It's Easy Being Green

If you’re like me, by this time of the year you start itching to get out of winter.  As much as I love it I also can’t wait to warm up into Spring and get back outside into the yard and the garden.  It’s a time of the year that signals plenty of produce and fresh food in the months to come.  By the time January rolls around, I anxiously await all 50 of the gardening and seed catalogs that pile into our doorside mailbox.  I’ll spend hours planning, plotting and circling seeds I want to order out of every catalog.

Before you buy enough seed to start a small farming operation though, you should carefully consider your garden plans and how much you really need to order.  First pick out the size and space that your garden will take up.  Some vegetables, like Globe Artichoke, can grow up to 4 feet tall and spread just about as wide.  Carrots however don’t take up much room because they grow down.  Make sure to pay attention to the growing requirements listed in the catalog because they’ll help you plot out the growing space.

Also, pay attention to the days it takes the vegetable to get to maturity.  When we lived in Flagstaff, Arizona, our growing season was extremely short.  It lasted just about 90 days which for most vegetables isn’t enough time to come to harvest.  We always had to pick vegetables that required short growing times.  In Indiana though, we’re now looking at a growing season that’s double that at 180 days.  That opens the door to more and more varieties of things to grow.

Lastly, don’t buy seeds for vegetables you know your family doesn’t like or doesn’t typically eat.  If only one person enjoy radishes you probably shouldn’t plant an entire section of your vegetable garden just dedicated to them.

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Winter can be a tough time to keep up your vitamin intake but it’s essential to stave off sickness and any sort of infection that might come your way.  One of the best ways to make sure you’re getting enough vitamins is through some good whole, natural foods.  This recipe for a vitamin-rich soup is a great way to change your dinner routine, warm yourself up on a cold night and help your body and immune system by getting a nice dose of vitamins.  It’s great made in the crock pot and can simmer all day if you like.

A rutabaga, packed with loads of nutrients.

This recipe includes rutabagas, a root that is usually clumped in with turnips.  Rutabagas have a larger root than turnips and are a weedy relative of the cabbage.  They’re popular in Canada, France, Russia, the British Isles and Scandinavia.  In the U.S., rutabagas are grown even less often than its cousin the turnip, although they store better and have a sweeter, yellow flesh.  Turnips are one of the first vegetables cultivated by man and were once as popular as potatoes are today.  The vegetable has fallen out of favor with gardeners despite new, tasty varieties that mature quicker.

Rutabagas and turnips

While you can substitute turnips for the rutabagas, you’ll be losing out on some amazing nutritional benefits.  They’re both moderately good sources of fiber, calcium and vitamins A and C.  Rutabagas have almost twice the amount of nutrients than turnips do.

Ingredients:

1 cup dried beans (any variety will do)

1/3 cup dried peas

2 cups diced carrots

2 cups potatoes, peeled and diced

1 cup rutabaga, diced

1 medium-sized onion, chopped

2 tsp. dried summer savory

1/2 tsp. dried thyme

1/2 cup fresh or frozen parsley, chopped

2 cups cooked chicken (optional)

1 cup zuchinni or pumpkin, grated (optional)

Soak the dried beans and peas in water overnight or for 8 hours to soften them up.  Fill your crock pot 1/3 full with water.  Add carrots, rutabaga, potatoes, onion, beans and peas.  If you decided to include the chicken or the squash add them as well.  Let simmer for 3 hours or until the vegetables are almost tender.  Add the summer savory, thyme and parsley.  Let simmer for another 1 to 2 minutes or until vegetables are completely tender.  Serve hot.

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It seems like most portions of the midwest and northeast are gripped by Old Man Winter this week.  I know here in Indiana our temeperatures are down to 18 degrees with wind chill right now and we’re supposed to be down to -10 tonight.  That’s cold but not near as cold as our neighbors to the north of us dealing with -40’s in some places.

While it’s cold outside, it can also be cold inside.  You might feel a winter chill moving through the windows of your house or even the walls so what can you do to stay warm yet be energy efficient?  Here are some simple ideas to help out.

For maximum energy efficiency and lower heating costs, it’s recommended that you set your thermostat around 68 degrees and wear extra layers of clothing.  We keep our heater right between 68 and 70 and it feels alright.  For extra warm, we use a heated blanket or a small space heater in the room we’re currently sitting in.

There are some extra steps you can take to maximize the heating efficiency of your house too.  First, as soon as the sun starts hitting some of your windows, open the curtains or blinds to begin reaping the benefits of solar heat gain.  Keep north-facing windows or shaded windows closed though because you’ll just be letting the warm air out.  As soon as the sun starts setting, crank the blinds and curtains closed to keep the warm air in and the cold air out.  If your home has older, single-pane windows you should think about replacing them with newer double-pane and highly insulated windows.  Also, keep the doors shut and the air registers closed in rooms that you don’t typically use throughout the day.

We used to live in a house that had a programmable, electronic thermostat and it was great.  Setting it to turn down the heat at your bed time and then turn it back up again just before your alarm clock goes off is a great way to slash up to 20% of your heating costs.  It’s also helpful if you have a warm, feather down comforter on your bed to retain your warmth and keep the chill out.

