Kitchen Ecology

2007-12-31T12:59:00.000-08:00

Read the full articles with images at http://www.chrisgreaves.com/SUFE

Grate Idea!

2007-06-10T07:06:00.000-07:00

Re-using fibrous material to ease the task of extracting vermicompost castings at Grate Idea!

Two new web pages

2007-06-09T19:06:00.000-07:00

I have created two new pages, one describing my process for harvesting worms and seeding a vermicomposter and one for my Orange Grove.

I Never Promised You A Rose Garden

2006-12-16T11:52:00.000-08:00

Yet another lamp bulb blown this week. I flip the switch, see a flash and hear a pop. Sigh.

Yet, there is a Second Use For Everything!

First step is to separate the bulb from the stem. I achieve this by removing all small children & pets from the vicinity, running a basin of cold water, wrapping a piece of string three times around the bulb where the metal socket meets the glass bulb, and loading the string with a few drops of kerosene or lamp oil. Rubber gloves and glasses complete the scene.

I light the wick and let it burn upwards, enveloping, if it will, the metal socket. After five seconds of this I plunge the bulb, metal socket down, into the cold water and hear a satisfying "pop" as the glass cracks in a fairly neat, but sharp-edged, circle. My theory is that if anything is going to shatter outwards, the water will dampen, so to speak, the motion.

A quick twist separates the metal socket from the glass bulb.

Below is a photo of the glass bulb, waiting for the shards.

I chose shards of a broken clay pot, figuring that the clay shards would absorb and retain water, sponge-like.

I am using a small hammer gently to break the clay pot into fragments no bigger than a quarter-inch on a side. Yes, that's last-year's yellow-pages being used as a protective mat. When I'm done it will go into a vermicomposter, taking with it small particles of clay.

Below is a photo of the glass bulb, holding its volume of pottery shards. I placed it in an empty coffee beaker (Second Use For Everything!) to stop it tipping over. Now I know the correct volume of shards I will empty the glass bulb temporarily.

Below you can see some philodendron cuttings. I learned some years ago to trim the stalk below a node, and to strip off leaves from two nodes. This gives me two leafless nodes which will root readily. Leaves would rot in the potting medium (which in my case is just water and clay shards).

And here is the glass bulb, primed with four philodendron cuttings and tanked up with shards and topped up with tap water.

If my friends ask me what it is, I will say proudly "It's a Bulb Garden".

Well, I Never Promised You A Rose Garden!

Thanks for reading this. I hope that you are inspired.

Orange Peel

2006-11-22T16:38:00.000-08:00

This isn't a recipe blog, but what with Christmas coming etc. etc.

Orange peel can take a long time to rot down in any composter. Here's an alternate method of disposal in tune with both Second Use For Everything and the Christmas Season.

It's never as good as store-bought candied peel, but it's a darn sight cheaper, and that's what I'm all about.

In essence (good one Chris!), I boil the peel of an orange in sugar.
70g peel in 180g sugar.

1. Gently heat the solid sugar from last time in a saucepan of water. I think I'm stupid to tie up a nice glass bowl for weeks at a time this way.

2. Eat the thick-skinned orange for breakfast. Dieting, you know. Slice the peel into a Lambert Conformal Conic sections and dream of Africa.

3. Slice each segment into strips about 2 mm wide.

4. Pour the liquefied sugar from last time into a different pan. That's right. The original pan didn't shrink! Add 180g sugar, toss in the peel and stir. I use a plastic teaspoon because I'm too cheap to replace the jam thermometer that broke last year. If the plastic melts, the sugar is too hot.

5. Stir the pan, but don't stir too far away from the stove. A good book on genetic technology helps here. Also a bar stool.

6. Reduce heat once the stuff is at the boil. Lowest heat, simmer to drive off some water.

7. Strain into the coffee percolator. Sweet orange-flavored coffee tomorrow morning. With cream. Sod the diet.

8. Spread out to cool/harden on a plate. I use chopsticks because it's almost lunchtime anyway.

Plastic bags

2006-11-02T13:05:00.000-08:00

I found this today - uses for plastic bags (grocery bags, bread bags etc.). Many of the uses seem to be duplicates or clones, but still and all it's a good list.

http://frugalliving.about.com/cs/tips/a/blplasticbag.htm

Too much energy

2006-10-20T06:29:00.000-07:00

I was asked yesterday about my use of a cross-cut shredder to chop up scrap paper and junk mail.

"Why are you burning up electrical energy instead of ripping the paper by hand while sitting in front of the television?", my questioner continued.

The answer is simple: I don't watch TV; I read books.

The electricity I don't use watching TV is not matched by the occasional use of my shredder.

Not Working

2006-09-26T05:14:00.000-07:00

Two stories here; one about a shredder, one about some screws.

Shredder

The cross-cut shredder stopped working. Chances are if you have used a paper shredder for a year or two, it has stopped working. You've shaken it, shook it, rattled it and rolled it, even banged it on the edge of the desk, and it Just Won't Work. Chances are you tossed it in a dumpster and spent Gold buying a new one.

I hate that with a passion, as you know.

