Dsolv Bags

There's a new green company in town. Dsolv Bags, based out of Columbus Ohio, makes compost friendly lawn waste bags. They offered me a starter set to test during my fall leaf cleanup.

I opened the starter set carrying case to find a collapsible funnel, 8 polymer mesh dsolv bags and a bag handle.

On the first try, I ripped one of the dsolv bags trying to fit it around the funnel/sleeve. Oops. Once I got the hang of it I expanded the funnel inside the bag and began filling with leaves. I experienced no ripping from then on.

The bags hold more leaves than a standard paper leaf bag and were far easier to fill. Once the bag was full, I slipped out the sleeve and tied the top. I didn't need the handle to drag the full bag through our tiny front yard but I could see it being useful if I was hauling greater distances.

Rain caused an early end to my dsolv testing session. I was able to fit the funnel and extra bags into the carrying case in a few minutes flat.

I did not test whether the bags decompose in my home compost bin. Their product information states the bags break down in six months under ideal conditions. I've already established that my compost bin is NOT ideal, so I'll stick with dumping in layers of leaves sans bags and leaving the dsolv bags for yard waste pickup service.

I was a little concerned that the leaf pickup workers would not recognize the bags, but they collected them without any hesitation.

I admit that my usual leaf raking habit is to work a little at a time and fill up my two forever reusable yard waste trash cans weekly. There are times of the year, though, when I do a big yard cleanup and use a few paper leaf bags. Now that I have the dsolv starter system ($19.99), I will buy refills ($6.99 for 8 bags) because they are easier to use, bigger than standard bags, and compact to store. Dsolv bags are currently available in limited retail locations and online with plans to expand into wider markets next spring.

Disclosure: Dsolv gave me a starter set. My opinions are my own.

This Is Wrong

What's is wrong with this apple juice?  Let's count the ways:

1) The concentrate came from China, where labor and environmental standards leave much to be desired.

2) The concentrate was labeled to 'possibly contain' juice from three other countries.

3) The concentrate was shipped thousands of miles to Texas where it was re-constituted.

4) Somewhere along the way, vitamin C and preservatives were added.

5) The juice was individually packaged in plastic and aluminum.

and the worst part?

6) All the effort was made for this apple juice to be served to children on a family fun farm in Ohio in the height of apple season.

A better snack?

A clean Ohio apple!  They are very prevalent close to the farm, full of vitamins without adding them, come pre-packaged, and show off the true farming heritage of our fair state.

A Lovely Wood Stove

We live in an early 20th century house with a brick hearth and built in bookcases. I have always wanted such a set up and loved it for two years. But last winter, I couldn't ignore what was missing: a fireplace.

These houses were built to hold gas burning units, as evidenced by the gas key hole in the floor.  I'm not a huge fan of gas heat, though it runs our furnace, because gas is an unsustainable resource. It's also seriously expensive.

Wood is renewable. In a high efficiency stove, wood is an efficient heat source. Free wood is often available on craigslist or freecycle and building a woodpile is simple.

So last winter, in February, we were able to score a wood stove that fits our hearth on clearance at our local Sutherlands. We were unsure of the quality of our chimney so we bought pieces for a chimney liner at the same time.

We hired friend Leonard to help install the liner and stove. He and Alex had to do a fair amount of modification to fit the woodstove in our small space, including placing the unit slightly off center in the opening. This does bother my sense of order, but I can tolerate it for the wonderfully warm heat that fills our house from this tiny stove.

Last night, the temperature dropped to mid 30s overnight. Alex lit a fire in the early evening, adding logs every hour or so until he went to bed at midnight.

When I woke up this morning, heat was still emanating from the fireplace and there were still hot coals. Mmmm....toasty warm!  We have yet to turn on our furnace this year.

A few weeks ago, I attempted to start a fire on my own.  I sadly couldn't do it.  I do not have the natural affinity for fire that Alex does and I always defer to him to start campfires and get the wood stove going.

I practiced under his eye for a few nights.   This evening, night one of his business trip to California, I made the fire myself!

There is more pleasure to come from this wood stove. In early 2011 when I prepare taxes, I will be able to take a credit for 30% of our purchase price through the American Recovery Act. This credit, which applies to new stoves purchased and installed in existing homes, expires December 31, 2010.

Free and Low Cost Landscaping Goods

There are several opportunities for gardeners to improve their landscape this week at little to no cost: On November 1, visit supermarkets for free straw.  Our closest grocery uses straw bales to display pumpkins and then gives them away after Halloween.  We use straw to protect our strawberries from frost/thaw heaving, to mix in garden beds, and for chicken run bedding.

Word on the street (aka twitter) is that the Columbus Habitat for Humanity ReStore has large bags of organic top soil for $2, quite a steal.  They almost always have scrap lumber, spare patio stones, and paint for fall home and garden improvement projects.

Locals can check out the Chadwick Arboretum Fall Tree sale next Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.  They have a long list of native trees and shrubs available for purchase at very low cost.  If I had more growing space, I would be interested in the butternut ($10), pawpaw ($15) and persimmon ($15) trees, all favorites of edible forest gardening expert David Jacke.

