It's Easy Being Green

I’ve been without a lawn mower going on two years now and in the land of green grass, that’s proving to be a bit of a challenge. I’ve been borrowing mowers from my neighbors but have decided I just need to get me own. I’m tired of having to work the lawn around other people’s schedules and prefer to be as independent as possible.

I’ve known for a long time that my new mower was not going to be gas powered. I get tired of listening to the almost constant hum of gas powered lawn equipment here in southwestern Indiana. To top that off, the air quality here is already poor since we’re surrounded by several very dirty coal-fired power plants. Just this last week we had two ozone warnings with local officials urging people to avoid fast food drive-thrus and trimming their lawns. The warnings certainly didn’t stop most people around here from doing what they wanted to do and spewing even more pollution into the air.

Originally I thought about just getting a push-reel mower. We have a fairly small front and back yard to begin with so there wouldn’t be a ton of effort required to push-reel mow my grass. Secondly, we live in a small home with a one car garage and don’t really have the room for a big clunky mower to sit around. A push-reel mower could hang up on the wall though and take up no floor space. Then there’s the idea of actually getting some exercise while you’re doing lawn work, something most people seem to try and avoid.

The last couple of weeks though, I changed my mind, thinking I would rather have an electric rechargeable mower. There’s several different versions available right now but T has been questioning just how long the batteries really last and how long it is before they won’t take a charge anymore. The prices aren’t easy on the pocketbook either, ranging from about $250 to $450.

So now I’m back to the beginning again, thinking about getting a push-reel. I’m looking for something that’s going to hold up well over time and has some decent features. The hunt is on! If you have any suggestions or a brand and model you’ve tried out, let me know. I’d like some feedback here!

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Awhile back I was sent a copy of the Green Princess Cookbook to review.  Several other books on green living and sustainability have been in que first so I haven’t paid much attention to the Green Princess Cookbook by Barbara Beery, that is until my wife T and I started searching for a green cake recipe for our daughter’s (we’ll call her Tater Tot)  first birthday.

Tater Tot was exclusively breast fed because booby is best!  Once Tater started on solid foods though, we’ve been feeding her Earth’s Best organic baby foods.  We feed her little in the way of processed or unnatural foods and avoid most things that retain pesticides and other harsh chemicals used in factory farming growing practices.  Tater doesn’t get much in the way of refined sugar either because both T and I have seen the outcomes of children who get way too much at an early age.

With that said, T and I have been trying to find recipes for a more natural first birthday cake.  We don’t necessarily want to go entirely vegan on this because little Tater Tot hasn’t made the decision to go that direction yet.  Tater’s Mommy and Daddy love their meat very much but we’ll support her if she eventually decides meat products aren’t for her.  Since we’ve been on the hunt, T pulled the Green Princess Cookbook from my book review stack and we began pawing through it.

Based on the title, you’d think there would be a lot of natural or in some way environmentally friendly recipes in this cookbook.  I wish I could say that was the case but instead, we found ourselves looking at a cookbook that had merely a sprinkling of the “green” idea laid out in its recipes.

The forward does recommend you try to use organic or locally grown ingredients whenever possible but this is a suggestion that virtually any cookbook author could slap in front of their recipe collection too.  The book is geared toward children and Beery did a good job including easy to make items like Organic Orchard Salsa and Solar-Power Strawberry Lemonade (which actually does have to warm up in the sun as part of the recipe).  They’re novel ideas and take a good step in teaching younger kids about organic foods and greener living practices.

You might be disappointed though when you come across recipes like No-Bake Brownie Cupcakes.  The idea is to use less resources by not using your oven to bake them but unfortunately the recipe calls for a package of brownie mix as its base.  We all know that’s not only resource intensive but surely there is a way to make your own no-bake brownie mix instead of trying to rely on another box of processed food.  The recipe for Off-the-Vine Zany Zucchini Muffins goes the same route, using a box of spice cake mix for its base.

I have to give Beery some credit for trying to spread the teachings of greener living to her childhood cooks.  There’s a greener living tip on each page and some recipes leaning toward learning about how to be sustainable like making your own butter.  Parents could expand discussions on each topic while helping their budding chef whip up their recipe and maybe teach them even more about living life a little greener.

I’m giving away a copy of the Green Princess Cookbook so if you’re interested in entering, here’s how you do it:

1)  First leave a comment on this post

2)  Secondly, send me an email to easygreen@greenpreferred.com with a favorite organic or green recipe you like to make with your kids or for them and a short story explaining why it’s your favorite.

3)  Finally, follow me on Twitter and re-tweet the following message:

“I just entered the Green Princess Cookbook for kids giveaway put on by @GreenPreferred.  Learn how to enter and win http://bit.ly/c1Phcu”

The contest will close on Friday, May 7th, 2010 and the person with the most creative recipe and story will win the cookbook for their budding chef.  Keep checking back for a free recipe or two while the contest is running. Good luck!

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This past week the cacophony of lawn equipment has officially heralded in warmer weather here in southwestern Indiana.  The first warm and sunny day we had last week apparently awoke every neighbor’s desire to mow their lawn, even though most hadn’t even grown an inch.  With lawn work and garden cleanup comes a lot of waste and the question of what to do with all of it.