I unplug the device and move it to a clean working area, unscrew the cover, note on a piece of paper the position & orientation of the mechanical chunk, then remove it.

Sure enough, the gears are clogged with shreds of paper. A small screwdriver gently teases out the worst of it, then the best of it, all swept into my paper bin.

I plug it in and it doesn't work. Still. And it lies still, still!

I test the optical switch by sliding paper into the gap, and hearing the click-on and delayed click-off am satisfied that the device is capable of functioning.

I unplug it again and gently turn the electric motor with the screwdriver blade. I see the gears begin to turn, so I know that once the motor starts, the device will work.

Clearly current is getting to the machine, and the optical switch is working.

Further examination reveals a small piece of paper wedged between the brush and commutator of the motor - that is enough to event the flow of electricity. I tease away that piece of paper and Behold and lo! It all hums nicely.

A small vacumn cleaner removes fluff and lint, I screw everything back in place, and I have used fifteen minutes of my time to save myself a 45-minute trip to the store.

See, it's not about money, it's about time.

Screws

Oh yes, screws. I use a clean tuna tin to hold any screws that I see lying around; also nuts, washers, bolts and small springs.

I reason that they must have dropped out of something, and although I don't know their source, their source will reveal itself to me in time.

Sure enough, as I unscrewed the cover of the shredder at the start of the job, I noticed two screws were missing. My tuna tin was holding them safely, waiting for this moment. The screws must have jarred loose a few months back. I'd picked them up and dropped them in the can.

Today they came home!

Never throw anything away, until you have found a second use for it.

Smallest SUFE Ever

2006-09-25T08:18:00.000-07:00

This is tough to Beta. No, I mean Beat. Not beta, it is Memorex (grin!)

I have a hanging folder "Adhesives" which holds adhesive labels for the computer printer and harbours anything else that doesn't get thrown out.

Including a sheet of labels for cassette tape. Remember cassettes?

I am drilling holes in the walls of a book shelf to house dowel pins for more shelves You can never have enough bookshelves for the simple reason that you can never have enough books.

I need to mark the twist drill so that I don't drill right through the wall.

The tiny timing tape - about 4mm wide by 14mm long - does the trick! Wrapped around the twist drill bit it is highly visible at speed.

Finishing Chest 3

2006-09-23T14:41:00.000-07:00

Meanwhile, back at the ranch ...

A few more weeks have passed. I have tipped the bin again. The contents are almost completely digested. The shredded paper is almost gone.

The remainder is a sticky clayey mass - the contents are still overloaded with moisture.

My guess is that I could set aside the clay, fill the bin with shredded paper, and let it run for another two months. It won't begin to freeze solid until late December, if then.

Here is the chest tipped up. You can see some of the shredded paper poking up through the mass. Quality Control has been, seen, and is bored:

Here is a view of the mass. Worms are scurrying away, but I can see that they are fat and healthy. Eggs are scattered across the surface and throughout the mass!

Books

2006-09-21T09:53:00.000-07:00

Where to send ...

(Thanks to Janie Upham of Ontario Textbook Recycling for the next set of links):

Ile Oluji Cultural Assoc. Kenny Olanusi (416) 742-8578 or Moses Olasusi 416 741-3986

Global Texts International: John Okosun, 416-274-6563

For book guidelines: www.booksforafrica.org

Plastic Lining

2006-09-10T06:50:00.000-07:00

In tapered vermicomposters I introduced the idea of pinning an open-ended garbage bag to the tower, thus lining the inside of the tower.

It works well.

The only disadvantage I could report is that injudicious application of bacteria-laden water can result in the water hitting the plastic and channeling rapidly down and out of the tower, leaving a mess on the floor.

The solution is obvious: pour the water into a smaller pot that rests atop the compost material. A small hole in the pot will trickle out the water at a rate that the compost can absorb. Shedding the water over a two-minute period is better than a deluge in two seconds.

That said, I have learned over the past two weeks of a tip in the size of the bag.

Most of my towers are three- or four-feet tall. The open-ended garbage bag extends beyond this. In consequence, the base of the tower, inside, nets a sleeve of plastic which does not allow the free-scooping of material from the base.

I can scoop outfall from the region close to the door, but material at the rear of the tower is hard if not impossible to obtain. My plastic scoop is entangled in the loose folds of plastic down there.

This photo shows the front of the tower, with the door, and from the back you can see a "skirt" of plastic which I have pulled outside. Imagine that skirt inside the tower. It obstructs the free flow of material.

Future towers will have the plastic liner trimmed to a length no greater than the top of the aperture, so that from the view of the aperture, there is no plastic sleeve; it does not descend to the region from which I intend to scoop material.

I live and I learn ...

Three For One

2006-09-04T08:39:00.000-07:00

SUFE - three for the price of one.

The vertical spacers (for a set of shelves) are being cleaned.

(1) The spacers are cut down from a smaller closet found at the dumpster.

(2) The drain racks are four baffles from a humidifier found at the dumpster.

(3) The washing bowl is a vegetable drawer from a refrigerator found at the dumpster.

