October's Newsletter

October's newsletter is here with great tips about Waste Reduction Week and the Take Me Outside Day Challenge

Seed Exchange

After getting at taste of the warm weather over the March break I can't help but think of getting seeds started and getting my hand dirty in the garden with the students. 

I managed to save several seeds from what we grew last year, but I also can't wait to get my hands on some new fun and interesting plants. I know that potatoes did well last year and garlic has done well every year as well as the kale, we've had difficulty growing most root veggies. My dream is have pumpkins so each class can have at least one, maybe this will be our year!

I usually get seeds from one of the many seed exchanges going on around the city. There are still a few left, so don't fret if you missed Seedy Saturday/Sunday at the Brickworks. Here is a link to some seed exchange events coming up in the future. For me gardening is about helping to build community, whether it's a community working together to grow food or you sharing from what you've grown in your own garden. You can always collect your own seeds and set up a seed/bulb exchange with fellow gardeners in your area or just trade with friends. 

Please feel free to contact me through twitter or the blog if you'd like to exchange some seeds with me. 

Keeping It Cool Without A/C

{Iceman}

Every summer the heat and humidity in this city kills me. At least it's a good excuse to take a cold shower and get that really refreshed feeling.

I own a small air conditioner that I use in my bedroom at night to cut down on the humidity and cool the room so that sleep is at least bearable. But since I don’t want to spend this whole summer or heat wave in my bedroom I searched the internet for tips on how to keep my house cool. Here are some of the best tips that I was able to find.

1) The first and most important step is to keep the sun out. You can do this a few ways:

a) Make sure that your curtains are drawn during the day to block the sun from coming in and heating the place up.

b) Bamboo mats for the exterior of the window. I thought this was a neat idea because the mats are cheap and will still let some sunlight through the gaps in the weave. In the evening you can just roll them up.

c) Awnings over the windows. The idea is that they are short enough to block most of summer’s direct sunlight and not winter’s. This option is the most expensive of the three. It isn’t always the best looking, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

2) During the hot humid days it’s better to keep your windows shut so the outside air doesn’t come in. When it begins to cool in the evening and the outside temperature is cooler than inside then you should open your windows to allow the cooler air in. If you’re one of those people who need to feel a breeze I recommend setting up a small fan. The breeze from the fan will make you feel several degrees cooler.

3) Direct sunlight and hot air will heat up your home quickly, but there are other culprits at play too. Lights get really hot when they are on and will therefore heat your home. If you have to have the lights on make sure that they are LEDs or CLFs because they give off very little heat. Halogen and incandescent lighting produces a lot of heat.

4) When doing your laundry do it at night when it’s cooler out. If you have to do the wash try not to use the dryer and take advantage of the heat drying properties of the sun. Running the dryer is like running the oven, it gets really hot!

5) Speaking of running ovens, don’t they get really hot! Plus summer time is BBQ season. If you don’t have the space for a full-sized BBQ there are many smaller options available for grilling on balconies.

6) Since we live in the northern hemisphere we get the sun’s hottest, most direct, rays to the south and west sides of our homes. If you live in a condo you won’t have to worry about this because chances are they are building another condo to block the view from your condo. But if you live in a house you’ll want to do some landscaping. Planting evergreens or other trees to the south of your home will help block the sun. If you have paving or stone work or are thinking about installing some remember that it will reflect a lot of the sun’s heat onto your home. So shading the pavement will not only make your home look nicer it will also make it a lot cooler too.

7) Electrical appliances have motors and motors give off heat. If you have a dishwasher hold off on running it until it’s cooler out or when you’re going to bed. You could also unplug you’re fridge, but then your food would last very long.

8) Electronic devices also give off heat and for the most part are always using electricity, even when turned off. I’ve found the best option is to put all of your electronics on powerbars. That way you can just flick the switch on the bar and everything is actually off.

9) Computers and monitors are another heat culprit. Your computer and monitor both give off heat. At the very least turn off your monitor. If you’re not using your computer turn it off too.

10) Modems. These suckers get hot. I can understand leaving your computer on because it takes forever to boot up. But if you’re not using your internet unplug the modem. Not only will this save you money, it will also keep you cool.

This wasn't meant to be a top ten list, but has turned out that way.

Garden Links

Well I've been finishing around the internet these days to find out some good gardening tip and get some info around school gardens.
Here is just a few links that I thought you might be interested in:

Toronto Balconies Bloom - Toronto has acres of untapped growing space on its balconies, and an opportunity for creating a peaceful and pleasurable living environment while at the same time improving the air we breathe. Just because you don't have a backyard doesn't mean you can't be a gardener.

