#easy composting

[mellomadness]

I just fell down a rabbit hole about (legal) body disposal and part of me is so anxious wishing I could tell the FBI agent monitoring my internet searches that I’m just morbidly curious and I’m not planning on dying anytime soon (or planning anything ELSE, for that matter)

[ecogreenlivingessentials]

DIY Guide: How to Start Your Own Herb Garden at Home

Step 1: Choose Your Herbs Selecting the right herbs is key to a successful garden. I prefer heirloom varieties, because you can simply allow them to go until they die naturally at the end of the season, and gather free seeds from them each year! Beginners should start with easy-to-grow options such as: Chives Basil Mint Rosemary Thyme Parsley My FAVORITE Organic and Heirloom herb…

[geocyclist]

Since our local trash company no longer sends the recycling truck up our street, I’ve taken to shredding our cardboard for compost. It was quite disheartening to see the recycling bin dumped into the garbage truck every week, so we made do. The boxes are broken down, all stickers and non-paper tape is removed, and the band saw is used to trim the boxes wide enough to fit through the shredder. An 18-sheet crosscut shredder found on marketplace locally makes quick work of the cardboard.

[bunnyb34r]

I need these damn temperatures to stay steady above 50° so I can fucking clean up the garden beds 😠 come on you son of a bitch

[jensownzoo]

Picked up five spent mums from the dumpsters on the walk back from the library yesterday.

They're getting a drink of water in the pic. I got them trimmed up to remove the spent blooms this morning and planted them in my raised beds to overwinter (I'll dump some straw on them when it gets cold).

From past experience, about half of them will survive the winter and once they've greened up, I can dig them up and move them into a more permanent bed. Like this one from last year:

Which is leggy as hell because I forgot to prune it back to shape it at the beginning of summer. I can usually get a few years out of a mum. And doing it this way is absolutely free! You just don't get to pick the color. Which, I mean, that's probably close to $100 of mums I brought back so.

I do want to get my hands on some of those purple asters though, and I think I'm going to have to actually buy them. In the meantime I'm encouraging the wild white asters to take hold in the side yard--the bees cover them this time of year. I got two little sprigs going now, but I'm stalking this alley plant to gather more seeds when it's spent:

There were at least 20 bees on it and that was a low number from usual.

[cantankerouscatfish]

it is succulents propagation time, as it is every year. it never gets old, turning one plant into 100 (or 50, or 10, depending on the stock plant) and watching the little unrooted cuttings take and grow new leaves and eventually go to happy homes. :'3

[turtle9374]

My friend says kelp is stupid, so I made a poll

I had made another one, but it had too few votes to really get a good answer, so this one will last longer

[lostryu]

gonna try to compost the plants that didnt survive the winter

[theshadowrealmitself]

Growing up there was an orange tree and a tangerine tree in the backyard and I always preferred the tangerines to the oranges so it’s what I peeled and ate more of, now whenever I see posts about peeling oranges and sharing oranges and stuff I always immediately think of tangerines

[marrow-bone]

Especially not when most of our produce comes from other countries, or is worked on by migrants because americans don't want to do it. Great job, maga-dipshits.

Anyway now is a fantastic time for everyone to look into growing your own food. It's amazing what a windowbox or a community garden can do; and a $2 packet of seeds can provide several families with all the tomatoes they need for a season.

Buy heirloom and that $2 becomes infinite with seed-saving.

[headspace-hotel]

How to begin a sustainable way of life

This is a draft of something I've been writing for a couple months. It is mainly focused on the culture of the USA. Feel free to repost or otherwise share, with or without credit.

Do not tell people what to do—help them do it! 

Give the gift of relief from being forced to engage in society’s unsustainable ways of life. 

“People need to eat more plant-based foods.” ->Talk about your favorite recipes, give others recipes, cook for them, and grow vegetables and plants in your garden and give them away as gifts. 

“People need to repair their clothes.” -> Offer to repair others’ clothes, and teach people how to repair their clothes. 

“People need to buy less clothes.” -> Give them old clothes that you don’t want, help them repair their clothes

“People need to buy less plastic stuff.” -> Learn to make things that can serve the same purpose, such as baskets, and give them as gifts. Let people borrow things you own so they don’t have to buy their own. 

“People need to stop using leafblowers and other gas-guzzling machinery.” -> Offer to rake the leaves. You can use them as compost in your own garden. 

“People need to be more educated about nature.”-> Learn about nature yourself. Tell people about nature. Be open about your love of creatures such as snakes, spiders, and frogs. Do not show awareness that this could be strange. You are not obligated to quiet down your enthusiasm for creepy crawlies to demonstrate awareness that it is weird. Point out at every opportunity how these animals are beneficial. 