It would have been 4-4-1 if I had included my dishrag in the photo - a sleeve from an old green T-shirt.

Something Seriously Wrong

2006-08-30T02:12:00.000-07:00

There is something seriously wrong with our mentality, and by "our" I mean at least the people in my apartment, perhaps the people on my street, in my city, province, this country but not, I suspect, the world at large.

Here in Toronto people have been educated, trained, indoctrinated, to be "neat" and to be "ecologically neat", so that the predominant thought is "When you are finished with something, put it out on the kerb on Wednesday", and more recently, "Put it in the appropriate coloured box on Wednesday", so we proudly point to our blue or yellow or grey or green box full of stuff; 'Look at how much I am re-CYCling!"

We are NOT trained to think "Just because I don't have a use for it, someone else might have a use for it".

So yesterday I collected a fan from the garbage. Electric, three-speed, oscillating, ten-inch blade with screen. Plugged it in. Works just fine.

Why is it in the garbage? It can't be because it doesn't work (excuse the double negatives) because it works. Storage space? It's not that big, besides, if you are short of space you toss a lot of stuff, not one item.

My guess is that the previous owner bought a bigger fan, or an air-conditioner, and "since I have no use for this, I'll toss it out".

Bad thinking. Non-thinking. Not so much thoughtless, as robot-like following the dictates of the local council that spends millions of dollars training people to cart stuff to the curb. On Wednesdays.

Shredded Paper - Status

2006-08-22T06:05:00.000-07:00

I took a look at the paper-only tower; the "only paper and coffee grounds" tower to be correct. (This is one of my heavily-tapered towers; descent of material ought to be facile).

First thing you will notice is that a week or two ago I enlarged the outlet chute to be the full width of the tower - twelve inches. Still material is not cascading out. That is why this morning I decided to take a closer look.

The material at the base was compacted. I had to work hard at wrenching it out with a pinch-bar. That, surely, is too compacted to make life fun for worms.

Some of the material is visible, swept to the right-hand side. All paper material that comes out will be tossed into the finishing bin, which can always use good bedding!

Castings are evident, the brown mass extending from the right-hand side of the tower. The black area is the black plastic garbage bag that lines the tower. Castings tells me that worms have been here.

To the left of the pinch bar is a knot in the tower frame, and an equal distance to the right of the pinch bar worms can be seen. Worms are active down here. They have not seemed to attack the exterior of the lower portion of the mass.

Again, I suspect the density of the mass is an obstacle. Given time they would probably attack it from the outside moving inwards, chomping away at the fringes.

Within a few minutes, part of the suspended mass has fallen away. In the image below you can see slabs of very damp compressed shredded paper on the floor of the tower, and castings above and behind that. The upper mass of paper is slowly extruding itself downwards and another slab looks as if it is about to descend.

This is encouraging. It tells me that once the obstacle at the base of the tower is removed, material will descend promptly

Parts of the black plastic bag liner are evident. I rip away what I can see as it appears.

More material descends. Yes, those are big fat healthy pregnant worms dead centre of the image, and more worms just below them. You may find it hard to spot, but there is a big, luscious, fat, juicy egg visible quite near the top of the image. I have circled it for you.

I dragged about two gallons of material from the base before propping a sheet of wood against the base. I will check again in a week's time to see how we are getting on.

The finishing bin has received two gallons of wet shredded paper populated by big fat juicy pregnant worms. Just LOOK at the size of them.

Quite makes your mouth water, doesn't it.

Uh Oh! Broken!

2006-08-16T04:43:00.000-07:00

Broken on two counts.

First my habit of picking up bits of colored glass from the beach, the sidewalk (poor dogs paws!) and sometimes at the local intersection. Collisions have a second use, too; they are a source of brightly colored refractive plastic!

Second, a glass bowl rescued from the trash with a weird triangular-toothed edge. I have found it awkward to use. I can't pour from it, and it just looks awkward when I'm eating from it.

Put the two together and what have you?

A colourful equivalent of a gravel pot.

I jabbed some philodendron-like cuttings in the colored glass, added water, and made two pretty table decorations.

Vermicomposting in the cold-climate apartment – Heat

2006-08-03T05:04:00.000-07:00

I started these web pages about eight years ago, titled “Vermicomposting For The Cold-Climate Apartment Dweller”, with the main focus on vermicomposting when you can’t have your bin outside.

Toronto has just passed through the hottest days/nights in a million years or so, you know what I mean. “Records Broken!” is the phrase that comes to mind on seeing the number of competing newspaper headlines.

My finishing Chest – a two-foot square laundry tub of white plastic revealed a pound of worms huddled in one corner above the soil, exposed to broad daylight, andf a film of worms escaping up .

The contents of the tub had heated to the extent that daylight was preferable to heat.

Poor buggers.

I removed the cover half-way to let cooler (but only slightly) afternoon air waft over them, and they went home.

This morning things appear to have returned to normal after last nights major thunderstorms cleared the air.

But Oh! I didn’t expect to be reporting on measures to get my buddies to Chill Out!

Shredded Paper

2006-07-29T04:19:00.000-07:00

This year's CICO project is to vermicompost the paper that arrives in my apartment.