The Locavore's Garden - Here you'll find some great tips on starting and maintaining a food garden.

Growing for Green - A Ward 21 garden blog group that offers various workshops and volunteer opportunities.

Green Neighbours 21 - A grass-roots, action-oriented group of people who live in ward 21 (and beyond) who are working together on solutions to climate change and other environmental problems.

Green Garage - This private company specializes is green roofing, keeps your house cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

How To Eat Fried Worms

Okay, so I won't be eating these little critters, but I'm hoping that they'll eat all of my food refuse and leave me with some top notch worm castings (poo) for the garden.

The workshop was put on by Food Share and I only had to shell out $10 bucks. I feel really bad that I can't remember the name of the man who ran the workshop, aside from being a wealth of knowledge and giving up his time for cost he was also full of awesome teacher/dad jokes.

I had no idea how easy a tower system vermicomposter would be to build. The only hard part would be getting the worms. There are a few people who sell them online (Cathy's Crawly Composters), but if you know someone with a manure pile there should be some wiggling around in there just remember to take a deep breath before digging in.

The materials:

* 5 plastic shoe boxes - they come in a 5 pack at Canadian Tire

* A small piece of landscaping fabric to cover holes in the bottom lid - this stops the castings from falling through the holes and still allows you to collect the liquid (compost tea) at the bottom.

[That's it!]

The plastic shoe boxes that we used had these three circles on the top of the lids that were perfect for marking the spots for drilling the large holes. We put the lid under the box to make sure the holes would line up when they were all stacked. The heat from the drill will melt the two piece together so we had to carefully pull them apart so as to not break them. We used a smaller drill bit (1/8") to drill some ventilation holes in the top lid.

Once all the drilling was done it was time to fill them up with bedding (damp shredded newspaper), worms, and a little top soil.

[Red wigglers and some melon rind]

[Inside the finished product]

Right now I only have the first level of my tower working, but in about 3 months it the other four levels should be operational and I'll have double the worms I started with. The fifth bottom box is for collecting the compost tea (it does not have holes in the bottom of it). Once the box I'm filling with organic food scraps becomes full I'll add the next box to the top and so on.

This is totally going to be a project for Eco-Club next year. I had considered doing it this year, but I'd like to make sure it works and become a bit of an expert at it before I go sharing my knowledge.

Dandelions 101

Today we started the solarization of the school garden. I hope that no one steals or messes with the tarps. The tarps will have to stay on for four weeks and then the planting will begin! But this isn't what I wanted to talk about.

As you may have noticed over the last few weeks the dandelions have started to flower and are likely taking over your yard. I have to be honest and say that I think dandelions (Taraxacum) a quite pretty and when they're done flowering there is nothing more fun than blowing all the white seed pods into the wind, making for some good pictures and a great way to make wishes.

But aside from all of that dandelions are really good for you and a lot of insects too! The yellow flower is an important source of nectar and pollen for early honey production. Dandelion pollen is also great for making bee pollen. If you find that you have allergies in early spring you may want to consider taking local bee pollen to help alleviate some of the symptoms (itchy eyes, runny nose, asthma, etc.). Butterfly larvae use dandelions as a food source and without food for the larvae there would be no butterflies! The numbers of both these insects are decreasing rapidly because of the way we effect their environments.

Okay, so they look pretty and they're good for insects, but I know that you're asking yourself "what do I get out of them?". I'm glad you asked this question. There are many ways you can use dandelion and it has quite a few medicinal properties too. Many naturopaths use dandelion to purify the liver and gallbladder of toxins. The leaves have large amounts of vitamins: A, C, D, and B-complexes. It also contains the following minerals: iron, magnesium, zinc potassium, manganese, copper, choline, calcium, boron, and silicon. I also find the leaves to be quite tasty. The leaves can be juiced or put into a salad and if you are able to pick them before they flower the leaves will have a less bitter taste. The root of the dandelion can be used to make teas and I've recently learned how to make dandelion jelly from the flowers, some people even make dandelion wine. I never knew that there were so many ways that one could prepare this plant for eating!

If you're living somewhere and don't have access to dandelions you should be able to find them at your local health foods store and your local grocer may carry them too. Since you're eating the leaf I would highly recommend that you buy organic to avoid all the unwanted toxins from pesticides. If you're living in Toronto I'll remind you that the city and the TDSB do not spray any chemicals to control weeds or pests, so take a walk to your local park or school field with big reusable bag and start foraging some organically grown delights!

Meatless Mondays

I chose to become vegetarian because I wanted to eat lower on the food chain and reduce my environmental foot-print. Now the Toronto Vegetarian Association is promoting Meatless Mondays. The goal of this campaign is to get all the omnivores out there give up meat for one day a week. It was also featured in The Toronto Star.

