What are your frugal and sustainable tips and tricks?

[gtaus]

In the context of this type of plastic. The whole page was about HDPE only. I mean, there are glass food containers, other types of plastic, and so on.

Right. We use glass and Pyrex containers for liquid leftovers, like spaghetti sauce, because the tomato sauce will stain most plastics - even those meant for food storage.

 

[TooCheep]

I had one green Menards bucket out in the garage, and it is marked as #2 HDPE. I don't have the white bucket, but I see that is also HDPE. Are they the same? I don't know. The green one with #2 code indicates food-grade, but the other white one advertises food-safe but costs more. Maybe the FDA food-safe certification is a higher standard? I don't know.

My eggs and fruits/vegetables are better than organic (far fewer chemicals), but I would spit blood before I payed for government certification.

 

[Birds of paradise]

We recycle or reuse what we can and burn the rest. I know, bad for the ozone layer probably, but at least none of our waste goes into a landfill - and most of it is paper products, anyway; feed bags, food packaging, cardboard boxes. Our solar system produces much of our own electricity, and we burn clean LP gas for heat. We don't drive much since we're both retired and homebodies. Diesel fuel for the tractor and such takes a chunk out of our budget, though. We don't very well conserve water, since the livestock and garden use so much and it's abundant in our region anyway. I do have an HE washer that I run only on full loads, and wash dishes only on full loads, bathe 2x a week.

We buy sodas, but usually in cans or 2-liter bottles; the cans are sold with our scrap metal for recycling, and the bottles are reused for emergency water storage and ice for the chicken processing tubs. Likewise, I reuse plastic milk jugs. But mostly we drink iced tea or water in our own bottles. We grow as much of our own food as we can, including beef and pork. I spend summers canning produce and fruit, and processing chickens. I'm growing mealworms to help with the chickens, and of course no produce scraps ever go to waste. We don't have much in leftovers; I'm being more frugal about cooking, and freezing meal-sized portions if there's enough. We waste very little food.

I wish we could spend less on farm expenses, though. The tractor and bobcat repairs are crippling us financially. And we go through buckets and buckets of hydraulic oil, that gets leaked all over the damn place. (I reuse those buckets for everything!)

Just a suggestion, why not turn the paper and cardboard into a worm farm. They will decompose the stuff for you and turn it into vermicompost which you can use on your farm for your veggies etc.

 

[Birds of paradise]

The growing of the bamboo may be more sustainable than other options but you might look at what is done to process it into thread.

I choose local stores over shipping whenever possible. I don't think it makes much difference sustainability unless the product is produced locally but I want to have an option of local later and I don't want Amazon to get more of a monopoly.

Support the little guy trying to make an honest living

 

[Birds of paradise]

Yup, those are my thoughts as well. Not to mention the shipping of the product to the US from a foreign country a lot of the time. That ship/plane/train wasn’t eco friendly that it came on. I try to buy made in the USA whenever possible.

Our neighbour has huge bamboo growing on our boundary wall. We use it "sustainably" from our side to stake our plants and feed our rabbit and guinea pigs. That stuff grows through our cement paving, it's the Godzilla of grasses.

 

[gtaus]

My eggs and fruits/vegetables are better than organic (far fewer chemicals), but I would spit blood before I payed for government certification.

I think you have to jump through a lot of hoops before you can get "organic" qualified. I'm happy with growing my own food and chickens for eggs. Might not be organic, but farm fresh just the same.

BTW, we had some store-bought fresh tomatoes the other night for our sandwiches, but the tomatoes tasted like red cardboard. I could not believe there was hardly any taste at all to the tomato. Chewed like eating cardboard, too. Very disappointing. So, I'm looking forward to growing my own tomatoes this summer. The growing season is short in Minnesota, but at least my tomatoes have a flavor to them.

 

[TooCheep]

I think you have to jump through a lot of hoops before you can get "organic" qualified. I'm happy with growing my own food and chickens for eggs. Might not be organic, but farm fresh just the same.