Here is this weekend's effort.

I have been straining pasta water into my tank, so there is a rich stew of bacteria within. Frankly, it is beginning to smell, so I would like to dispose of the water and start afresh.

I place a rectangular sieve inside an old refrigerator drawer.

I tip a waste bucket of shredded paper in the sieve.

I hose from the water tank over the paper and leave it to soak for about an hour.

Finally, I tip it to drain back into the drawer for five minutes, and consign the damp paper to the tower vermicomposter.

I repeat the process until all the water has been transferred (and a lot of paper shredded!).

The worms get a rich source of nutrients in their fresh bedding.

The tower vermicomposter is not overloaded with water.

Finishing Chest 2

2006-07-27T05:49:00.000-07:00

Meanwhile, back at the ranch …

A few weeks have passed. I started to skim the castings from the top of the chest and half-way down through the eight inches, discovered that I had a fairly sodden mass that was tending anaerobic.

Tipping the chest at a 45-degree angle allowed me to move the mass to one side of the chest. In the space I dropped a couple of bins of shredded paper, flipped the chest the other way (burying that paper) and placed another two bins of shredded paper.

I righted the chest, smoothed the soil over the paper, and have left it for a week.

My theory is that the paper will provide fresh bedding and help the mass to dry.

This morning I lifted the lid, removed the plastic sheet, and saw the worm colony going at it again.

I am optimistic that this will result in the remaining soil mass being rendered into top—surface castings, and I’ll continue to skim them on a weekly basis.

Here is the chest with the masonite lid removed. You can see some of the shredded paper poking up through the mass:

Here is a view of the mass, with the plastic sheet removed. Worms are scurrying away to avoid the early-morning light, but I can see that they are there, doing their productive thing atop the mass!

Here is a view of the underside of the plastic sheet. Worms are attracted here, I suspect for the moisture content.

Castings are in evidence and better yet – my worms are preggers!

Harvesting Castings 2

2006-07-23T13:56:00.000-07:00

Once a week, sometimes once a fortnight, I remove the outfall of castings from the broom-closet vermicomposter.

Below is a photo of my kit.

With a trowel made from an old orange-juice bottle, I shovel the dry castings into a plastic sieve that sits in a plastic container of the same area.

Below I have shoveled the dry castings and some debris into the sieve

Below I have agitated the sieve. The dry castings have fallen through, undigested material remains in the sieve. Today most of that debris is paper, so I tip it back into the top of the vermicomposter.

I pour the sieved castings into a clean plastic milk bag. Below you can see that the big is about half-full. Not bad for one week.

For this essay I decided to weigh the castings. About one pound, half a kilogram. Again, considering that the recommended dose for houseplants is one spoonful per month, I have harvested enough castings in one week to keep me going for six months!

Harvesting Castings

2006-07-23T09:44:00.000-07:00

Harvesting Castings

I start fresh cuttings in a mixture of peat moss and vermicomposting soil, rich in castings.

And of course, there are worm eggs in the castings mix, so the eggs hatch while the cuttings are taking hold.

Worms in the house plants means that I have self-fertilizing house plants, and the soil is aerated, and it sometimes dries out rather rapidly.

My solution is to stand a collection of pots in an tub (an old refrigerator drawer shown below), and soak them with water from my pail. The water in the pail contains bacteria – it is where I strain my pasta – and so the soil in the pots gets a load of bacteria, which is what the worms eat.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch,…..

On the terrarium where I had stood my pots, …

… and on the margarine lids where I had stood my pots, you will see for each pot four small piles of pure castings.

Here is where the worms have retired to do their thing.

I can collect these small amounts in a plastic bag, and am amazed at how quickly the amount adds up.

This is, too, confirmation to me that each pot has a small but healthy population of worms, continuing to make my houseplants the most luxurious on the block!

Cupboard Love

2006-07-15T13:41:00.000-07:00

This is the true story of a cupboard.

(Read the full article with images at http://www.chrisgreaves.com/SUFE/SecondUse)

Background

Yesterday I was offered some cupboard doors by the superintendent. I operate on the principle that you can never have enough bookshelves, because you can never have enough books.
It took me one trip to lug all six doors upstairs. I was coming up here anyway

Basics

I armed myself with a screwdriver and unscrewed each knob. Good. I need some knobs for another set of cupboards. They will clean up nicely.
I have an idea for a collapsible bookshelf – don't be silly; I mean a bookshelf that can be dismantled without tools, collapsed, transported, and re-erected.
The basis will be four doors hinged together in a chain, two doors making the back, one door for each side, and two doors as horizontal shelves.
I test the idea by propping the Cupboard Doors against my desks to see that the idea will work.

In the image below I rest one shelf across the top of the two sides and the two back pieces. I'll need to trim an inch or so off the length of the shelves.

That done, I wipe down each cupboard door to see which ones will look best for the outside ends, and which, the worst, will form the back. I stack the doors to dry.