“People need to use cars less.” -> Offer rides to others whenever you must go somewhere. Whenever you are about to go to the store, ask your neighbor or your friend who lives along the way, “Is there anything you need from the store?” 

You cannot control others’ behaviors, but you can free them from being controlled. 

If you think to yourself, “But this would be so difficult to do!” ask yourself WHY? Why does your society coerce you into less sustainable ways of living, forcing you to consume excessively? After thinking about this, consider that it is less simple and easy than you thought to make more sustainable choices, so why would you judge others for not doing it? 

Do not act alone—act with others! 

Environmentally friendly behaviors that can be done alone, without collaborating with or consulting another person, are the least powerful of all. Whenever an “environmentally friendly” behavior is suggested, figure out “How can I give this as a gift?” or “How can I make this possible on the level of a whole community?” 

“Personal choices” do not work because every single person has to make them individually. If you are focused on making your own personal choice, you are not focused on others. If you are not focused on others, you are not helping them. If nobody is helping each other, most people won’t be able to make the “personal choice.”

You inherently share an ecosystem with your neighbors  

            Start with your neighbors, the people physically close to you. You live on the same patch of land, containing roots from the same plants and trees. You can speak to them face to face without traveling, which means you can easily bring them physical things without using resources to travel. 

            Always talk to your neighbors and be friendly with them. Offer them favors unprompted and tell them about how your garden is doing. Do not be afraid to be annoying—a slightly annoying neighbor who is helpful, kind, and can be relied upon for a variety of favors or in times of need is a necessary and inevitable part of a good community. If you make the effort to be present in somebody’s life, they will have to put up with you on some occasions, but that is just life. We cannot rely on each other if we do not put up with each other. 

Simply spending time with someone influences them for good 

Every hour you spend outside with your neighbor is an hour your neighbor doesn’t spend watching Fox News. Every hour you spend talking with someone and interacting with them in the real world, eating real food and enjoying your real surroundings, is an hour you don’t spend only hearing a curated picture of what reality is like from social media. 

            Isolation makes it easy for people to become indoctrinated into extremist beliefs. When someone spends more time alone, watching TV, Youtube, or scrolling social media, than they do with others, their concept of what other people are like and what the world is like comes more from social media than real life. TV and online media are meant to influence you in a specific way. Simply restricting the access these influences have to yourself and others is helpful. 

A garden is the source of many gifts 

If you grow a garden, you can give your neighbors and friends the gift of food, plants, and crafted objects. This is one of the foundational ways to form community. When you give food, you provide support to others. When you give plants, you are encouraging and teaching about gardening. It is even better when you give recipes cooked from things you grew, or items crafted from things you grew. You can also give the gift of knowledge of how to grow these plants, cook these recipes, or craft these objects. 

More on gift-giving

            Some people are uncomfortable with receiving items or services as gifts. They want to feel like they are giving something back, instead of having obligation to return the favor hanging over them. 

            It can help to ask a simple favor that can be easily fulfilled. People generally like the feeling of helping someone else. 

When you give someone a gift, it can help to say something like “Oh, I have too many of this thing to take care of/store/eat myself! Do you think you could take some?” This makes your neighbor feel like they are helping you. 

When allowing others to borrow items, you might not get them back. Don’t worry about that. It just means the item found a place where it was needed the most. You can ask about the item if you think it might have been forgotten, and this can create an opportunity for a second meeting. But don’t press. 

If the person you give to insists upon some form of payment, this is a good opportunity to negotiate a trade. 

Ask to be given compostable or recyclable things 

Ask your neighbor to save compostable scraps, biodegradable cardboard and paper products, and any other items that might be put to use. Use them in your own compost pile. Or, start a compost pile at the edge of the yard where you both can add to it. Remember that “wet” compost like vegetable and fruit bits needs to be mixed with twice as much of “dry” and “woody” compost like cardboard, leaves, small twigs, paper and wood bits. 

Use the front yard for gardening

Overcome the cultural norm that the front yard is only decorative. Use the front yard for gardening so you can be seen by others enjoying your garden, and others can witness the demonstration of the possibilities of land. In the front yard, anything you do intentionally with your land can be witnessed. It also makes you a visible presence in your community. 

Grow staple foods 

Don’t just grow vegetables that cannot be the core component of a meal themselves. Grow potatoes, dry beans, black eyed peas and other nourishing, calorie-dense foods. Grow the ingredients of meals. You could even build a garden around a recipe.

Invite neighbors and friends over to eat food made from things you grew 

Be sure to send them home with leftovers.  

Grow plants for baskets 

Containers are one of the fundamental human needs. If we had more containers, we wouldn’t need plastic so much. You can learn to make baskets, and to grow plants that provide the raw materials for baskets. 