If you aren't lucky enough to have a university sponsored arboretum nearby, keep an eye on your local nursery.  This is the time of year that many fruit trees are marked at clearance prices.  Given a little bit of care over the winter, fruit trees will return to life in the spring.

Go forth and love your landscape this autumn!

Wise Water Use in the Kitchen - Blog Action Day 2010

The act of cooking food from scratch necessitates using water. We use water when we boil pasta, scrub potatoes, wash dishes, steam vegetables, and thaw frozen items. Here are five 'wise water ways' to reduce pressure on the water treatment facilities, reduce your water bill, and keep our access to water plentiful:

1) Turn off the tap. If you step away from the faucet while washing dishes, turn off the tap. As soon as the pasta pot is full, turn off the tap.

2) Reuse water. When you thaw meat*, water bath can or steam vegetables, you are left with a big quantity of useful water. Cool the water to room temperature and use it to water plants indoors or out, pre-soak dirty dishes, or fill the dog's water dish. *Only reuse water from meat if the meat was sealed in a package.

3) Consider the rinse. Do your dishes really need a pre-wash rinse before they go in the dishwasher (assuming you have one)? My dogs do the pre-washing in our house which has the double benefit of not using water to rinse dishes. If you don't have beasts, most dishwashers can handle dishes that have scraps scraped into the garbage or compost bin.

4) Scrub in a tub. Rather than run water over root vegetables or fruits to wash them, fill a small bowl or pan and scrub in the pan. Give them a final quick rinse in clear water.

5) Wash a full load. If you are running the dishwasher or filling up the sink for washing dishes, loading it up to the max makes best use of the water.

What else do you do to use water wisely in your kitchen? Share in the comments!

This year's Blog Action Day theme is Water. You can read thousands of other posts on the topic here. You can read my previous Blog Action Day posts on Poverty (2008) and Climate Change (2009).

Jars: Trash or Treasure?

This crate of jars was given to me by my mother who received it from my paternal grandmother.  What does this look like to you? Trash?

To me, it was a box full of potential. I know Grandma Joyce is a collector of stuff.  Out of the box of miscellaneous jars, I decided not to keep many of unknown origin or with chipped rims. After a little digging and sorting, look what turned up:

Nearly two dozen usable canning jars. Of course they will all need new lids, which I buy every time I can.

I found some of my very favorite jar style in that box.  I adore these squat squared half pint jars.  They are shaped differently than anything I can buy new and the flat back side gives a lovely view of what is canned inside.

Using inherited or thrifted jars adds a whole new dimension to the preservation effort.  As I'm milling applesauce, coring tomatoes, or stirring jam, I often wonder what the life was like of the woman or man who used the jars before me.

Were they preserving out of necessity or hobby?  Were they making a special family recipe or trying something new?  Were they working alone with babes underfoot, alongside their teenage children, or with a group of friends as my mother used to do?  Of course, I will never know the situations for most vintage jar in my stash.

I can guess with relative assurance that anyone who went to the pains of home canning some time ago would be delighted to know that someone is still using their jars and practicing the art of food preservation. This post is part of Simple Lives Thursday.

Edible Forest Gardens by David Jacke

"The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings."  Masanobu Fukuoka So began the talk 'Home-Scale Ecological Food Production' by David Jacke on Friday July 30, 2010.  Organized by the Ohio Ecological Food and Farming Association, the Clintonville presentation was attended by approximately 70 people.

Jacke, an expert in edible forest gardens and author of a set of books of the same name, continued by explaining that edible forest gardening is a new way of seeing, thinking, and acting in the world.  Humans become co-creators and equal participants in the natural ecosystem.

What is a Forest Garden?

A forest garden mimics the forest as a design metaphor.  It's a consciously designed ecosystem of perennial polycultures, i.e. groups of diverse species that come back year after year.  Each plant has a 3-3000 year lifespan and contributes at least three of the following uses: food, fuel, fiber, fodder, fertilizer, f(ph)armaceutical and fun.

Forest garden plants have ecological functions as soil improvers (such as nitrogen fixers like beans), accumulators soaking up nutrients from deep soil (such as comfrey), or control of the environment (such as ground covers that prevent 'weeds').  Another class of plants provide important food and habitat to beneficial organisms such as pollinating bees.  These include asters, umbels, and mints.

Coppice and Pollard

Plants may contribute to food, fuel, fiber, and fertilizer through coppicing and pollarding.  Coppice is the new growth from a short stump after cutting.  This cutting practice results in many small diameter sticks harvested every few years and a thick hedge like plant in the ground.

Pollard is new growth from a tall stump after cutting.  In this practice, the results are a tall trunk barren of branches with a plethora of branches high in the ground, such as in a grazing field or around overground wires.

The byproducts of coppicing and pollarding, usually thin branches, can be used to fertilize, as animal fodder, as mushroom substrates, or as a material for garden furniture, tool handles, fences, and much more.