To Work

Despite my best measurements, I've always been served well by tangible layouts. Here the six shelves are ;aid out. The two centre pieces will become the back of the new bookshelf. The outside pieces will become the "walls" of the bookshelf, and the two pieces propped up by my supervisor's pet basket and my fruit basket will become the shelf and top, respectively.

Continued supervision is an important part of any work project.

Here are the four panels with hinges dropped roughly into place.

Here are the two wing or wall panels, with peg-holes drilled out at 3-inch intervals so that I can adjust, insert or remove shelves at will.

I screw each hinge onto only one side of a panel, not both.
I'll fasten each panel to another while they are standing vertically; in this manner I can be sure that the panels will sit flush with the floor.

We already talked about supervision. Here you can inspect the four panels. The wings have peg holes drilled for shelves; the three pairs of hinges are screwed in place.

I have trimmed the fifth door and placed it on pegs about half-way up the walls.
At this stage I found myself wondering why I wasn't making a bench seat for my balcony.

The top will be held in place by pegs. I have drilled two holes in each wall and placed pegs in place. I am about to mark the corresponding position, very carefully, on the underside of the top shelf.

The holes are drilled in the top shelf and the top is placed over the pegs. The pegs fit into the top which acts as a rigid brace for the entire structure.
Bingo! A lovely storage unit 30 inches tall, 30 inched wide, and 15 inches deep, from six kitchen cupboard doors tossed out, twelve inches of ¼ inch dowel, and some spare hinges left over from dismantling closet doors!

The measure of success!

True to design, the unit collapse for removal or storage into two shelves (top right corner) and a folded-in package (on the left). In the photo below the four hinged pieces are not folded flat because I have left the shelf pegs in place while I move the unit across the room

Thanks for reading this. I hope that you are inspired.

Finishing Chest

2006-07-13T11:19:00.000-07:00

((Read the full article with images at http://www.chrisgreaves.com/sufe/vermicomposting/FinishingChest.html)

I have titled this "Finishing Chest", but I am not really certain .. it is the old laundry tub, about two feet square and fifteen inches deep. It has a plug-hole dead centre in the bottom.

In this tub, six weeks ago, I stashed sieved material from my efforts at re-assembling the tower vermicomposters. The coarse undigested paper is held back and fed back into the towers. The laundry tub receives worm castings, soil, small pieces of paper and of course, scads of bacteria.

My theory was that the mass would continue to generate worm castings, and by the end of summer I could mix it with peat moss for my winter program of house plants.

Last week I cut a piece of white-painted masonite to fit as a lid. I sit on the bench and drink my morning coffee.

With the lid raised you see an old garbage bag, folded, following on from my discovery of condensation of moisture in the tower vermicomposters. In the laundry tub, the plastic and its condensate seems to attract worms.

As you can see! When I remove the plastic, I see the surface of the bin is covered with worms and castings.

The white mass is a batch of bean sprouts that was left too long in the refrigerator.

Moisture Level

2006-07-09T09:00:00.000-07:00

(Read the full article with images at http://www.chrisgreaves.com/sufe/vermicomposting/MoistureLevel2.html)

After a day or two I reasoned that the worms should be attracted to the bacteria in the moist soil. Sure enough, here they are.

I have placed the pot outside the bin to take a better shot.

ThereÂs a possibility that the pot might serve too as a harvesting mechanism for worm droppings.

Moisture Level

2006-07-06T18:32:00.000-07:00

(Read the full article with images at http://www.chrisgreaves.com/sufe/vermicomposting/moisturelevel.html)

How to maintain a decent level of moisture in a tower vermicomposter? Too little moisture and the worms die. Too much water and you get nasty seepage from the base.

Here’s a technique I use that, coupled with a plastic-bag cover seems to work well right through summer on my south-east facing balcony.

Remember that I drape a plastic bag loosely over the top. Moisture condenses on the underside of the plastic and drips back into the centre of the pile, so moisture is circulating all the time.

Here is a photo of a tower vermicomposter. You can see moist patches on the sides of the plastic liner, and you can see traces of worm castings on the sides, too. The worms are warm, moist, and active.

You are looking at the latest batch of shredded paper dropped into the bin a day or two ago.

Here is a broken plastic pot. I have filled it with stale soil. The soil looks moist because it has been put to the use I’ll describe below.

The pot of soil sits on the top of the shredded paper in the bin, in the centre of the pile, equidistant from the sides.

Here I am with a pint of vegetable water, at room temperature, in a small plastic pail. A Second Use For Everything.

I tip the water onto the soil. You will see below that the water is bubbling down and up through the soil. The soil acts as a reservoir and releases the water over a period of five minutes. This gives the water time to seep sideways through the paper without coursing down the sides of plastic and directly out of the bin.

The worms get a drink of bacteria-laden water. The soil breeds bacteria. The worms can rise into the soil if they prefer.

When I have a batch of shredded paper, I lift out the pot, dump in the paper, and replace the pot atop the new batch of paper.

Salad Days

2006-07-02T06:48:00.000-07:00

Summer is upon us, and that means Iced Cappuccinos and expensive Romaine Lettuce.

Don't give up hope. Save and clean the cute clear-plastic coffee cups with their covers (large hole in top!) and start sprouting.