If someone rakes their leaves, ask to have the leaves  

If you see someone putting leaves in bags, don’t be afraid to ask if you can have the leaves. More likely than not they will be happy to agree. 

Collaborate with neighbors to plant things in the no-man’s-land of the property line 

In the border land between your neighbor’s yard and your yard, it is almost always just mowed grass because no one can plant anything without it affecting their neighbor. But these border lands add up to a lot of space. It would be much better if you talked to your neighbor about what would be nice to plant there, and together created a plan for that space. 

Give others the freedom to wander 

Make it clear that you will not get mad if the neighbor’s kids play in your yard or run across it. Invite the neighbors onto your land as much as possible. Tell them they are allowed to spend time in a favored spot whenever they would like.  

The power of the hand-made sign 

If there is a yard sale, you always know about it because of the hand-drawn signs placed around. Therefore, a cookout or unwanted item exchange can be announced the same way. In rural areas I have seen hand-made signs that say: FIREWOOD or WE BUY GOATS or EGGS. This is one of the few technologies of community that remain in the USA. If someone who looks to buy and sell can put up a hand-made sign, why shouldn’t you?  

Religious people or people with strong political opinions like to put signs everywhere. If they have the confidence and courage to do so, why shouldn’t you? 

So if there is a message you would like everyone to see, use the simple power of the hand-made sign. Proclaim “BEE FRIENDLY ZONE!” above your pollinator garden with all the confidence of a religious fundamentalist billboard. Announce to the world, “VEGETABLES FREE TO ALL—JUST ASK!” “WE TAKE LEAVES—NO PESTICIDES.” Instead of YARD SALE, or perhaps in conjunction with YARD SALE, you can write, PLANT EXCHANGE or SEED SWAP or CLOTHING SWAP. Who can stop you? 

Someone has to do it for society to change  

Some of these ideas might be eccentric, strange, or even socially unacceptable, but there is no way to change what is normal except to move against it. Someone has to be weird. It might as well be you. 

[nerdyqueerr]

i NEED more time to MAKE ART and KISS my friends i don't WANNA write a media law case analysis or wash mould out of the compost bin

[merry-death]

The worst part about making gazpacho is waiting for it to chill

[turtle9374]

My friend thinks kelp is stupid so I'm here to prove it wrong

There will probably not be enough votes by the time the time runs out for the poll, so I'm gonna post a new one that lasts longer

[jensownzoo]

So we've had a break in the heat for the past two days (ends tomorrow with 95F) and so I've been trying to get a few things done that require me to be outside.

Yesterday was booked with hauling various stuff home.

Today I was planning on cleaning out the composting side of the older chicken run in preparation of moving two of the younger hens over to replace the two old hens that passed this month (they were both 11yo so not entirely unexpected). The entire run is divided in half with a pet door in between. No flap installed but has a solid portion that I can slide in place to "close" it.

So I shoo the two older hens that are left into the non-composting side that has the coop, close them in, and grab my shovel and a bucket. I intended to just pile up the material in the yard to finish composting, move the old coop shavings into the run, and fill the coop with new. It's a system that works well, I just usually wait until late summer when I take over one of my planting beds after the veggies are done producing for the compost-finishing, but whatever.

However the hens in this coop have never been particularly fond of earth-moving (unlike the newer hens who delight in tossing shit everywhere) and I usually get in there to do a "pile turnover" regularly, but not in the heat we've been having. So my first shovelful has some matting at the bottom of the scoop and I flip it over to chop it into smaller pieces only to find that it is absolutely full of soldier fly larva.

New idea.

I flip over a bunch of chunks then let the old hens back in. Once their crops are full, I shoo them back to the other side and go get the two new residents. They are anxious about the move for all of 30 seconds and then notice the wigglers. I realize maybe an hour later that there are probably more than they can eat and go grab another two young hens to help (the legbars said no thank you we don't want to be picked up otherwise all six would have been feasting).

So now the two new residents are settled into their part of the divided run and the temporary workers have been returned to their own coop. There's 1/4" hardware cloth between the two sides so the old and new residents can get used to each other. There's not a coop in the composting run, but it does have a "jungle gym" of secured branches to perch on and I moved one of the hooded cat litter boxes that I use for nesting boxes in with them so they'll be fine. I'll do a switcheroo in a few days so they can explore the coop side.

But first I'm planning on repeating the temporary move of non-residents tomorrow and maybe the next day until the feast runs out of food and all the unfinished compost has been thoroughly churned by chicken feet.

Should help with the fly problem too :-)

[mijhajo]

Compost Animal Crackers Recipe Easy