Road side Ruminations

I was driving my boys home from school yesterday when I got to thinking. As anyone with pre teen boys will tell you, they are constantly hungry. I try to make it a point to have a burrito or some snack for them so they stay in a good mood on the drive. Yesterday I came from work, so did not have a chance to stop and stock up. I did have some peanuts in my lunch pail and offered them up. They ate them ravenously and made a game of tossing the shells out the window at various street signs.
Now what got me thinking was how cool it was that we could just throw the shells out the window without any social discrimination. Tossing peanut shells out the car window isn’t considered littering in my book. Since they are a natural product I consider it feeding the critters that scavenge the roadsides. I put apple cores, sunflower seeds, and orange peels in the same category.
When we pulled up to a stop sign and the car in front of us opened its door and dropped a McDonald’s bag on the ground before driving away, it made clear a point: by eating natural food in the packaging that Mother Nature gave it, we are making our lives easier in yet another way. Not only are we putting less strain on the systems (health care, sanitary, road maintenance, etc,) but we are putting less strain on ourselves. I mean I don’t have to worry about finding a trash can, or about spending an hour on the weekend cleaning the foot wells of my car.
How cool is that?

Show Us Your Compost!

I feel like starting a new campaign. I want to see a little chutzpah from our customers. I want to see how people are composting. Be it at home, school, work, play, real or imagined.

So take a picture of you or someone you know in the act of composting. Make sure the image above is visible somehow. Send it to me either Facebook or through email or whatever. As I said, I want to see how creative you all can be.

Who knows, maybe there is a free yard of compost for the most interesting...

Our Place in the World

I recently spent an evening listening (I didn't feel like she needed advice just then) to a friend lament her lack of place in this world. She feels she has no meaningful job, no permanent place to stay, and as such, doesn't feel like she contributes. She expressed envy that I get to go to work everyday and do something to save the earth. She felt useless because she spent one day in bed, unable to get up and shoo the ants away.

It got me thinking. What is important, nowadays? Is it important to go to work everyday? Certainly. Is it important to ensure that your kids have an active interesting social life? Absolutely. But it is also equally important to recognize a body's need to stop periodically, to reflect, to weep. From the devil's advocate point of view, I could argue that she did less damage to the earth yesterday, than I did driving to work, then school, then to soccer practice, then home again.

But more importantly, she spent the day reflecting. Today, she will be more sure and aware of who she is and where she belongs. I hope the little things she does everyday to make the world a better place for her, me, and anyone she runs into are as clear to her today as they always are to me.

At Soilutions, the nature of what we do allows us to come into contact everyday with people who are trying to do their part to make our world a better place. The impact a small urban garden has on the world (I know I am sounding overly dramatic here, but it's true) is immense. But there are other ways to impact positively our world. For those that don't or can't garden, just being kind, courteous, and considerate has an equal impact on this world we call home.

Peace.

C and D Recycling

Soilutions, Inc., a compost facility and organics recycler in the South Valley of Albuquerque, will stop accepting construction lumber as of March 30 2011.

Due to the high cost of processing, long labor hours cleaning the material of contaminates, and a lack of end market for the finished product, we are forced to stop receiving construction lumber from many LEED new construction projects. This will affect nearly twenty contractors and at least two major haulers. We currently accept about 3000 cubic yards a month.

Until we can find a market for the finished material, there just isn't any financial reason to keep accepting it.

Materials range from coarsely ground chunks to uniformly screened mulches. Some of the finished products meet the NMDOT specifications for mulch and mulch logs and are on the state's approved product list. Many are competitively priced.

Uses for the material include decorative mulch for the urban gardener, erosion control, SWPPP implementation, and NMDOT applications.

New Worm Bin

I know I am a compost dork. I had a real reminder of that this last week.

I am moving into a new apartment. What do you think I set up first? The shower curtain? The computer table? No. I saw that I needed a recycling center first. Moving generates a lot of trash, or I should say it generates a lot of unwanted discards: paper from unpacking, cardboard from the new coffee maker, coffee filter, the paperboard six pack holder, orange peels, etc.

Here is a picture of my simple worm bin.



It's just a 5 gal. bucket with some worms and bedding at the bottom and various organic discards thrown on top. As it dries out, I pour undrunk coffee (a rarity I can assure you), and used dish water. The bulky cardboard I hope will be compressed as more material gets dumped on top.



As you can see, nothing fancy, but it erases the constant chagrin I have when faced with throwing away perfectly good waste.

Moving is usually a time of reflection. A chance to change things that I've always wanted to change but couldn't find the time to do so. I have a long road ahead to make an environmentally healthy living area out of my new small apartment, but at least I got the important thing out of the way.

