It’s Easy Being Green

Have you ever thought about the environmental impact of all those paper coffee filters you might use to make your pot of coffee every morning?  Our last coffee maker required a special kind of paper filter.  But we tried to make the environmental impact of those as little as possible by purchasing unbleached filters and composting them, complete with the coffee grounds when they were done.

Reducing that impact can be simple and save you money in the long run.  You can buy a reusable hemp or gold coffee filter to fit your coffee maker’s filter basket.  They range from as little as $3 on up to about $15.  You could even to make filterless coffee by picking up a french press, a fun way I’ve found to make an unusual cuppa morning joe!  Do you have a reusable coffee filter?  If so tell us how well it works and any challenges you’ve faced!

While the snow has all but left us here in the mountains of Northern Arizona, the weather has still been pretty cool. That’s how it should be this time of the year. It may warm up into the 60’s during the day but temperatures quickly drop off into the low 20’s overnight. That’s of course too cold for a garden going outside. Despite the fact that I’ve got spring fever and want to get my veggies on their way outside, I have to give them some gentle nudges inside, first.

Two weeks ago I planted two seed starting flats worth of tomatoes and other veggies which will require some time to get themselves established before they actually produce anything. More than likely I won’t be able to get any veggies outside until sometime in May so the few weeks they have to begin sprouting inside and forming root systems will be beneficial. My first flat of tomatoes has sprouted but the seedling are already too leggy. With tomatoes you want to keep replanting them fairly deep, allowing roots to grow off their main stems every time you replant them. This ensures your tomato plants will grow strong and healthy. They’ve already outgrown their little seedling flat so now it’s time to transfer them into small pots so they can continue their growth.

If you happen to save all those little plastic nursery pots you probably don’t have to worry about what you transplant your seedlings into. As it turns out, the last time we moved we through most of those pots littering our potting shed into the recycling bin. So, I turned to some newspaper to form little transplant pots just like the peat pots you could buy at the local nursery. It’s cheap and allows you to put the newspaper to another use, recycling it before it’s demise. Just like the peat pots the newspaper pot is biodegradable and will eventually just disappear into your soil. I found a great video showing how to make some newspaper transplant pots, so take a look below.

If you have any roses in your garden, make them even more productive with some simple composting.  Roses need potassium to boost their flower production resulting in some nice, lush blooms.  They can get plenty of potassium if you simply push banana peels into the soil at the base of your rose plants.  So, have a banana for breakfast and feed your rose too!