By Becky Striepe •
April 22, 2009
[These little cucumber sprouts were seeds just a week ago!]
The weather is warming up, and it’s about the right time to start planting your spring garden! Whether you’re living in an apartment with just a little bit of window or patio space or a house with a yard, you can still grow some of your own food to save a little cash and reduce your food miles. Rather than spend money all season on expensive (and often petroleum-derived) fertilizer, why not get yourself a worm bin, and make your own nutrient-rich compost?
If you have a lot of yard space, you can build yourself a full-sized compost bin. Vermicomposting, compost bins where worms do the work breaking down the organic matter, are great for folks with a less space, but you homeowners can benefit from a worm bin, too! Worm castings are super-nutritious, and worm bins yeild good compost relatively quickly. The bins are easy to make yourself, and you can even divert some waste from the landfill while you’re at it! Bonus points if you rescue discarded plastic tubs, rather than buying new ones. Check out this awesome step-by-step video on getting your worm bin together:
By Becky Striepe •
February 10, 2009
[Creative Commons photo by Anne Norman]
The weather in Atlanta felt like Spring this weekend, which got me thinking about our Spring garden and, of course, our compost bin. Composting is a fabulous, cheap source of fertile soil. On top of that, keeping a compost bin prevents your food scraps from heading to
the landfill where they break down and produce methane, a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2.
While some communities offer curbside composting, most do not. Luckily, it’s really easy to get your own bin going! Whether you’re living in a house or an apartment, there are great composting solutions out there. Here’s a roundup of some options, so you can have your compost ready in time to get that Spring garden going!
I wrote about my class visit to the landfill (oh yes, I've been to TWO different landfills in the last six months) and about how that has impacted both my students and our school. Along with kicking butt in paper recycling (our Abitibi dumpster was filled to the brim today in our first post-spring-break recycling collection), we've slowly but surely started plastic bottle recycling.
Even our small school (320 students) generates
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