Mimicing Ecosystems

Plants gain adaptive advantage when they show emergent properties, that is characteristics that come about because of the interactions of components.  Forest gardening is a case where the whole functioning together equals more than the sum of the individual parts.  Ecosystems that mimic the forest are: resilient, self-maintaining, self-regulating, self-renewing, they produce clean air and water, and increase water storage and biodiversity overtime.

There is, necessarily, a nature-agriculture continuum.  Organic agriculture is moving agriculture towards nature but still reliant on monoculture and inputs.  Forest gardening is making nature more food productive.

Edible Gardening Goals

Edible forest gardens aim towards different goals than traditional or organic agriculture.  Forest gardens hope to achieve:

• high diverse yields
• maximum self-maintenance
• maximum ecological health
• improve economic stability
• cultivate and embody a new paradigm: humans are nature and co-creative participants in nature

History

Edible forest gardening has been practiced in Africa, Asia, and Latin America since at least 1000 AD.  Robert Hart creative the first modern western temperate forest garden in 1984 in England.  Jacke shared about visiting Hart's garden.  The loveliness of it actually brought tears to his eyes.

And yet, Hart made every mistake in design in the book.  His patches were unorganized, making harvest difficult.  Pathways were nonexistent, so visitors were constantly trampling plants.  Some partner plants were not complimentary.

Design Principles

From observing Hunt's garden and studying others, Jacke has devised several principles of creating emergent properties.  These are architecture, social structure, self-renewing fertility, and succession.  Each concept is detailed further in the Edible Forest Gardens book.

Gardeners need to learn how to pack plants into patches and habitats with minimal competitive exclusion.  Jacke emphasized several times how important it is to study and understand plants before including them in design.

Species niches are the inherent functions of a species including all interactions between an organism and its environment.  The best designs include species that employ more than one function, ideally at least three.

Plant Guilds

Groups of species that perform a similar function in the community are known as guilds.  Ideally each plant will occupy several guilds within the patch.

You might design with resource partitioning guild in mind, that is plants side by side that share a resource well.  In example of this, Jacke showed a resource partitioning guild of plants that have differing root systems to effectively share shallow and deep sources of water.  In the home garden, one might plant chinkapin, a chestnut bearing shrub with tap roots, next to juneberry or serviceberry, fruit bearing flat rooted species.

A mutual support guild is composed of species whose inherent yields supply another species' inherent needs.  One might plant wild blue indigo, a nitrogen fixing perennial, near fruit bearing pear trees, who need nitrogen to produce.

The proverbial 'Three Sisters' plantings of corn, squash, and beans work because the species compliment each other in several guilds.  Jacke suggested one could make a perennial Three Sisters by planting Jerusalem artichoke aka sunchoke heliantus tuberosa with groundnut apios americana and Chinese artichoke aka mint root stacchys affinis.

A World With Edible Forest Gardens

Surrounded by plant webs of support, stability, and harmony, edible forest gardeners do less work, waste less, and reduce stress to themselves and the environment.  Jacke posits that a community rich in such gardens would be a society full of well fed, healthy, stable people. He concluded "Live in the garden and the garden lives in you."

David Jacke is repeating this public talk this Monday August 9 from 7:30 - 9 pm at the Glen Helen building in Yellow Springs Ohio.  He will also be speaking on 'Soil Ecology and Self-Renewing Fertility' on Wednesday August 11 from 7:30 - 9 pm at the same location.  All presentations are organized and supported by the Ohio Ecological Food and Farming Association.

More information about David Jacke and his book Edible Forest Gardens are available at his website.  The site includes some very useful Resources for Forest Gardeners.

Bird Netting EVERYWHERE: Why and How

Just after the second set of pea leaves appeared, birds started eating them.  I blame sparrows, the possibly invasive species that seem to swarm our neighborhood in the spring.

So, bird netting is on the peas.

Last year we lost strawberries to the squirrels.  Even with Alex's not exactly legit squirrel hunting, they still come around.

Bird netting is on the strawberries.

Then I noticed that despite plenty of rain and sun the lettuce just never seemed to grow.

Five days of bird netting and the leaves are rounded and growing.  Same with the endive.

As much as I hate covering everything in little bits of plastic, I raise plants for me!  Go away birds and squirrels!!

If you struggle with critters eating your plants, netting might be the answer:

• Purchase an appropriate quantity of netting. I have two 14x14 foot packs I purchased from the local nursery for about $6 each.
• While it is still carefully folded, cut to the length of your garden bed.
• Spread each piece gently over top of the crop you are protecting. It doesn't have to be perfectly aligned. If your area is particularly windy, use several small sticks to secure the corners.
• When plants have been established, you can try removing the netting. Gently peel it away from the plants, unwinding tendrils if they have grown through the netting.
• Fold your netting to reuse next year. It never seems to pack down to the size it was when I purchased, so we keep a large grocery bag filled with folded up pieces of netting.
• Enjoy your peas/berries/lettuces munch free!