At my house there is never a shortage of green material (also known as wet or nitrogen-rich matter) – orange peels, corn husks, dinner food scraps, yard waste, etc. – for my compost bin, but when it comes to finding brown (also known as dry or carbon-rich) material, in the past I’ve often ended up coming up short. The trick, of course, to getting compost to work and breakdown into that coveted nutrient-rich soil is to have the right combination of both green and brown matter.
About a year ago, however, I posted my first Green Tip of the Week suggesting that my readers keep a bag or two (or three) of their dry fall leaves to use throughout the coming year as brown material to add to their compost pile or bin.
Continue Reading »
You never know what yakking about green issues is going to elicit. Sometimes it’s a “give me a break already” but when my child’s Kindergarten teacher overhears me advising my neighbor about composting tumblers, she has a surprise in store for me. “Oooh!” she says. “I had worms in my classroom in Texas! Can you set me up with a worm bin?”
I’m totally excited and totally game. But I’ve never done worm composting in my house. What to do? First step? I read Worms Eat My Garbage. Great book, recommended by my sister-in-law, who’s a master organic gardener and 10+ year vermiculturist (is that even a word?).
Continue Reading »
Happy Labor Day weekend to you all from the green team here at 5 Minutes for Going Green! Here are some interesting reads for your long weekend:
-Geek Dad creates an incredible Styrobot, all from styrofoam he collected over the past several years. Check out the awesomeness.
-Last week, our own Crunchy Chicken had some exciting updates on the distribution of pads for her very important and very successful Goods 4 Girls organization. Go read about what happened in Sudan, Kenya, and Uganda.
-Another one of our rock stars, Mama Bird, pointed out the lack of environmental awareness among the American Dental Association.
Continue Reading »
These days, I see a lot of “R”s added to what was originally the sacred trinity of green living: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. My personal favorite is “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rot,” used to encourage folks to compost their food scraps and yard waste instead of consigning it to the burn pile or the landfill.
Many of us will get our first frost of the season within the next month (I know, where did August go?), which means that yard clean-up is right around the corner. In fact, I’ve already been trimming a lot of spent blossoms and pulling out the end of the spring radishes and lettuce (to replant, of course, with fall veggies!).
Continue Reading »
