An Act of Mercy: I killed my worm bin

As a bit of a disclaimer: I'm not going to go into great detail about the specifics of composting methods.  This is strictly my experience and should not be taken as expert advice.  There's a lot of info out there about how to properly do this stuff.  

I have no regrets.  Worm bin composting can be tricky and high maintenance in spite of what its proponents say so if you fail as I did, take heart.  You are not alone.

It started out as a bit of an experiment.  The man and I were looking for ways to compost in our small apartment.  We tried a Bokashi bin but found it too small for the amount of organic waste we produced, and then we had to find somewhere to bury our unfinished pickled Bokashi bits.  For those of you not familiar with Bokashi composting, it's basically a process by which your food scraps are "pickled" using microbe infused bran.  It's fairly mess-free and non-stinky, but the bins are small and you need to do something with your bin contents to finish the whole process off.

So the Bokashi bin was out.  Would a worm bin be our solution?  It seemed easy enough.  A colleague donated some worms (red wrigglers to be specific) and assured me that it was a no fuss deal.  I did a little bit of reading (but not enough obviously), bought a medium sized plastic bin, drilled some holes, and went to town.  My worms seemed happy enough for a while but it didn't last.

Kill Justification #1: It just couldn't keep up

So, it turns out that you can't just feed your worms all of your scraps.  They can only eat so much.  I understood this.  The man, not so much.  We started slow, but after the population grew he kind of went a bit crazy and it wasn't long before things got stinky.  Our poor worms couldn't handle all of the stuff we were giving them and the whole thing had turned into a rotting mess.  Bad smells are a major sign that all things are not well in your worm bin.  It took months for the bin to recover and then once it did we were extremely paranoid about how much we put in it.  This resulted in us not putting very much in it at all so it wasn't very effective for us reducing our waste.

Kill Justification #2: Space and maintenance

Some internet research showed that not only was our bin being overfed, but it was also waaaay too wet.  Our bin had lots of air holes but no drainage holes on the bottom.  At the time I made the bin I was assured that I wouldn't need them.  That is wrong.  Our bin needed drainage - big time.  Veggies are mostly water so when the worms eat them they produce water as a by-product.  We tried to counteract the problem by adding more bedding more frequently but then our bin was just full of paper most of the time which didn't seem to be really effective.  

I thought about drilling some drainage holes but then shuddered at the thought of the logistics of caring for the resulting runoff inside our small apartment in the winter time.  All of this stuff sounds so easy in the summer but what happens when you live somewhere where there is snow on the ground for half the year?  

Kill Justification #3: Backyard Salvation

We moved to a house with room for a backyard compost bin.  End of story.  The worms couldn't compete with the convenience of having the composting process occur OUTSIDE where it kind of belongs.

Our new backyard compost bin

At the end of the day, I'm willing to admit I just wasn't dedicated enough to be a successful worm bin composter.  And I don't think I'm alone.  It was so frustrating to be an apartment dweller and not be able to compost but I don't think I'd try it again.  Green living still has to make sense for your life, right?  

I buried my worms in the garden of our new house.  I know they won't live to see spring but at least they will provide a healthy snack for the earthworms?

News & Excitement

Well hey there, kids.  It's been a while.  I know that I probably should explain my absence and beg forgiveness but why don't we just agree to move on together?  There, isn't that refreshing?

Here's the update: After a three year exile, I am making a not quite triumphant return to the metropolis of Edmonton.  Now, this is a significant step considering I spent the greater part of my youth concocting plans to flee the place.  I spent a year in Europe and moved to Camrose just to get away from it.  And after all this time I have learned that, yes boys and girls, there are worse places to be than Edmonton.  So here goes, my top 5 reasons I'm excited to move back to Edmonton:

1. Household recycling pick-up
Oh yes, believe it or not, Edmonton is a champ at the recycling game.  I never really appreciated the joy of household recycling pickup until it wasn't there anymore.  The system in the borough of London where I lived in 2007 was similar and it wasn't until I moved to Camrose that I really learned how awesome I had it in E-ville.  The blue bag rocks.

I did make my best recycling efforts at the drop off location in Camrose, it's just such a serious pain in the rear.

