered container with holes in the bottom, because Borax, while natural, is poisonous if consumed, so you don’t want the dog snuffing around in it.  Here’s two recipes – you’ll want to test them both to see which one your colony is wanting – take-out pizza or thai.

Sugar bait

  • 2 tablespoons Borax
  • Jam (or Jelly, Honey, Maple Syrup)
    • Mix the boric acid with the jam or jelly to make a paste.

Protein Bait

  • 2 TBS Boric Acid (Borax)
  • Peanut Butter or Bacon Grease
    • Mix and set out in mounds on pieces of paper or plates.

One more tip – in order for these to work, the ants need to carry the Borax back to their colony, so while the trail across the counter may be gross, you have to leave it for a day or two and let it work.  Resist the urge to wipe them up.

For more info on attacking the nest, or keeping ants from entering the house check out this site:

http://tipnut.com/ant-killer

Yogurt cups

July 13th, 2010 § 0

Last week I suggested using yogurt cups with beer or salted water in your garden to lure in slugs, but what else are yogurt cups good for?  This month’s issue of This Old House had a great list of reuse suggestions for yogurt cups.  Here’s my favorites:

1. Sort your hardware – screws, bolts, nuts, washers.

2. Seed starters – not enough six packs from the garden store – poke holes in the bottom of the yogurt cups for drainage, fill with dirt, and your set.  Or, if you want real six packs, go to the nearest garden store – you will usually people recycle their old pots by placing them near the center’s dumpster – bring your extras there too!

3. Paint testers – for mixing colors for the kids, or to bring small amounts around the house for touch-ups.

4. Bird seed – here’s a summer project.  First step, cook bacon (OK that’s not really necessary).  Take warm lard or bacon, mix with bird seed in a yogurt cup, and add a string or twine.  Put the cup in the fridge to solidify, then remove the cup and hang in a tree from the twine.

5. Popsicles – another summer one for the kids – pour juice into the yogurt cups, cover with aluminum foil, add a popsicle stick through the foil, and freeze.

Slugs in my cereal!

July 9th, 2010 § 0

My strawberry crop is doing well now that we dealt with the slugs, but before that, all I was getting were Swiss cheese looking berries.  If you’re having the same problem, here’s a few solutions:

Sluggo is one option.  You sprinkle it around the perimeter of the bed, and the iron phosphate in it attracts the slugs and snails and kills them.  I’ve been trying to find out how green this product is and haven’t been completely convinced.  Some websites call it organic and a plant nutrient that happens to kill slugs.  Other sites say it’s not great, and one site even mentioned that it is being evaluated to be acceptable in organic products.  One thing is for sure – it does work.

Other more definitively green options include beer and salted water.  Take an old yogurt cup, dig it into the soil so the top of the cup rests at ground level.  Fill the cup with beer or salted water to lure in the slugs, where they will be trapped and drown.  I’ve read that some people even bait the edge of the cup with small pieces of potatoes.

Hopefully you’ll only need to bait your berry bed, or other vegetables, once, and you’ll become the only consumer of your produce.

Front yard success

June 22nd, 2010 § 0

Artichokes growing in my driveway

Go out to the driveway and get a vegetable for dinner.  No, not from a grocery bag in the car.  We’ve had a salad garden in my front yard for a couple years now, but this past winter I added something new to a strip between the driveway and the neighbors yard.  I’d tried corn there, but not enough sun.  Critters ate dozens of baby squash plants planted over a month’s time last summer.  Carrots wouldn’t grow into the clay soil.  Snap peas did well over the winter, but I was looking for something easier and prettier for the front yard.

Artichokes!  Last summer I had the opportunity to visit the gardens for the kitchen at Mondavi winery.  They had huge artichoke plants framing a sitting area that not only looked great, but were incredibly prolific.  So, at the end of this past winter, the snap pea plants came up from the driveway bed, and in went two small artichoke plants, and one low rhubarb.

Last week we had our first artichoke and it was delicious.  I have at least five more growing, and I’m optimistic about this new addition.  Artichoke plants are not like other garden vegetables – you don’t need to plant them every year.  As a perennial it will mature each year providing even more fruit.  It’s large green leaves look great agains the fern under the maple tree, so at first your don’t realize it’s a vegetable garden.  The rhubarb growing in the front will start slowly this year, but it too will thrive year after year, and it’s lower plant looks great below its three foot tall artichoke neighbor.

As a leaf falls off now and then, I have to keep reminding myself, the leaves of a rhubarb plant are toxic and therefore can’t go into my compost pile.

