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We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.
~Native American Proverb
Honor & celebrate our Mother Earth every day, Dear Readers. She's the only Earth we have.
Happy Earth Day!
-kelly
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Last year was the first year we tried planting edible plants in our backyard in containers, and had a fairly successful (albeit modest) harvest: a couple of sweet strawberries, three tiny cucumbers, and several handfuls of cherry tomatoes! In our condo, we are blessed with a tiny fenced yard which allows us a private (although mostly shady) area where we can plant our own veggies and flowers, along with a sunny garden we built up against the woods in the common area. We've used the in-ground garden in past years for non-edible plants (due to the pesticides & fertilizers which are spread in the neighborhood [not inside the fences], I'm not comfortable eating anything from the common area) like sunflowers and pumpkins. This year, we decided to get a bit more ambitious with our edible garden, and we're going for some shade-tolerant root veggies: beets & carrots, greens: lettuce, spinach, and broccoli, along with fun-to-grow & eat snap peas! It's still a bit too cold yet in New Jersey to plant veggies outside, so we decided to start our seeds inside, and move them out to the back in a few weeks. I'm not sure yet whether we'll construct a raised bed, or plant in pots again. We also haven't decided what's to go in the common area garden yet either. Stay tuned for details!
We bought some lovely organic potting soil (from Maine - yay!), biodegradable pots, and organic seeds, put down some newspaper, and got to work! The kids had a blast in the dirt (okay, so did I!), my daughter showed a bit of her creative side with designing the seed markers, and my son practiced his motor skills gently watering the finished pots. Enjoy our afternoon in pictures... Can't wait until they start to sprout!
(Go Organic!)
(If you could only SMELL this dirt - *swoon*)
(Carefully filling the pots)
(Gently sprinkling the seeds)
(More seeding...)
(Watering the pots)
(Done!)
Are you planning a garden this year? What are you planting?
How Far Do You Go to Recycle?
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Back in February, I wrote about things we do around our house to be more eco-friendly. One of those things is recycling glass, metal, paper, and plastic on a daily basis. Separating recyclable materials from your trash and recycling them is a fairly simple task when your township picks up the recycle. But what if it doesn't? While researching for that post, I discovered that we could in fact recycle MORE than what we had previously been saving when it came to plastic (our township only recycles #1 & #2 plastic), if I just brought it a few towns over from us. So, from that point forward, instead of throwing away all our yogurt containers, fruit & veggie clamshells, and old sippy cups, I started cleaning & setting them aside, with the rest of our recycle.
Collingswood, New Jersey collects mixed plastics - #3 through #7 and is about 15 miles away. While not that far, mileage-wise, it’s not particularly conveniently located to us, and unfortunately, not on the way to anything we typically visit, so we thought the best plan of action was to save up our commingled plastic recycle for as long as we could stand it, then bring it over as one big lot.
The bags were piling up, it was a dreary day, so… what better day to pack up the car & go for a drive? We loaded up the six garbage bags we’d saved up of number 3 – 7 plastic over the last seven months into the back of my minivan. It started to rain on our drive down there. Once we arrived, we discovered the recycle drop off was right by a bicycle recycle station – so cool! You can drop off your bike or bike parts & take what you need.
Of course, being pouring rain & windy by the time we arrived, there was no one around, and so the kids only got to observe the bike parts and recycle bins through our minivan windows. I managed to fill up FIVE CANS worth of recycle – did I mention it was raining? – and snapped a few photographs before hopping back in the car. Unfortunately due to the weather, we didn’t linger (though the town looks like it has an interesting walk-able downtown area, as well as a Farmer’s Market on Saturdays), and got back on the road home (the rainy, traffic-y, carseat screamy, ride home).
All told, we spent nearly an hour on the road (approx 25 minutes each way) to recycle 5 cans of plastic. While I certainly felt good inside – both while saving up the recycle all year, teaching the kids about recycling, keeping plastic out of the landfills, and loading up those empty cans with our stashed recycle – I’m not sure, with the time spent on the road (much of it in traffic – so a lot of engine idling), how worthwhile it was in the long run. What I mean is, was my carbon footprint (certainly reduced by recycling 5 cans of plastic), then increased by driving 30 miles to recycle it?
At this point, I think we’ll keep doing what we’re doing because I can’t imagine going back to throwing all that plastic in the landfill! I sure wish there was a more environmentally-friendly way to get all the plastic from my house to the recycling station though. Next time, we’ll try to combine the trip with another outing – perhaps the Saturday Farmer’s Market!
So… do you recycle? How far would you/do you go to do it?