2. Public Transportation
Camrose gets a bad rap these days for its lack of public transportation but the truth is that there isn't really anything that isn't a good 20 minute walk from just about anywhere in town.  That being said, I can see how a lack of wheels would be a major pain if you were a senior or disabled.  Or had to somehow get a massive bale of toilet paper home.

My rural counterparts don't often share my enthusiasm for riding the bus.   To a lot of people buses are associated with a lot of unpleasantries like smelly homeless people, smelly crazy people, and waiting in the elements.  To me, public transportation means not having to worry about parking, paying for parking or fighting traffic and for this I am more than happy to put up with the occasional stinker.  Plus, I'm really looking forward to walking off the 15 pounds I've gained since becoming a regular member of the motoring public.

3.  Backyard Gardening
Yes, I've had multiple gardening experiments in the last couple of years but it's a hell of a lot easier to maintain a garden when it's right in your backyard.  The new casa's garden is small but it'll do for some veggie growing.  The deck should also be helpful container experiments.  If only I didn't have to wait all winter to get started...

4.  Variety is the Spice of Life
Oh man, am I ever excited to live somewhere where a girl can get a half decent tandoori chicken. I was going to say "where the majority of restaurants aren't pizza joints" but that's the sort of thing that's difficult to verify. But seriously, how much pizza can a town of 17,000 people eat?

 5. Less Drive Time = More Free Time

Is it very obvious that I dislike driving intensely?  I don't want to say hate because I sure love a good road trip but man have I grown to seriously abhor the hour long drive between Camrose and Edmonton.  I may have exiled myself from Edmonton, but man is my life still there.  Between visits with family, errands for family, favours for family and the occasional thing I want to do, I've spent a lot of time in the car.  And I can't wait to not have to do it any more.  I also can't wait to not have to pay for all that gas!


I'd always had very romantic notions about small-town living and the rural life.  I guess I'm over it.  It can be cute and quaint but I'm an urbanophile out and proud.  It will be good to be home.  At least until I get sick of it again...

Got Gnats?

Hellos to all.  Long time no see.  My apologies for being away so long.  Gainful employment has proven to be a major bummer on the blogging front.  Turns out it’s also a major bummer on green living front.  The lack of time has made green experiments scarce around here but today I’ve got a doozey.

My little kitchen herb garden has been trucking along all winter.  I’ve lost some good soldiers to lack of light and a cold window sill but for the most part, winter has been relatively kind to my increasingly green thumb.  Recently I’ve developed a common winter problem for house plants - fungus gnats.  At first I thought they were just fruit flies but after carefully ensuring I didn’t have any flies in my worm bin and any nasty rotting produce anywhere, I took a closer look at the little buggers and realized they were something else entirely.

Fungus gnats are little flies that are commonly found in potted plants.  Apparently commercial potting soil can be full of larvae and their hatching may have been triggered by me overwatering my plants while they’re in a semi-dormant state.  They are also super annoying.

After scouring the internet for a non-chemical cure, I started to experiment. 

Step 1: Drying out my plants.  Apparently these suckers thrive on rotting organic matter (aka the roots of my plants) so I stopped watering my plants for 2 weeks.  This of course came with some risks and it appears that I’ve lost one of my basil plants and possibly my oregano  but everything else seems to have survived.  I’m down to watering only once a week and very sparingly.

Cutting back on the water helped a bit but still wasn’t doing the trick so I had to try something else.

Step 2: Cinnamon.  When I saw this idea on a UBC Botanical Garden Forum, I was highly skeptical but I really didn’t want to have to resort to chemicals so I gave it a try.  I started with just a sprinkle on the surface of the soil because I really wasn’t sure how crazy to go but after about a week I went for full soil coverage.

Sad dehydrated parsley with cinnamon soil

Step 3:  Lemon juice.  Again, seriously?  But reason with me for a moment.  Apparently the little buggers are attracted to the colour yellow. So I used a couple of our little soy sauce dishes from the ole sushi set and set them up on the window sills.  The gnats are attracted to it and then they drown in the lemon juice.

See those itty bitty dead flies?