Now you may be asking yourself how not eating meat can reduce your impact on the planet. Well it's easy. It takes around 6-9lbs of corn to grow 1lbs on beef, you can take this the next step and think about how much water would be needed too. The commercial farming industry has grown so big that fecal matter from farms is starting to pollute ground water and neighbouring farm crops... ever wonder how spinach can get E Coli?
Here are some interesting facts and figures about meat consumption and the environment:

1)
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) calls the meat industry “one of the most significant contributors to the world’s environmental problems,” including acid rain, deforestation, water and land pollution. According to the FAO, animal agriculture is responsible for 18% of global climate change, more than all forms of transportation.

2)
In 2000 alone, 40 billion chickens – more than six times the human population – were transported using massive amounts of fuel and generating tonnes of pollutants in the process. Going vegetarian would eliminate 1.5 tons of CO2 equivalent gas emissions per person, per year — an even bigger difference than switching from a SUV to a hybrid.

3)
In Canada, it takes seven times more land to feed a non-vegetarian than a vegetarian. With one-third of the world’s cereal harvest and 90 percent of the world’s soy harvest being raised for animal feed, the energy required to grow those crops is a major factor in toxic gas emissions. In the United States and Canada, half of all synthetic fertilizer is used for feed crops.

I'm trying to keep this strictly a green eco-blog, but I want to take this time to mention that even if you are an omnivore there isn't anything wrong with that. I just think that you should take the time to find out as much information as you can about the factory farming system. Chances are the meat on your plate didn't come from a place even remotely resembling what you think of when you think of a farm. If you're going to eat meat you should really be buying from local organic farmer and buy beef that has been grass fed, not grain.


If you're interested on finding out more facts and interesting information on vegetarianism, factory farming, organic farming, GMOs, and the environmental impact they have check out John Robbins book "The Food Revolution".

I guess this big long post makes up for my absence.

Please feel free to leave comments, lets get a dialogue going.

The Numbers

Prices from www.grocerygateway.com

A 12 pack of 330ml water bottles is $3.99. A reusable container can cost anywhere between $1.00-$15.00 depending one the type you buy. Considering that you pay for the water that comes out of your tap the reusable bottle pays for itself after 1-4 cases of water. After that it's nothing but savings!

A 8 x 200ml tetra pack (juice box) of Allen's apple juice costs $2.99 ($0.19/100ml).
The Del Monte "Grab N Go pouch" costs $3.49 for 10 x 200ml ($0.17/100ml).
The 1.2L can of Allen's apple juice costs $1.29 ($0.11/100ml).

Not a huge savings between these options, but the savings will add up over time. You should also consider the waste from each of these options. The 1.2L can is 100% recyclable, where as the only the paper part of the juice box is recyclable (the straw and inner lining go to waste). The Grab N Go pouch is 100% waste, not a single part of it can be put in your recycling bin.

Bottled Water Free Day

Bottle Water Free Day will be March 11th, 2010. I encourage everyone look at the website and read the information they have. Lets see how many people can make the pledge to be free of bottled water on March 11th.
On Monday I will make the challenge to all students at our school to go without bottled water for the whole week. I will also extend this challenge to include juice boxes, terra packs (Kool Aid Jammers), and other on non-reusable drink containers. Not only are non-reusable containers wasteful in the long run they will end up costing you more money!!!

Here is a fun video about Bottled Water Free Day.


Why are you paying for water when it is already hardwired into your house?

Green Neighbours 21

Green Neighbours 21 is a local community group for ward 21 and just beyond. They are a group of volunteers helping their neighbours reduce home energy use.
This program is different from a home energy audit done by a certified auditor because its role is to compliment the energy audit process. They can help you arrange an energy audit, connect you with neighbours who have done similar work, offer you a list of contractors who have been used and rated by the member community, and most importantly calculate your actual energy savings.
They also offer tips on things that you can do to seal air leaks in your home. Air sealing and draft proofing can reduce your energy bill by as much as 20%.
I know it's a little late in the season for this information, but there are still many cold weeks ahead and there isn't much time to be part of this program (it wraps up this summer for evaluation).

Two posts in one day, who'd have thunk it?

Super Power Bloke - 5 Ways to Save the Planet

Here is a fun British video about global warming with 5 tips for you to do at home to reduce your carbon footprint

What Can I Recycle?

It seems like there is a lot of confusion out there about what you can and cannot put into the city recycling bins. It looks like the city has caught on to this and retooled their web page to make it easier to figure out what goes where.
Follow this link for more information.