What did you do in the garden today?

[jerryse]

Trying this one. Also known as Gete Okosomin in the Maxima group.

 

[Nym]

I used to burn lots of cardboard, then I sent cardboard to the recycle center, but for the past year I have been shredding up our cardboard and using the shreds in the chicken coop as deep bedding. When I clean out the coop, the paper and cardboard shreds get tossed into the chicken run to compost in place. The shreds compost pretty fast and then they get put into my raised garden beds as finished compost in 4-6 months.

I have a big manual scissors, but it was getting too hard for my old hands to cut heavy packing cardboard without getting cramps. So, I bought a power cutter which cuts the heavy cardboard without any effort.

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Now I can cut up our heavy cardboard packing boxes we get from Amazon into 2-3 inch wide strips and feed them down my paper shredder at home. Makes gets shreds for coop bedding litter and later as finished compost for the gardens as I mentioned.

Just wanted to mention that option because I find shredding the cardboard to be more useful to me than when I used to burn it.

I will have to get a pair of those cutters! - thank you for sharing those. I don't make a habit of burning it. I had a run of buying online and ended up with several boxes. One was large enough to house my chicks for a few days. Some went in the base of hugelkultur beds, most were put in the recycle bin once they were wet from rain and could easily be torn. The quality of cardboard has certainly gone up a few notches recently.

 

[Nym]

I remember the little glasses that Welch’s grape jam used to come in. Those were our juice glasses for years.

My kids collected a whole set of glasses from peanut butter jars. There is a dedicated fb collectors page. I can't recall what motifs were on the set we collected.

 

[Nym]

We never got a minute of dry weather yesterday. The rain turned into drizzling and misting. The snow melt slowed down but hopefully will be gone before the fresh stuff moves in. When I was in the grocery store the other day I noticed a new product in the freezer section, squash fritters! Ok, who gave them our recipe. Lol!

It will never taste as good!

 

[TJAnonymous]

Speaking of recycling things, I use old medication bottles to save bulk seed from the garden, like dill, sesame, flax, black cumin, etc...

 

[Nym]

here's one for you....
You cannot, by law, but X, Y, or Z in the trash here. It must be sent to the recycle center.
The countryside in this county has no recycle center. The city where this law originated started with 25 recycle centers when the law went into effect. But then it got to costly to keep emptying them and they would fill up quickly. If you lived out of town, you had to collect it all at home, load it in the car and haul it to the city.
THEN since town thought it was too expensive to keep the public sites open and emptied, they closed all but 3, which are constantly full to overflowing. Every time I went to town to drop mine off, it was full, making me store it in the truck and try again the next week.
That got old really quickly.
NOW people to avoid the full sites, PAY $40 a month to have it collected at the curb, in a special roller bin, by the same company as the trash company. So not only are we paying for pick up, there are extra trucks on the road burning diesel fuel to pick it up, and want to guess where it ends up since it is too expensive to recycle??
So basically, I'm spending $40 more a month thatnI was when I was just paying for trash pickup, using extra time and water (it all has to be clean before going in the bin), and more energy is being used to haul it around. Brilliant.
All for their feel good movement.

Don't wash anything. I haven't washed a single jar or tin for over 20yrs before putting it in the recycle bin. Try it - you'll feel great! lol

 

[WthrLady]

Required here. If you have dirty containers, they leave your whole bin.

Don't wash anything. I haven't washed a single jar or tin for over 20yrs before putting it in the recycle bin. Try it - you'll feel great!

 

[TJAnonymous]

Well this is a major bummer!

 

[gtaus]

Yes, the numbers don't lie about this kind of thing (if reported honestly!). What we MUST do (IMO) is find better ways to recycle. Or build batteries for electric cars. Or whatever we can do to keep from killing the planet and ourselves. I don't know if we'll learn fast enough. Rant over.

I have converted almost all my small gas engine yard tools over to battery operated tools. I have been much happier with the batteries. Where I live, my grass trimmer, chainsaws, tillers, etc... will sit in the garage for more than 6 months out of the year. My old gas engines would clog up the carburetors and not run properly. For example, I used to replace my gas grass trimmers every 2-3 years because they cost too much to fix than to buy a new one. I switched over to a battery grass trimmer about 15 years ago and it still works like new with a fresh battery. Same story on my battery tiller, battery chainsaws, battery push lawn mower, etc... No regrets in leaving the gas engine tools behind.

I still think professionals are better served with gas machines, but that is not how most of us use our tools. The battery run time on my tools is enough to maintain my property, but not enough if I was working all day cleaning multiple yards for a living.

As to the batteries, my Li-Ion batteries are proving serviceable life going beyond 10 years. As I have stated, I'm in the Ryobi line of tools. The old Ni-Cad batteries died in about 3 years and had no value after that. But the newer Li-Ion batteries are proving to last much, much longer. My oldest Li-Ion batteries are now over 10 years old and still provide about 80% of their original capacity. No complaints from me.

Having said that, I know that Li-Ion batteries are made from toxic materials and when the batteries do go bad, they will probably be toxic in a landfill. In theory, they can be recycled, but I seriously doubt any of that is going on. My hope is that at least the batteries are disposed of in a manner that reduces the toxicity of the materials. Our local recycle center has separate bins for batteries.

A month or so ago, I watched a YouTube video on new upcoming battery technology. Someone is working on Sodium "salt" based batteries. The idea is that salt is not toxic in the mining, production, or disposal. I know I would welcome a less toxic battery for my tools. I would think everyone would as long as the batteries were another step forward in terms of capacity and performance.

Now that California is eliminating small gas engines, my hope is that market will respond with better, and safer, battery technology because there are a whole lot of customers in California that have no other options.

FWIW, I lived in Santa Barbara for two years while I was serving in the Navy. Santa Barbara was beautiful with clean air. However, when I had to go to Los Angeles for training, you could see, taste, and feel all the pollution in the air as you went over the mountain top and headed down into the Los Angeles basin. It was really disgusting for this boy from northern Minnesota. I don't blame California one bit for doing anything, and everything, they can do to clean up their air.

 

[Smokerbill]

My shipment from Baker Creek arrived today. In addition to my squash seeds I got a free packet of Merlot red leaf lettuce. I'm out of lettuce seeds and wasn't planning to plant any, but I guess I will now. LOL