I obtain Mung beans from my local bulk produce store and start a fresh batch every three days. I've found that about two tablespoons do me for three days. You will experiment until you find the small cup that measures just the right amount for you.

Soak a small quantity of beans in cold water overnight. In the morning, rinse and soak for the remainder of the day. You should see the seeds germinating after 24 hours, 36 at most.

Rinse gently twice a day. By "rinse gently" I mean to flush them with fresh water and drain off. Don't hold them under a strong kitchen tap - you'll do damage to the roots that are forming.

I have found that lidded, there's enough circulation of air to promote germination. If the beans appear to be drying out, cover the lid completely.

House plants

2006-06-25T07:59:00.000-07:00

I'll swear in Australia we called them Pot plants. In North America I am learning not to use the term!

Here's a link to some of my musings on House Plants, especially as it relates to kitchen ecology and vermicomposting.

Monitoring The Balcony Vermicomposter

2006-06-17T04:56:00.000-07:00

To see the images, visit one of my SUFE pages at http://www.chrisgreaves.com/blogkitchen/TaperedVermicomposter.html

I generally place a cover of a plastic bag over the tower vermicomposters when they are out doors to retard the loss of moisture.

Imagine my delight today to find that the plastic bags act as water pumps! Here is how it works:

Moisture evaporates from the heap and hits the plastic bag which is held in place with a length of wood and a house brick.

There being a slight sag in the bag, during the cooler night the moisture condenses on the underside of the bag and drips back into the heap.

It seems like a good thing ...

Tapered Vermicomposter

2006-06-12T09:13:00.000-07:00

To see the images, visit one of my SUFE pages at http://www.chrisgreaves.com/blogkitchen/TaperedVermicomposter.html

Sometimes the composting material is reluctant to descend, even with a glissant garbage bag and some extra water poured down the inside of the bag.

The trick is to introduce a slight taper to the composter, narrower at the top than at the bottom.

This morning I took two two-foot sides (total four feet) of the large bin and rebuilt them as a four-sided, one foot per side, small-footprint tapered vermicomposter.

First off, A Second Use For Everything.

Simple as it sounds, I'm still re-using an earlier compost bin.

Here you can see the four panels lined up partway through assembly. I am moving one set of hinges from a point about ten inches down to a point flush with the edge. (The top edge. I've just turned the whole thing upside down to start work on the base).

Here is a wider view of four panels hinged along their top edge; all other hinges are removed. The base edge (right now up in the air) is unsecured:

I wrap the sides together to form a rough square. In this photo the edge resting on the ground has three hinges, but the fourth join is open.

I have used four small pieces of plywood to anchor the corners of what will be the base of the vermicomposter.

You can see that I have forced a one-inch-wide gap between each edge. Since the corners at the other end are flush, this base gap introduces a total of four inches of splay around the base. ItÃ’s not much of a taper, but it will assist the descent of material.

Here is a view from the outside. The taper is not terribly apparent in the photo, but it is all I'’ll need to encourage descent of material.

Finally, put-away time. Here are the tools I used: one screwdriver, and a one-dollar packet of hinges. The screwdriver goes back in the toolbox. The cardboard hinge packet goes into the cross-cut shredder for vermicomposting.

If you'’ve been tracking the date/time stamps in the photographs, you'll see that the whole project took me about fifteen minutes. It'’s eight minutes in the photographs, but I started work before the first photo.

Restocking The Balcony Vermicomposter

2006-06-10T09:14:00.000-07:00

To see the images, visit one of my SUFE pages at "http://www.chrisgreaves.com/blogkitchen/RestockingTheBalconyVermicomposter.html"

Today I am priming the new composter (see "Rebuilding The Balcony Vermicomposter")
I have a large rectangular bin. OK. It's a laundry-tub that got tossed out during renovations. (A Second Use For Everything). The tub is full of sieved material from the large Balcony Vermicomposter together with some left-over peat moss, and the soil from a few dead houseplants.

First off, during the week I've added a garbage bag of shredded paper to the new bin, tossed in a scoop of compost material, and added a cup of water each day until I see fluid seeping from the bottom. That's enough water for now.
I have created a bed of shredded paper. It is moist (well, down-right wet at the bottom!), and is seeded with bacteria from a worm bin. Remember, worms eat bacteria, not garbage, so we need a healthy community of bacteria for our worms before we introduce the worms to the bin.

Here is my laundry tub. I scoop two dollops of material into the metal basket inside a pail, then sieve the material into the pail. Fine compost and soil drops through with worms. The basket retains a few scraps of undigested paper or cardboard, a few worms, and some 1-centimetre pellets of clay or soil. That little bit of detritus goes into the new composter, so already I'm adding worms, bacteria, soil and bedding. It's a start!

The pail of sieved material is emptied onto a plastic sheet, in this case a garbage bag in reasonably good condition. I make a flattened cone and leave it sit for five minutes. The worms shun the bright light and retreat to the lower layer.

Here is a close-up of the heap. You can see some worms that were in the base of the pail, and are now on the top of the heap. They will soon burrow down into the lower levels of the heap.