Green bin vs. garbage disposal

June 16th, 2010 § 1

Someone asked me last week about my column on throwing food scraps into the green bin versus putting them down the garbage disposal.  It was a great question, and one I know a lot of people think about.  At the time, I reiterated the environmentally preferable options:

  1. Compost at home – the best food for your garden and lawn
  2. Compost with the municipal green collection – the next best step, though transport of the stuff does use fuel compared to doing it at home
  3. Garbage disposal – the organic matter will be used in the methane capture at the water treatment plant to make electricity

Not an option – the garbage.  No, it doesn’t break down like you might think – the landfill gets covered each day so that there is not enough of the necessary oxygen for biodegrading.  What’s worse, organic matter buried in the landfill produces methane, a gas 25 times more harmful that CO2 when it comes to greenhouse gases.

OK, a bit of a leap here, but if you follow you’ll agree that bio-degradable poop bags are no better than plastic bags if they are going into the landfill.  Which brings me to the next point of this person’s question – biodegradable bags.  I was asked, “if you are putting your compost into small biodegradable bags then carrying it out to large biodegradable bags in your compost bin, wouldn’t it be better to just run it down the garbage disposal?”  I would have to agree.

But, there’s an easier solution – no need to use so many biodegradable bags.  Get yourself a nice stainless steel compost bin that looks attractive on the counter, empty it daily (or better yet, have the kids empty it daily), and rinse it out.  It’s just food.  These nice bins have charcoal filters that keep them from smelling, but if you don’t want a compost pail on your counter, use a nice pasta pot, or an old copper stock pot – something you are used to putting food into.

“But the bin outside gets nasty,” you say.  Here’s your solution – make sure you are adding as much of the following list as possible to your compost or green bin:

  1. Tissues
  2. Used paper towels
  3. Paper plates and napkins
  4. Pizza boxes
  5. Cardboard take out containers
  6. Yard waste – the more of this the better – rose bush clipping will add space to your bin and keep stuff from collecting into a clump at the bottom.
  7. Shredded paper – no one is going to try to piece together your checking account numbers by diving into your green bin.

Lastly, it’s an outdoor green bin, like your garbage pail of yesteryear, you will probably always wash your hands afterwards and will never plan to pull something out of it and eat it – accept a little grime.  Just keep it out of the sun.


my electric car

May 27th, 2010 § 0

Tesla motors Roadster with 220 plug charging

OK so mine doesn’t look exactly like this one. I shot this in the parking lot of a solar panel client’s offices. It was plugged directly into a rack of 4 panels they had set up in their parking lot. This is the Tesla Roadster – the company you heard so much about last week with their plan to open the recently closed Nummi plant in Northern California to produce their sedan and do work on electric vehicles for Toyota. I saw two of these while shooting in London two weeks ago – surprised me since they’ve only made about 1000, to see two in London with Right hand drive.

My electric is more for local jaunts – it’s one of these. Though I have reserved a Nissan Leaf – Nissan’s all electric sedan due out later this year.

Green clean

May 18th, 2010 § 0



Someone asked me recently, ‘Which is greener sponges or cotton towels?’

Let’s look at sponges first – most sponges that you get at the supermarket are made from polyurethane – a petroleum product.  So they are not made from a renewable source, and some might say potentially toxic.  Are there non-polyurethane options for sponges?  Yes, first thought is natural sponges – taken from the ocean.  But if everyone switched over to those, I’m not sure the rush on the reefs would be such a healthy choice for the environment.  A better option might be cellulose sponges, made from wood.  Trader Joes sells pop up sponges made from vegetable cellulose.  When these become too tattered or nasty, throw them in your compost bin.

How about cotton towels?  You can’t really go wrong with something that you can use forever and easily throw in the wash.  It’s going to last longer than your average sponge, doesn’t contain anything toxic, and probably cleans just as well.  Try replacing your sponge for a week, and see if the cotton towel works for you.  Just don’t use those disposable towels, what’s the point of that?  It’s not like it’s that much work to wash a towel once in a while.

Some people have to consider the ick factor when it comes to sponges.  Here’s the green tip you really should take away, especially if you are one to toss sponges frequently, don’t toss, clean.  When you finish washing dishes, throw the sponge in the dishwasher – the hot water and detergent will clean off the grime.  Are your sponges starting to smell after a while?  Nuke them.  Throw a wet sponge in the microwave for one minute – the ick will die and no more odor, just make sure the sponge is wet before you put it in there, or you’ll have dried burnt popcorn sponge bits.

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