Starting Seeds for Spring!

This year, I've been seeing a lot of people promoting the use of egg cartons for starting seeds. While I love the idea of re-using what would otherwise be (hopefully) recycled, they just don't work very well. I tried it last spring, and the results were overall, pretty disappointing:

1. The egg carton paper is too thick and acts as a wick, taking water away from the soil.

2. The egg pods are too small, and seedlings do not have enough room to grow healthy and strong before transplanting.

3. The egg carton paper is, again, too thick. You cannot just plant it into the ground and expect it to decompose and allow the seedling to flourish, and it is otherwise very difficult to get the seedling out of the egg pods.

(For a defense of the egg carton seed start project see the comments below. I posted my issues with this project elsewhere, and got a rebuttal - which someone intent on re-using their egg cartons may find very helpful)

This year, instead, I decided to try something completely new and just as recyclely:

Origami seed start pots!

Materials needed:

Scrap paper

Cupcake tray you don't plan on using for a while

Seeds

Soil

To make the cups, find detailed origami instructions (with charts and graphs!)  here.

Next, place cups in cupcake tray, fill the cups with soil, place in the seed according to the packet's directions, add water and a few weeks later...

Since the scrap paper is pretty thin, you could theoretically just place the cups directly into the garden bed you intend them for. Though, it will probably be a good idea to cut a hole in the bottom (if one hasn't already developed) before planting.

Good gardening to you!

The American Dream

Scientists and historians may find it difficult to pinpoint the exact moment that the American Dream became synonymous with 'Buy as Much Crap as Possible and Throw it Away to Make Room for More Crap we Absolutely Have to Buy', (more commonly known as 'Consumerism'), but I would suggest the moment was sometime around August 1960, when the following ads appeared in an issue of House Beautiful.

'Sure,' you're probably thinking, 'This looks wasteful, but it's no worse than using tissues.'

And you may be right. Many people seem to have some issues with re-using cloth handkerchiefs. And they don't notice how wasteful it is because, unlike people with hayfever, they don't really have to blow their noses too often.

People with spring-summer-fall allergies (like me) learned by about age 10 that tissues are the most ridiculous inventions ever - not to mention how expensive they are! I can blow (hah!) through a travel-pack of tissues in a single spring day. Simply imagine how much trash I would be creating if I didn't have my rotating supply of handkerchiefs.

This is like having a disposable table cloth. Or disposable plates and silverware (although some people do actually use these items in the home, regularly).

How filthy and/or lazy does a person have to be to get to the point where they are actually seeking out disposable clothing items?! Keep in mind, also, that in 1960 simple and convenient home washing machines not only existed but were commonly owned. They also had bleach.

This is my personal favorite.

These apparently solve "an ever-present problem for the summer-hostess."

What on earth could this problem be? How many showers are her guests taking that it is too much trouble to wash and dry the bathmats?

On top of how wasteful this is, the very idea of touching my bare, wet skin to paper fills me with dread. It is a most disagreeable sensation.

It's Monday Morning...

...And there was no coffee!!!

Well, no roasted coffee. So, that's what I did, still bleary-eyed and tousled-haired. This time, since I wanted my coffee 20 minutes ago, I made medium roast.

Sorry it's blurry. The coffee was cooling, so I couldn't drink it yet. Cameras are difficult to use.

While it was cooling (it's still brewing right now) I decided to take a photo of a recently finished project to share with the world: My Bottle Path.

An entire summer in the making, I've finally finished it! There must be over 300 bottles in the path, beer and soda - and maybe a hot sauce bottle thrown in for kicks. It involved many many weeks of asking neighbours, party hosts and parents for their glass recycling. Then it took trench digging, bottle placing and finally a lot of sand and dirt and sweeping. But now it's done! And we can walk on it! Just in time for the rain to keep us inside for the next 6 months!

(I took an overall shot of the path this morning, but it was blurry too. Sorry!)

Now that we're talking about re-using excessive packaging, I'd like to talk a little about plastic grocery bags:

STOP USING THEM!

Roommate has a habit of going shopping and coming home with 10 plastic bags (sometimes double bagged). I've tried offering him the use of our canvas bags, of which I have more than enough for him to borrow, but to no avail. Earlier this year, the collection of plastic bags in our house got so insane that I macaramed a lampshade out of all of them (it had to be at least 100).

That was, seriously, only 3 months ago. The collection has gotten ridiculous again. I guess I do have another lamp in need of a shade... My original plan was to make it out of fabric (I have some old silk slips just dying to be repurposed). Oh well.

I remember when I bought my first re-usable canvas bag: Summer, 2001 in Stuttgart. My travel-friend Kelley and I were taking a German-language immersion class for a month. The first time we went grocery shopping we had a little bit of a culture-clash:

As we went to pay, we were informed that we either had to buy a canvas bag or carry our food out in our hands. So I bought a bag (picturing a turtle kissing a frog and the words: Schützt unsere Umvelt) and NEVER forgot it again. We desperately need such a policy here in the US.

For the next 6 or 7 years back in California I used that bag, and others added to my collection, while getting hard looks from most cashiers and heavy sighs from baggers. Only in a Mexican grocery store in Van Nuys did I ever receive praise from a cashier for bringing my own bags.

Until I moved to Portland, that is. Not everyone in this town uses canvas grocery bags (i.e. Roommate) but it's not just accepted here, it's generally expected and encouraged. A lot of that may be due to environmental-responsibility suddenly becoming hip, but I'll take it!

In conclusion: seriously folks, STOP USING PLASTIC BAGS. It's wasteful and unnecessary and an easy thing to do for the planet.