BTW, we had some store-bought fresh tomatoes the other night for our sandwiches, but the tomatoes tasted like red cardboard. I could not believe there was hardly any taste at all to the tomato. Chewed like eating cardboard, too. Very disappointing. So, I'm looking forward to growing my own tomatoes this summer. The growing season is short in Minnesota, but at least my tomatoes have a flavor to them.

Yes, they have to jump through a lot of hoops to prove themselves to the government. The organic certification also defines which pesticides, herbicides, etc. are "organic" and which aren't. I use cabbage moth decoys to drive them away from my cruciferous veggies (broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, cabbage, brussel sprouts, etc). Works well and no chemicals at all. Spraying aphids (a common plant pest) with water to knock them off is as effective as chemical controls. There are lots of tools to grow plants naturally and healthy plants are naturally more resistant to disease and pests.

Organic eggs still allow a lot of similarities to factory farm methods for raising chickens. I'd stack mine up against the kind you find in stores anytime both in how they are live their lives and the quality of the eggs.

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As for the tomatoes, that often happens with our current system. There is a reason that there are hundreds of varieties of tomatoes, but ~4-6 at most supermarkets. (a) The stores require that they can be picked green, handle packing and transport without much damage, ripen when exposed to chemicals or in transit and must be able to sit on the store display and look good for as long as possible. Only a few varieties meet those requirements. (b) When you grow your own (or buy from a local farmers market), you can wait until they are fully ripened, are at their tastiest and most nutritious, but they may not last a week+ in your fridge. Note that (a) priorities have very little in common with (b) priorities.

When you get your food locally, you can even get things that don't exist in most supermarkets. I have a large mulberry tree that both the chickens and I enjoy. But the ripe berries only last about 24 hours, so they won't work in supermarkets. I don't have any myself, but PawPaws are a very good US-native tree fruit that bruise too easily to ship but taste like tropical fruit custard.

So, whenever possible, I prefer locally grown, fresh products. I'll even happily take non-organic chemically fertilized produce over the equivalent grown for mass production as they can still allow for full ripeness/nutrition before picking.

 

[Birds of paradise]

I think you have to jump through a lot of hoops before you can get "organic" qualified. I'm happy with growing my own food and chickens for eggs. Might not be organic, but farm fresh just the same.

BTW, we had some store-bought fresh tomatoes the other night for our sandwiches, but the tomatoes tasted like red cardboard. I could not believe there was hardly any taste at all to the tomato. Chewed like eating cardboard, too. Very disappointing. So, I'm looking forward to growing my own tomatoes this summer. The growing season is short in Minnesota, but at least my tomatoes have a flavor to them.

How do you keep pests off your tomatoes? We have a lovely long growing season in South Africa, but the rats, mice, birds and insects get to the tomatoes just as they show any signs of ripening. Drives me nuts that they're enjoying the fruits of my labor before I can.

 

[gtaus]

How do you keep pests off your tomatoes? We have a lovely long growing season in South Africa, but the rats, mice, birds and insects get to the tomatoes just as they show any signs of ripening. Drives me nuts that they're enjoying the fruits of my labor before I can.

Sorry to hear about pests eating your tomatoes. I don't have any of those problems with my tomatoes.

I had a problem with a squirrel eating our eggplants before they had a chance to grow big. In that case, I made a wire cage out of chicken wire to go around the plant and that worked to keep the squirrel out. Hardware cloth would probably keep out rats and mice. I suspect you would need window screen to keep out insects.

Sounds like you have a challenge. Hope you find a way to keep out the pests. Best wishes.

 

[igorsMistress]

How do you keep pests off your tomatoes? We have a lovely long growing season in South Africa, but the rats, mice, birds and insects get to the tomatoes just as they show any signs of ripening. Drives me nuts that they're enjoying the fruits of my labor before I can.

I agree that hardware cloth could work for rats. We have insect netting available in the US, is that something you have there? It helps keep bugs off pretty well.