An even better close-up. Cute little critters, ain't they!

Having poured myself a fresh coffee, I began removing material away from the heap. I use a plastic spoon to drag away a few spoonfuls at a time. It is easy to spot the worms that are exposed from the side and edges of the heap. Most of them have retreated to the deep interior, but there are always stragglers.
Here is a straggler, posing for a photo alongside the Sundae teaspoon.

I scoop him up in the plastic teaspoon.
Why a plastic teaspoon? Not for my sake – I'm too big and robust to be harmed by the worm. It's for the worm's sake. I want to minimize their contact with whatever might be on my skin (harmful bacteria - harmful to the worm, soap, coffee, cat hair etc.)

The worm joins a few of his friends in a margarine tub. With every worm that gets scooped comes a small amount of compost. This little bit of soil accumulates quickly to provide a haven for these worms-in- transit.

I'm nearly done with the heap. The heap has been spread to the outside edges of the plastic sheet.
The margarine tub is almost full of worms and material.

Here are seven worm eggs. Think "Shape of a lemon; size of a grape pip".
I used to separate eggs too, but now I realize that the worm eggs are pretty good at looking after themselves. Read on, dear reader, read on.

Here is another view of the exhausted heap. Yes, that's restful sitar music playing on the speakers.
Harvesting worms provides me with a relaxing hour or so on the weekend.

I pick up one edge of the sheet and gently nudge the edges of the distributed heap to the other edge of the sheet. In doing this, I uncover a couple of worms I've missed.
Here are two more stragglers. I'll teaspoon them into the margarine tub with their buddies.

By the time I'd finished I had five shopping bags with material.
Each bag contains about 50% worm castings and 50% soil and peat moss. It is still too rich for most houseplants.
As well it contains some baby worms (too small and easily missed) and a host of eggs.
I'll store the bags in the broom closet next to the Broom Closet Vermicomposter, where it is dark, warm and reasonably moist. After all, if the worm colony is thriving in the broom closet, the climate must be suitable for a nursery of five bags.
In six week's time I'll take out the bags and quickly extract any worms.

If you've been tracking the date/time stamps in the photographs, you'll see that the whole project took me under two hours.
The new Balcony Vermicomposter has bedding, is moist, has a colony of bacteria and a small colony of worms added today.
My plan is to use this vermicomposter exclusively for shredded paper, so excepting for the material primed today, only paper and nitrogen-rich sources such as coffee-grounds will enter it.
I plan on putting no kitchen waste in there, so that as best as I can I'm simulating an office environment.
Let's see if the worms can survive in, and digest all of, the shredded paper I produce in my home office.

Rebuilding The Balcony Vermicomposter

2006-06-08T06:08:00.000-07:00

(You can see the complete article with photographs at http://www.chrisgreaves.com/blogkitchen/RebuildingTheBalconyVermicomposter.html)

I have now emptied the large (four square feet) balcony vermicomposter into a small (one square foot) vermicomposter to free up space on the balcony.
This morning I took two two-foot sides (total four feet) of the large bin and rebuilt them as a four-sided, one foot per side, small-footprint vermicomposter.
First off, A Second Use For Everything. I found an old table I’d used as a drinks table

On turning it over I discovered a one-foot wide channel:

Exactly one foot wide!

I decided that the channel would house my one-foot wide vermicomposter, so I removed the legs and one end of the table top

And waddya know! I ended up with a nice collection of wood-screws. A Second Use For Everything, right?

Here are the two panels ready to be hinged. Each panel consists of a three-foot high (half the original vertical height) section of a folding closet door.

And here they are linked together with a pair of cheap hinges, one hinge at the top, one at the bottom.

Next I decided against hinging the fourth corner. This time I’m using a piece of metal strapping which I can un-latch when it’s time to empty the vermicomposter en masse.
The right-hand end of the strap (there’s another piece at the bottom) is secured to one panel with two wood screws; the left-hand side will be dropped over the heads of raised screws on the left-hand panel. Easy to unhook, space out, and so on.

Here’s the vermicomposter turned upside down while I fasten the bottom strip. You can see the two raised wood screws which will serve the latch the strip.
You can also see some of the muck from this past winters efforts. Don’t worry, it brushes off …

I have un-latched the strip while I cut away the eight-inch door in the bottom of one panel. I make the vertical cuts with a hand saw, and score the plywood with a small kitchen knife. The plywood then snaps away by hand.

Here is the vermicomposter completely rebuilt. I have it standing on a piece of Masonite which will absorb most of any excess fluid and help evaporate it, rather than have it drip off my balcony.
The eight-inch doorway faces away from the edge of the balcony. It will be shielded by the balcony door, just visible to the left.
That’s a grocery-store bag (A Second Use For Everything) slowly collecting non-degradable garbage – old bones, small pieces of window envelope plastic (I shred the lot and sort it out later).

I am lining this vermicomposter with an old and holey garbage bag (A Second Use For Everything). I use thin strips of plywood (cut with the kitchen knife from the plywood I removed to make the eight-inch doorway) to anchor the edges of the bag to the vermicomposter with three two-centimetre pins each.
I have cut way the bottom of the bag – which now is at the bottom of the vermicomposter, so that my bag is now a cylinder.