I generally mulch mow my lawn meaning I finely chop the clippings and leave them on my lawn to decompose and provide green manure for the rest of the growing season.  If the lawn is too thick or too long, I’ll compost the clippings.  Most of the time it just simply doesn’t make sense to throw grass clippings away.  It’s a great waste of time and resources to bag all those clipping, haul them out to the curb for pickup and watch all that water and fertilizer you bought get hauled off to the landfill.

That said, there are times when you do need to bag yard waste and there are greener alternatives to the normal plastic lawn garbage bag you might buy.  This past week I’ve been trying out some EconoGreen Plastics bags made by Jig-A-Loo.  The company has just released a line of trash bags and plastic drop cloths made entirely from recycled plastic.  They also claim the bags are “oxodegradable”.  Supposedly an additive in the plastic helps accelerate the decomposition of the plastic into simple organic compounds when it’s exposed to oxygen.

In my tests using a handful of bags the company sent me to try out, I found them to look, feel and hold up like most normal bags.  They weren’t any more puncture resistant to twigs and sticks but also weren’t like the thin, cheap trash bags you might find at the discount store.  If you do have some trash that needs to be thrown away and can’t be composted, these bags seem like a good option to help reduce the environmental impact at least just a bit.

The EconoGreen line includes large trash bags, tall kitchen bags, lawn and leaf bags, contractor bags, garage and automotive bags, wet/dry vac liner bags and drop cloths.  Home Depot is said to be carrying the full line of EconoGreen plastic products.

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These are the composting coffee cups and sleeves used by one of my favorite local coffee shops and made by World Centric

Back in November I wrote about how one of my favorite local coffee shops switched their paper to-go cups to a cup that can actually be composted when you’re done with it.  World Centric, the company that produces the cups, claimed the cup would break down in a home composter within 2 to 4 months.  Some commented on my original post and said it was hogwash.

Several weeks ago when I began building my square foot gardening space, I had to relocated my compost bin.  I had to empty the entire thing of compost, move it over and re-fill it.  While doing this, I sifted through the compost looking for the two composting coffee cups and sleeves I dropped in back in November.

My two used coffee cups dropped in the composter. They ended up disappearing over the winter in just 3 months time!

I’m pleased to announce they were gone, at least in the sense that they no longer looked like a coffee cup.  There wasn’t even a single piece of cup that I could detect in the compost after about 3 months of sitting.  That was over the coldest months of the year too, so I imagine they’ll disappear even quicker when the compost really heats up this Summer.  Kudos to World Centric for this development and producing a product that really does break down after use!

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Since I last posted about the progress of my new raised garden beds, I don’t think we’ve had more than two days straight without rain.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the rain but right now our yard is more like a mud bog with some portions verging on marsh-like.  I keep expecting to look out my window to see large water birds wading through the yard, looking for fish.

In order to complete my raised vegetable beds, I needed to locate the three items I needed the make the recommended growing media.  If you happened to miss my previous posts on creating this year’s garden check out Spring Fever and Garden Planning.  The three soil amendments I was in search of included bulk compost, Sphagnum peat moss and vermiculite.

Vermiculite ended up being the most difficult item to locate.  Even though it’s included in just about every ready-made bag of potting soil, I found it almost impossible to find by itself and in a quantity that was large enough as to not break the gardening bank.  Needing 25 cubic feet of the material, I quickly discovered that most gardening centers in my area wouldn’t be able to get me even close to that amount and they weren’t interested in ordering it in for me either.

Daylight Farm Supply was kind enough to price it out for me in 4 cubic foot bags and offered to order it in if I wanted it.  There was going to be a bit of a lag time to get the order so that’s when I got to thinking about the one place I drive by on a daily basis, specifically geared toward agriculture: The Warrick County Co-Op located in Vanderburgh County.  Sure enough they had vermiculite in stock at a little under $20 a bag which was the cheapest I was able to find it too.

Once I found my vermiculite supply I was set.  I ordered 4-scoop loads of well aged manure and compost from AP&P Soil Masters on Kansas Road and had them dump the large pile in my driveway.  After paying the driver I headed out to Rural King to get some peat moss and then to the county co-op to pick up vermiculite.  I spent about 3 hours playing mixologist, combining equal parts compost, peat moss and vermiculite to create my raised bed planting mix.  Without a wheelbarrow, I made a makeshift soil transporter with our little red wagon and two huge planting containers as my carrying buckets.

I’ve been dodging rain showers ever since, trying to get the rest of my raised beds filled with soil mix while trying to take care of other responsibilities around the house.  Today, rain be darned, I destined to get some more work done.  I finished filling in the raised beds and built the square foot planting grids to go over the tops of the boxes.  This is the grid system that lays out your planting squares.  It’s built using 4 foot lengths of wood lath that you buy by the bundle for about $5.

I also dug two holes about two feet deep on either side of my main aisle.  These were to sink my 4×4 poles into the ground to support the two picket fence panels.  I will also be attaching a swinging gate and building an arbor over the top of the 4×4’s.  The garden looks so much different from the last time I took a picture of it.  I’m excited about everything I was able to get done today and can’t wait to get out and starting getting some Spring veggies planted to take advantage of the cool weather.

It still looks like a construction zone but you can see my newly filled raised square foot gardening boxes with their planting grids and the new picket fence and two 4x4 posts waiting for a swinging gate and an arbor over the top

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