Lastly, double check all your entry doors and make sure they have sweeps installed on the bottom of them and that the weatherstripping is in good shape all the way around the door.  If not, head to the hardware store and buy some replacement stripping to keep the cold out.  Also, make sure you furnace is running as efficiently as possible by checking the filter.  Clean it once a month or as needed to keep air moving efficiently.

Are there any steps you’ve taken to make your home warmer this winter and more energy efficient?  Share your experiences, tips or ideas by writing a comment below!

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By now several areas of the country have dealt with a crippling round of ice storms and with salt in short supply, de-icing in some parts of the country has been rather difficult.  If you haven’t been able to find de-icer, you might want to put together this homemade de-icer mix.  You’ll just need access to a couple of chemicals to make it work:

6 cups of rock salt

12 cups of ammonium chloride

6 cups of magnesium sufate

Place all the ingredients into a bucket and mix well.  Sprinkle the mixture on sidewalks and driveways to melt ice and snow.  This mixture will even handle hard-packed snow.  Have you had problems finding de-icer for your home or business?  If so, what have you done to remedy the ice problem?  Stay warm!

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Engineers at Toyota are apparently working to build a completely solar powered car.  It will be a few years before the solar powered vehicle will be ready for sale but it’s a move the auto manufacturer hopes will help turn it’s business aound.  Toyota, just like most other auto manufacturers, have been hit hard by a slumping globabl economy and reduced demand for their products.

Sources say the car will be equipped with solar panels on the roof and will also be able to be recharged by conventional solar panels you might have on your house or business.  Toyota also hopes to eventually build and market a car that can be solely powered and recharged by it’s own installed solar panels.  The move has surprised many since Toyota is reporting its first sales loss in 70 years of business.  But the auto giant says it won’t halt it’s research in green technology despite the current bad business environment.

Toyota already has a history with solar power and other green technology.  The company’s plant in Tsutsumi has solar panels spread across it’s roof that would cover 60 tennis courts.  The panels produce enough electricity to supply 500 homes with power.  The company says the panels are reducing 740 tons a year of carbon emissions…the equivalent of 1,500 barrels of oil in reductions.

Toyota will also apparently get some help through one of it’s battery research partners, Panasonic.  Panasonic just recently took over Sanyo Electric Corp., a leader in solar energy.

I hope these researchers are able to get this done sooner rather than later and are able to make the technology affordable to the normal car buyer.  Can you imagine in sunny locales like Arizona and California, these cars would work like a dream…quietly whisking you from one errand to another powered by the cosmic giant above.

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As it gets closer to New Year’s Day, more and more people will begin to take down their holiday light displays.  I know I usually like to have it put away by then because I’m done looking at it, at least for another year.  This year I put up very few lights because the house we’re renting has extensive gutters and aluminum siding.  On top of that, I don’t have a ladder that will allow me to get too crazy with the decorations.  I also noticed that several strings of my lights don’t work.

Mini-LED Lights

I’ve been wanting to switch over to LED light strings but am waiting for the cost to come down a little and for my strings to quit working.  If you’re in the same conundrum, wanting to switch over but not sure what to do with the old lights, you should check out this Christmas Light Recycling Program.  Holiday LED’s will recycle the old strands you mail them and give you a 15% off coupon for new strings of LED lights.  That’s a pretty cool deal and a great way to properly dispose of your old lights.

Have you made the switch to holiday LED light sets yet?  If so, what do you think?  If not, what’s keeping you from doing it?

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By now you might be booting extra family out the door or finally getting to see loved ones who didn’t make it that far before the grips of old man winter trapped them at the airport.  Either way, this weekend you might begin to get antsy and wonder what to do with all the aftermath of Christmas (hopefully it was a good one to you and your family).

Last year, I discovered some creative ways to recycle your Christmas tree.  You can check them out by reading this post called Christmas Tree-cycling.

We’ve been receiving a lot of gifts by mail this year and thus have dealt with an overload of packing materials.  Most people think you can only throw all that stuff out but luckily you don’t have to.  You can donate those packing materials back to shipping stores.  They’ll gladly re-use them and keep them from just a one-time use before going into the landfill.  You can also call the “Peanut Hotline” at (800) 828-2214.  For more about packing materials read The Joy (and horror) of Packing Peanuts.

For electronic items or toys, hopefully you opted to power those items with some rechargeable batteries.  That’s really the best option.  But once those batteries lose their charge and aren’t useful anymore you can still recycle them instead of throwing them out.  Visit the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation for more details on where to send them.

I’m not a parent yet but I think purging old toys and donating them is a wonderful idea, especially after the holidays when the kids are overrun with new things to play with.  There are several ways parents run this but the most popular seems to be when the parent sits down with their child and asks them to pick out a toy they don’t use anymore (one for each new toy received) and then donate them to charitable thrift stores.

Did you get a new cell phone for Christmas?  How about donating the old one if you don’t want to keep it around as a backup!  A group called CollectiveGood will take your old cell phone and you can write it off as a tax-deductible donation.  If you live near one of 1500 UPS stores spread across the U.S., you can head over to their location.  Each store has a free envelope so you can drop off items like cell phones, ink cartridges, digital cameras and MP3 players and send them in for recycling.  The shipment is also free.  Thanks UPS!

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