Result?  Victory.  Well, they’re not completely gone, but things have improved dramatically.  I’m still watering only once a week but the flying population in my household has decreased dramatically.  Dare I call this green experiment a success?  Do you have any green pest control success stories?

Harvest Time!

Hey Y’all!  I know I must apologize for my blog absence but things have been pretty insanely busy around here and the poor blog ended up on the bottom of the priority totem pole.  But there’s good news!  It’s Harvest Time!  We finally get to reap all the rewards of all the *cough* time *cough* that we spent in the garden and pig out on veggies!

Well, I guess it doesn’t go exactly like that…

In spite of my best unintentional efforts to kill my garden, the little beast is a fighter and has been producing more than I ever thought it would.  I elected to use a bit of “harvest as we go” to keep things manageable.  I later learned that this is not a new concept – it’s only new to me who is used to Mom pulling everything up on the same day and then making us store everything ON THE SAME DAY.

A special thanks to my little sis’ for helping with some weeding and making me a killer beet salad.

Beet Salad!

Ah yes, the beets.  Not only did these bad boys grow, they grew well and provided months of beet greens for salads and beets…for salads.  

I also ended up with a decent amount of peas considering I only had about 6 plants come up and I accidentally pulled up 2 of them when weeding.  Ooops!  The beans were also a just right amount even though only about half of what I planted actually grew.  Are you sensing a theme here? 

Let’s talk tomatoes.  At one point, one of my tomato plants died.  It was seriously dead.  Brown and dried out and sad looking.  I contemplated pulling it up – but then it came back!  The weather got a bit rainy and by the time I got back to the garden it had miraculously come back to some kind of semblance of life!  Needless to say I was pretty excited.  And then the hail hit.  Jubilation turned to disappointment and I wrote the whole lot off.  Big mistake.  After ignoring my tomatoes for a month, the plants turned into monster plants.  Having missed the prime pruning opportunities, I spent the rest of the summer trying to manage my insane plants.  I never really got them under control.

But they managed to produce more than just branches….

And we can’t forget about the carrots!  I was kind of lazy about thinning them out and to be honest, I really don’t think it mattered.  Even with harvesting over the last 3 weeks, I’ve got more carrots than I know what to do with.  There’s going to have to be carrot cake, carrot soup, carrot muffins, carrot juice…?

And since my squash and pumpkins produced nothing(!), one of my garden neighbours (who didn’t tend her garden AT ALL) gave me a couple of squash because she had over 30 (did I mention she did NOTHING? Not fair.).  And another one of my lovely neighbours gave me a zuchinni.

Hooray for harvest!

Anyone need any carrots?

July Garden Update, or, Lazy, Lazy Bones, or, Thanks for the Freebie Mother Nature

Well, I should have known better than to brag to the blogosphere that I was keeping up with my garden.  It pretty much guaranteed my imminent failure.  Now, under normal circumstances, I would be feeling really, really terrible, but as anyone in Alberta knows, this summer has brought anything but normal circumstances.  I think I can at least partially blame this garden failure on good ole Mother Nature.

Let me break it down for you…

July saw me start a new job with a daily hour round trip commute (that’s a green failure for another day…).  With said new job, my available garden time dropped dramatically.  But there was still time available.  Unfortunately, Mother Nature has a serious hate on for Alberta this year.  It’s been wet.  Really wet.  After years of near catastrophic drought conditions out here on the wide open praririe, we’ve had the wettest spring/early summer that I can honestly remember.  While this certainly has benefits (woohoo for recharged aquifers and easy watering!), it also has serious drawbacks (massive mosquito infestation).

Rainy weather and mosquitoes that swarm thick enough to form clouds that actually show up on weather radar have made for incredibly soggy and uncomfortable gardening.  One particular trip for watering had me wearing a hoodie in 27°C with mittens to avoid being completely drained of blood.  Another saw me almost lose a rubber boot to mud the consistency of quicksand (it looked solid, I swear to God).

To put it lightly, this garden season has been a challenge.

But things are growing alright.  Weeds.  Lots and lots of weeds.  And not just little ones either.  Giant Friggin’ Weeds.   And they are everywhere.

Before weeding - but after pre-weeding...

After 3 hours of weeding... it's better right?  Right?!

