I first ran across Orta plastic-free self-watering seed pots last Spring at the Temescal Farmers Market in Oakland, CA. I wanted to review it back then, but what with buying a new home in Maryland, caring for my dad, and then the extreme heat of the Maryland summer, it never happened. So, here I am […]
Adding to the continuing series of posts on gardening without plastic, here is another guest post from Ro Kumar, who gave a few tips for avoiding plastic in the garden back in April. It’s been said by environmental leaders like Michael Pollan that one of the best and easiest things we can do to reduce carbon […]
It’s spring. Â Are you starting a garden? Â Right now, the plastic-free garden I planted last year with assistance from Organic Gardening’s Eric Hurlock is totally overgrown. Â The chard has become a huge bush of pretty white flowers and stalks that are taller than I am. Â Most of the rest of the yard and garden are […]
My plastic-free gardening project is coming right along. I’ve been eating chard for days! Some plants are doing well, and some are doing not so well. I have questions for you. Please read through to the end of this post to see some of my plant problems and offer suggestions. But first, here are my […]
A few weeks ago, I began my plastic-free gardening project in my tiny Oakland, CA yard with the help of Rodale.com and Eric Hurlock of Organic Gardening. I built a raised bed with sustainable wood and filled it with bulk gardening soil that I had delivered without any packaging. So far so good. But buying […]
Last Fall, Rodale.com’s Dana Blinder contacted me about plastic-free gardening. What she didn’t know was that I had already failed miserably in the gardening department several times and wasn’t sure gardening was my thing. That’s when we came up with a brilliant idea. Rodale would teach me how to grow an organic garden, and I would […]
This was our postage stamp-sized front yard on Saturday. Michael and I thought it was pretty. But I was concerned that neighbors would report it as a hazard. The flowers weeds were over a foot tall and harboring who knows what furry little beings. Something had to be done, and I was not ready to […]
Sorry for the quality of the photos. For some reason, my camera and the sun would not cooperate last week when I took these. Anyway, here’s my very little front yard garden grown almost entirely without plastic. Yep. Little. And late. Because I didn’t get started until June. But it is what it is, and […]
Yesterday, I mentioned recycling the potting soil from my dead roof garden as well as harvesting the compost (finally) from my Urban Compost Tumbler to add to the dirt in the front yard where we planted tomatoes. Back in March, I whined about how the Urban Compost Tumbler was just not as great as I’d […]
Inspired by Life Less Plastic’s excellent Step By Step Composting Guide and info about her Compost Tumbler, and also after many questions from readers about my experiences composting with my Urban Compost Tumbler, I thought I’d post a quick update. Back in August I wrote a detailed post about the various composting options for someone […]