Container Vegetable Gardening
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I’ve been perennial gardening for years. Adam and I were sort of thrown into it nearly 10 years ago, when we moved to Maine, and the house we bought was surrounded by an amazing array of perennial plants and flowers. I’d grown up gardening with my mother, and felt, at the time, that I had a pretty good handle on plants. I could get mostly any houseplant to grow & thrive, and had luck in our previous apartments with summer annuals out on the balcony. But 8 fully landscaped flower beds on two acres (the woman from whom we purchased the house even left us with a detailed map of the flowers and plants – yeah, that might have tipped us off)… this was a different animal altogether. During our five years in Maine, we had some gardening successes (amazing echinacea and lilac bushes) and failures (composting, vegetable gardening, and weed management - FAIL), but in all, we learned SO MUCH about gardening (namely, never, ever, buy a house with 8 huge meticulously landscaped perennial beds again, because man oh man, that is a LOT of mulch), and came to love it in spite of the challenges. We even got married in our gardens (cue giant previously mentioned echinacea):
When we moved to our apartment in New Jersey, I really missed the calming aspect of gardening, in spite of the work. I missed tending the plants (that didn’t talk back, but let you know by growing bigger & more beautiful, that you were doing a good job nonetheless), smelling the fragrant lilac in early spring, and the feeling of great energy and beauty that exuded from each plant. So, as soon as we bought our house here, I set to work spending a near fortune all my free time on planting New Jersey-friendly perennials, and slowly expanding our tiny front flower bed into the beautiful garden it is today. I’ve always involved the children when gardening; from the time my daughter was a baby – I’d set her out on a blanket next to the bed where I was working – until today; where both of my children happily work beside me, and even lead the way in gardening.
My daughter & son leading the way out the back yard to our pumpkin garden
This year, since both kids are of the age where they can actively participate in and learn about the details of planting, caring for, looking after, trimming, and harvesting plants, I decided to take another step forward in gardening, and we started a “vegetable garden” and container veggies. Now, I put that first one in quotes because our current “vegetable garden” actually only consists of pumpkins, sunflowers, and ornamental corn (which we planted today), due to the unknown soil quality and potential contaminants. I’m not comfortable eating anything we plant out there. However, because I think there’s great teaching and motivational value for my children in being able to actually EAT the literal fruits of your labor, I also decided we’d take on the task of container gardening in our enclosed back yard (out of reach of the landscapers who liberally and frequently spray pesticides through our neighborhood).
After an initial less-than-stellar attempt at locating organic potting mix at a big box store this weekend, I elicited the assistance of twitter. With the help of Hobo_Mama & innerwizdom’s sage gardening advice, I was able to locate an appropriate natural potting medium for our new cucumbers (and for transplanting our tomato and strawberry). The kids and I made a special trip to Whole Foods and found an organic potting mix by Organic Mechanics and an organic compost & peat mix by Coast of Maine (rather apropos, no?).
As an aside (and let me say, neither of the aformentioned companies have contacted me in any way, and I paid for these items myself - I just feel it necessary to tell you about how awesome they are), the difference between the two actually organic soils and the so-called "organic" soil by Miracle Gro that I was duped into buying at the local big box store is unbelievable. The M.G. (abbreviating from here on out, as not to attract any more unneeded attention to said mainstream brand) soil smelled so noxious – even IN the bag (unopened!) in our house – that that I had to immediately put it outside. There was NO WAY I was going to put our edible vegetables in that. After opening the bag, I discovered it was heavy, dense, smelly, and full of unknown bits of who knows what. I didn’t want my children to even touch the stuff. I should have been tipped off by the warning on the back, indicating to keep away from children. It’s SOIL! Keep away from children? Ey yi yi… can you say greenwashing? In contrast, the Organic Mechanics and Coast of Maine soils were rich, dark, and smelled heavenly (like dirt SHOULD!) yet were light & fluffy to boot. I willingly encouraged my kids get themselves dirty in the organic soils.
My son alternated scoops from both bags and filled the container. My daughter placed our cucumber plants (we chose a low-growing bush variety - good for containers, and pickling!) in the midst, and gently pressed down the additional soil my son placed around the base of the baby plants. We put in a metal trellis on which the cukes could travel up. Watered, and done!
Next, came tending the back garden. We discovered that something (we’ve seen deer, groundhog, birds, and squirrels visit our garden, hence the installation of the fence) had eaten the heads off of our sunflower sprouts; which was our third attempt at growing sunflowers out back. On the upside, our Northern Giant pumpkin is really taking off! We also had some random wild corn sprout up in our garden, so we decided not to leave those stalks lonely, and planted some ornamental red corn.
The kids turned up the dirt, pulled weeds, and prepped the soil.
My three and five year old painstakingly placed one kernel at a time into each hole and gently covered them. I was amazed, as I always am, by the gentleness and patience my children naturally display around the plants. We watered everything, and voila! Another fabulous day in the garden! Here’s hoping nothing decides to dig up the kernels as special treats.
Up next? Transplanting our tomato & strawberry plants into the fragrant Maine soil. So... what are you planting?