This has led to a whole new kind of guilt.  Forget green failure guilt.  Bad gardener guilt is 10 times worse.  The rapid expansion of my weed garden and a lack of viable weeding time combined to form an epic disaster.  I even resorted to visiting my garden under the cover of darkness to pre-emptively weed before having to show my face in the daylight among all the other, infinitely more responsible super gardeners.

If I thought I’d escaped Keeping Up with the Jones’ syndrome by my resolution to buy less stuff, I was friggin’ delusional.  Forget the Jones’.  Whoever these super tidy garden freaks are, I need to at least pretend I’m trying to keep up with them.

Garden Update: IT'S ALIVE!!!

It’s been a month since I planted my little experimental/plant killer rehab garden and it’s time for an update!

Let the record show that I have been dedicating a minimum 2 hours a week to garden maintenance – which is what I’d planned on in the first place.  I must, however, credit my newly unemployed state for allowing me that time.  I’m not entirely convinced that if I didn’t have my days free for garden folly that the poor venture would be surviving in its current state.

Okay, caveat completed, here’s an update:

I’m fairly certain that my garden plot was grass last year so part of me wants to blame it’s slowness on a lack of soil nutrients.  More likely is the fact that I went to Halifax for a week right after planting and it was probably the nicest week of the season so far.  Either way, my garden is looking a little stunted compared to others.

My Garden - look reeeeeaaaaal close. There's stuff growing, I swear.

On the success side of things lie the pumpkins and squash.  I’ve got one strong looking pumpkin coming up and what seems to be like more and more squash plants popping up every day.  It’s a good thing I didn’t give up on them because it took a solid 3 weeks for any signs of life to show there.  

Pumpkin!

 

And count another success on the tomato front.  My heirloom Beefsteak tomato plant, which I thought I’d lost to frost, has miraculously come back to life thanks to some rain.  The other plants are pretty bushy despite my trimming efforts but everyone else’s tomatoes seem to be doing the same thing so I’m not quite worried yet.

Spinach seems to be the clear winner for me at this point.  I’ve even harvested some already so score one for the early harvest!

Spinach!

Everything else is growing veeeeerrrrryy sloooooooowly compare to the other gardens which look this:

Apparently I should be growing potatoes...

The weeds are growing though.  They’re growing like crazy.  That’s where my 2 hours a week goes.  Weeding.  Holy moly.  But if butt muscles from squatting in the dirt count as success, then count one for that.

No One Wants Your Used Crap – And Other Garage Sale Lessons

It’s that time of year.  The leaves are out, the birds are singing, and people everywhere are trying to unload their worthless crap on others.  Yes, it’s garage sale season.  I have very mixed feelings about the phenomenon that is the garage sale.  On one hand, it’s a great exercise in re-use - all those bargain hunters giving a second life to all that unwanted stuff; the treasures waiting to be discovered.  On the other hand they kind of make me sick to my stomach.  If there is a hell, I’m certain that there is a special level where there’s a garage sale everyday (it’s probably near the top so it’s accessible to people who think that garage sales are DA BOMB).  

I’d managed to avoid helping my mother with any of her previous garage sale attempts – which is quite the feat considering what a champion manipulator she is.  My mother has a serious hoarder tendency and with my sister’s impending move to Vancouver this fall, she and I decided to take some covert action while Mother is on holidays and hold a garage sale with the goal of divesting the family of the excessive piles of crap that have accumulated over the years.  It taught me a couple of things that I’d like to share so that you too can learn from this horrific experience.

Garage Sale Lesson #1 – No One Wants Your Used Crap

Let’s face facts, People.  No one wants your used crap.  Well, some people do – but they only want the weirdest stuff and they probably want it for free.  But seriously, many people have a serious aversion to buying used goods.  It probably doesn’t help that most of the items that end up in garage sales really belong in the garbage, but just take a look at any thrift store and you’ll see what I mean.  There is more used crap out there than there are people to buy it.  I had a chance to attend the first day of the Edmonton Waste Management Centre of Excellence Conference in May where one of the presenters shared the fact that approximately 70% of goods donated to second-hand stores ends up land-filled.  There just aren’t enough people to buy all of it.