Finally, put-away time. Here are the tools I used: A hand saw, pins (stored in a plastic hand-lotion bottle from my latest hotel stay) and wood-screws (stored in a plastic see-through milk bag); three screwdrivers, a hammer (lost its rubber-handle, but still works!) and a kitchen knife.
I’ll clean the knife and use it to eat my apple on the balcony while I admire my work.
If you’ve been tracking the date/time stamps in the photographs, you’ll see that the whole project took me fifty minutes. Under an hour.

It's about: Apartment Climate Cold Contact Dweller Ecology Error First Introduction SUFE Kitchen Local Post Site

Second Use For Everything (SUFE)

2006-06-06T02:56:00.000-07:00

o What it is, why you need it

SUFE is a philosophy, but is not a mystic religion. It is a way of thinking.

Modern society is suffering from a mis-guided educational process suggesting that taking things out to the kerb is quite allright, as long as we put things in the correct plastic containers. Tossing out newspapers is OK, as long as they are put in the Grey Bin. Vegetable Scraps can be tossed as long as they go in the Green Bin. Jars can be tossed as long as they are tossed in the Blue Bin.

SUFE suggests that we should think, once more, before consigning a useful object to kerbside collection.

There is always a Second Use For Everything - SUFE.

You just haven’t thought about it – until now!

Please note that it is a Second Use For Everything, which is quite distinct from "Never throw anything away". We’re not collecting garbage here. True garbage should be, well, trashed.

Our philosophy will be "No matter what it is, If I’ve brought it into my life, I’ll find one use for it beyond its original purpose before I throw it out".

You need SUFE because without it you are unwittingly making extra trips to the kerb, lugging small mountains of stuff to where it doesn’t need to be, and worse, spending your post-tax cash on objects that you threw out last week. You don’t believe me? Read on, dear reader, read on!

Vermicomposting Cardboard

2006-06-05T04:01:00.000-07:00

I am in the process of emptying the large (four square feet) balcony vermicomposter into the small (one square foot) vermicomposter to free up space on the balcony.

I have withdrawn many sheets of cardboard with which I had lined the large vermicomposter. I want to make a meal for the worms. The sheets are too dry and stiff, I'll have difficulty fitting them into the one-foot square vermicomposter.

Luckily ( Second use For Everything !) I have a crisper drawer from a cast-out refrigerator.

I place the sheets, roughly folded, into the drawer, weight them down with house bricks (did I mention Second Use For Everything ?) and pour in a lovely bacteria-laden pail of water Â vegetable water, slurry from my water butt, all sorts of stuff.

Three hours later all the cardboard is well soaked and (rubber gloves!) into the small vermicomposter it goes.

Worms seem to love cardboard. I've heard theories that they go for the glue. I suspect that worms just carry on eating bacteria, but that the bacteria love the glue.

By soaking the cardboard in bacteria-laden water, I've given the bacteria a head-start on populating themselves, which will encourage the worm population to grow.

View this post with images at http://www.chrisgreaves.com/blogkitchen/blogkitchen.html

Vermicomposting Shredded Paper

2006-06-03T13:06:00.000-07:00

Last August I built a Broom Closet Vermicomposter, and it has worked well, never more than half full.
I built a second Broom Closet Vermicomposter to serve as a receptacle for the output of my office cross-cut shredder. This provided me with a surfeit of large bales of shredded paper.
My apartment is a Carry-In Carry-Out apartment, so I built a Balcony Vermicomposter and charged it with about four gallons of material from the Broom Closet, complete with worms and eggs, and then spent the winter piling shredded paper in it.
Last weekend I opened it, and found to my delight a healthy colony of worms!
We have had a mild winter, and the worms survived.
I am now in the process of emptying the large (four square feet) balcony vermicomposter into the small (one square foot) vermicomposter to free up space on the balcony. I transfer about eight gallons a day, aerating and mixing as I go, and the material settles down in the smaller vermicomposter.

Kitchen Ecology and the Carry-In-Carry-Out philosophy

2006-06-01T07:06:00.000-07:00

This series of notes describes methods for reducing disposal of matter from a single-family dwelling. The model described is a single-occupant apartment, but the model is extensible to a large family unit, and to multiple units.

I have based this system on my visit to Letchworth State Park and Mount Morris Dam in New York State. I am impressed with their "Carry In, Carry Out" philosophy, and decided to bring that philosophy into my home in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

If you've read my notes on SUFE (Second Use For Everything) you'll recognize Kitchen Ecology as taking SUFE to the limit for a small group of items Â food, paper and water. Every particle that falls within one of those groups is used again, and again.

First Post!

2006-05-31T04:48:00.000-07:00

This blog is an account of my efforts to implement Kitchen Ecology; strictly speaking "Local Ecology for the Cold-Climate Apartment Dweller", by which is meant "stuff that anyone can do, if I can do it"!

You can explore more details on events posted here by visiting Second Use For Everything, which site will be upgraded over the next few months.

You can contact me by telephone or email.