Just in Time

Just in time for the Polar Bear Swim. I was starting to worry that the water would remain in the 40's.

Merry Christmas

I don't know what the rest of you think, but Christmas is a time of such wealth. It sounds oxymoronic, especially after I've spent a month's wages on toys for the family. But regardless of bad commercial habits, people just seem richer in other ways: kinder, slower, happier. As I harvest some greens for tonight's salad, I realize again it is a good time to reflect. And when I do so, I almost always find that I have so much.

Today, especially, I feel like I have too much: to much wrapping paper, too many cardboard boxes, too many brown paper bags from spent luminarias. With the weather co-operating and with a few extra days off of work, let me tell you what I will be doing the next couple of days. The wrapping paper and cardboard boxes will be place over the top of some of my dried tumble weeds. Then I'll put a good layer of mulch (in this case wood chips) to cover sufficiently to keep them buried. The sand from the luminarias will go into a base for short brick walkway. Paper bags and leftover candles will go into my compost bin. I have an artificial tree, but generally buy a "Charlie Brown" tree. That I will plant next to last year's.

Once again, I feel better about giving back to the earth as a way of saying thanks for all her generosity throughout the year.

Merry Christmas. Don't be strangers.

This is where I work

Jealous yet?





The drive in was so pretty, I had to call and wake Kim to tell her (not recommended by the way).

12/16/10

Ahh...Rain

Cover Crops

Here is a link to a cover crop story in Organic Gardening: http://www.organicgardening.com/feature/0,7518,s1-3-81-789,00.html


Again, anybody with any knowledge about this gardening practice, I urge you to chime in.

As an aside, I am privy to some of the goings on at the Rio Grande Community Farm regarding cover crop studies. I'll let you all know as soon as I know how things came out.

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

Welcome to Winter, Baby!

It was 16F INSIDE the office this morning.



If anybody feels like dropping off some Brandy, I don't think it would be turned down.

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?

Former Employee Makes Good

Here's a shout out to a former employee of Soilutions: Casey MacFarland. If it weren't for Casey's leaving, I would never have had the opportunity to work here. But he moved on to do what he loves and now he has a book out.

Check out his website: http://wildlifetrackingsouthwest.com/home and see if you can't attend one of his book signings near you. There's one this Sunday in the East Mountains.

Seed Saving Workshop

Please Join Us!!

Seed Saving Workshop
with Joshua Cravens director of the Arid Crop Seed Cache
Saturday October 16th, 2010
3:00 PM
Free
410 Atrisco NW Albuquerque, NM 87105
Just north of Central


This is our last workshop of the season. We will cover seed saving basics, with lots of hands on examples as well as more advanced techniques such as saving seed from biennials.
• Why Save Seed
• How to Save, Clean and Store Seed
• Saving Seed from Biennials


Biennial plants are ones that go to seed during their second growing season, usually in the spring. Some example of biennial plants are parsnips, carrots, cole plants (cabbage, brussel sprouts, turnips, kale and so on), celery and celery root (celeriac), parsley, beets and swiss chard. Come learn tips on how to best save seeds from your biennials.

Hope to see you there!!

Questions, please email Sarah:
sarah@gardensedge.org
505-948-8398

Lots to do this weekend

There is so much to do this weekend. I figured instead of enumerating it all, I'd send you to a great website, hosted by a great organization, featuring a great calendar. Soilutions will be at a couple of these events.

http://www.gardenersguild.org/urbangardenactivities

While you're visiting the site, go ahead and become a member.

Get out there and garden!

Weeds

By a VERY informal poll, all of you are sick and tired of pulling weeds for past three months. The rain is great but I know that, in the far reaches of my brain, I curse ever so slightly the rain because of all the inevitable weed sprouts.

I have been trying for years to document the power of mulch in terms of weed control. I have 5" or more of mulch throughout my property. Where the mulch is undisturbed, I have zero weeds; where the mulch is mixed with soil, the weeds have taken hold, but are really easy to pull because the roots are in the friable mulch; where there is no mulch, the weeds are strong and impossible to pull from the compacted soil. It really is significant enough to warrant consideration, but I weed in the morning before the sun rises so photos don't really come out well.

In the course of conversation with customers, I finally got one long time customer to send me a picture of her garden.



This picture is an excellent example of what a layer of organics can do to ease weed ills. Obviously, on the left of the path, no treatment. But on the right, she says "On the right, I mulched as follows 3-years prior to this photo: 1-2 layers of cardboard + 1" of Soilutions compost + 2" of Soilutions wood chips."

At home, I have started using the weeds as an organic layer, i.e., instead of cardboard. So I pull the weeds, lay them flat, cover them with mulch. That way I save room in my truck for the bulkier branches.


Pretty convincing. Thanks for the photo.

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.