Christmas Gifts

Okay, so the Sun Mar 200 didn't tickle your fancy?
How about the Tumbleweed Compost Tumbler?



The vertical tumbling action of the patented Tumbleweed Compost Bin, designed with a stainless steel rod running through the middle, creates an aerobic action that offers a quick and odorless form of composting. It is supported by sturdy, galvanized tubular steel legs that won't rust. The steel in these legs is made with recycled metal (as available). The recycled content varies between 17 and 20 percent.

The Tumbleweed Compost Tumbler is attractive and excellent at keeping pests out of your pile.

Give us a ring if this one interests you, only three left...

Christmas Gifts

Do you have a gardener friend who is already starting to jones for spring? Why not give them a leg up on the seed starting frenzy? It's easy to make compost at home. A compost tumbler keeps your garden looking neat while turning leftover food into a great seed starting mix.

Soilutions has a number of compost bins available. Here's one:



The Sun Mar 200 compost tumbler is already assembled, is an attractive green color and hold almost a 1/3 cubic yard of material. Simply fill it with leaves, grass clipping, kitchen waste...anything organic, turn it periodically, and by Spring all that "waste" will be turned to black gold.

The Sun Mar 200 is on wheels so it is perfect for someone with a small back porch. The hinged lid allows for easy extraction of finished product.

Call us for more information about the Sun Mar 200 or any of our other compost ideas.
505-877-0220

Words to Live By

When driving home with graciously given homemade sauerkraut, ensure the lid is screwed on tightly!

Pictures of Food in Soilutions' Dirt

I am always encouraging people to send me pictures of their projects to post here. Surprisingly, I get very few. Here are a couple of photographs of some food grown by a Soilutions customer in our Topsoil Blend.

The lovely Artichoke. I don't know why it isn't grown more often in this climate. It handles the weather well and is so beautiful.




My personal favorite: Chard. It is so versatile in the kitchen, it is so easy to grow, and it too is lovely.




Who doesn't like watermelons?

Portable Gardens

I love to garden. Duh.

But I would also like to live on a boat and sail around the world. Or maybe just drive around the country tasting vanilla ice cream from all the small creameries on all the small roads in all the back woods of our world.

Or I would love to live in a very hip city, Paris of course, or Portland (Maine or Oregon), Sofia Bulgaria, on the tip top of a high rise.

So, my living fantasies don't really have space for a garden, it seems, even though I would give up many, many comforts to continue to be able to taste a carrot 10 seconds out of the ground.

I followed a blog by Roz Savage as she was rowing solo across the Pacific Ocean. Enthralled, I bought her book depicting her similar journey across the Atlantic. As a composter, I kept asking myself, does she have worms on board to manage her waste? She didn't as far as I could tell, but it turns out she kept a pan of bean sprouts growing for her fresh food supply.

There was a customer a year or two back that worked in a women's health clinic. She and her fellow workers were finding that many of her patient's illnesses were related to poor diet. So she commandeered half the facility's parking lot and built a garden to help instruct women how to eat.

Gardening helps me stay active. My neighbors are well into their 60's and can work me under the table still. I attribute that stamina to daily work in their garden. But when I am old and in a retirement home or should one of my fantasies come true and find myself living atop a building in Bucharest, how am I to maintain a stress-busting garden?

So, from the scientific testing laboratories of Soilutions, Inc, comes a new gardening tool: the portable garden.



Light enough to move, small enough to fit on a roof top or in the back of pickup, yet filled with the same great growing medium you have come to know and trust from Soilutions.

I am speaking of a mesh "sock" filled with a blend of compost, soil, and composted chips. Simply lay out the sock, slit it, plant starts or seeds, water and viola!

Landlord kicking you out just before tomatoes are ripe? A portable garden will allow you to take the tomatoes with you. Too much asphalt? Not enough space? Guerrilla alley garden? Traveler? This might just be the answer to your problems.

Vote for a Charity

This was forwarded to me by an old friend.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/38027143/ns/today-what_do_you_care_about_today/

What warrants a blog entry this time was the dilemma between the organizations from which to choose. The old school in me says that surfing always trumps anything else. There really is a cleansing quality to the surf that every one should test. But the new school in me sees a huge demand for urban farms. My recent experience with our Soilutions' sign painting makes me want to vote for the urban art project.

So, I leave it up to you all to vote your heart. I don't think there is a bad choose.

Seedlings Up For Grabs

So a long time customer just came in with several flats of Tomato starts. There are about 200? They were grown by an organization called seed2need out of Corrales. As I understand it, they grow food on vacant and abandoned lots and donate the food to the food bank system. They grew way too many seedlings this year, so want to share their wealth a little. They only ask that you follow in their footsteps and give some of the tomatoes to the food banks. The Storehouse on Broadway was suggested but there are several. Our customer works at RoadRunner Food Bank, so there is another one to consider.

The New Face of Soilutions

Hopefully, you all will see this for yourself. It's the sign at the end of Bates Rd.



We are pretty good at what we do, i.e., make compost. We are not very good at advertising. So when this guy walked into our office and said that he wanted to re-paint our sign, we said okay. We had been thinking of re-doing it for some time; each morning the rust spots bothered us. And now that the RailRunner comes by several times each day, we figured an old rusty sign wasn't the best face for our business.

I encourage you all to check out the guy's website (http://www.actualcreative.com), but in the meantime, here's what I know of him. His name is Danny Skinz and he owns and operates an advertising business in New York City: big clients like Chrysler, Tampico, Nintendo, Ecko, and now Soilutions. Then he had an epiphany, and moved to NM after studying Permaculture. I don't know how he found us (how does anyone find us?) but decided that he could help us out.

His real love is aerosol, i.e. spray paint, and what he really wants to do is paint our delivery trucks. Any one who knows us knows that we don't make quick decisions. So we agreed to have him re-work the sign as a test run. Not a test run for him as much as a test run for us to see if the "urban" style would work for us.

Well, we are as tickled with it as anyone could be. I think it is sharp, unique, and speaks to the growing crossover market of agricultural and urban gardening in which we find ourselves deep in the midst . As one customer said yesterday, "it puts you into the twentieth century finally."

So please let us know what you think as you drive by on your way to recycle those branches, or to buy mulch for your newly planted trees. And look for Ski in our soon to be freshly painted delivery truck at a restaurant or cafe near you .