This, of course, brings up some pretty philosophical questions about our consumer habits (like why do we buy all this shit in the first place?) which could be (and probably has been) a master’s thesis.  

Garage Sale Lesson #2 – There’s a fine line between “saving for reuse” and “hoarding like a crazy person”

My mother excels at re-use.  I suppose I could learn a thing or two about the 2^nd most important R from her, but there is such a thing as taking things too far.  For instance, why use the lovely re-usable aluminum water bottle that your daughter brought home from a conference when you can carry around an old mustard jar as a water bottle?  Or, why throw out this 1980’s crib when someone might be able to use it 30 years later?  BECAUSE IT’S NO LONGER SAFE IS WHY!!!!  (Also, see lesson #1).

Uh, I think the only person who still wants to play with this doll is Chucky.

Sorry.  I let my frustrations get the best of me for a second there.  Don’t get me wrong –
re-use is an important aspect to living a greener existence, but if your kitchen counter is so covered with old margarine containers and empty jam jars that the space is no longer useable, it might be time to let a couple of those bad boys go to the big recycling depot in the sky. 

The key part of the word re-use for me is USE.  If you’re not actually going to re-USE an item, then let it go.  My sister is a much better example of a re-user and I’m sure she learned some of her mad skills from dear old mum, but even she knows that if your living space starts looking like a trash heap, you’ve got to make some changes.  Or maybe become a mixed media artist and actually use the friggin’ shit.

Handsome example of reuse of old refrigerator drawers by Edmonton craft artist Roxanne Nesbitt

Garage Sale Lesson #3 – Anything you buy becomes instantly worthless the moment you pay for it

Okay, let’s talk economics.  One thing my mom never quite seems to grasp (aside from #’s 1 and 2) is that you will never recover the money that you paid for an item, no matter the condition on garage sale day.  She, and many other people I know, have a hard time letting go of stuff because she can’t handle the fact that stuff becomes nearly worthless the instant you buy it.  

When I was a kid, my mom used to take my sister and I on epic sale adventures.  My mom would go anywhere to catch a sale.  She’d buy in bulk – even if we didn’t really need the items (sound like something trendy today?  Cough, extreme couponing, cough).  She’d call it an ‘investment’.  Fact of the matter is that almost no consumer good out there appreciates in value.  Just as a new car depreciates the moment you drive it off the lot, so does everything else.  Resale value of that $50 coffee table book you just bought on Amazon – 50 cents.  Maybe a $1 or $2 if you’re lucky.  Those fancy dishes you asked for in your wedding registry – hell, I can get that shit at Value Village for $5.  

Garage Sale Lesson #4 – Garage Sales are a Waste of Time and Money

In some cases, your stuff could be costing you money.  This is especially true if you think about the opportunity costs of hosting a garage sale.  If you’re doing things on the level, you’ll probably need a license (requirements and costs depend on your jurisdiction).  Then you’ll need signs to direct suckers, I mean bargain hunters, to your sale – that means signage materials or premade signs.  Then you need labels for all your crap – more dinero.  

And then there’s your time.  How much is your time worth to you?  Consider what you make an hour.  There’s no way in hell that you’re going to make that in a weekend sitting on a lawn chair in your garage.  Even if you make an awesome haul and get rid of tons of stuff (which you probably would have had to pay for someone else to take away), you will never ever make as much as you could have doing something more productive.

Garage Sale Lesson #5 – Avoid Garage Sales at All Costs AKA Buy Less Stuff

I’ve recently discovered that I don’t want to turn out like my mom.  And by recently I mean it’s been my life goal since I was maybe 10 years old.  What I’ve actually recently discovered is that I don’t want my life to revolve around my stuff.  I really need very little to survive in this world beyond food, shelter and a little self actualization.  None of that really requires a lot of stuff.  So I’ve been challenging myself to live with less.  That means making a conscious effort to curb my spending on consumer goods including – gasp! – shoes, my one mortal weakness.  I hope that by reminding myself of this horrific garage sale experience I can avoid ever having to do it again.  And as green as re-use and buying second hand can be, buying less crap in the first place aka reducing is definitely greener.