Tag: gardening
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Hawley Hamlets: A Nebraska Eco Village
Building a community around an urban food forests may seem like a European idea, but it is gaining interest here in the U.S. as well. With climate change becoming an imminent concern, some community members are investing in their own communities food security. One example is in the heart of one of the more dense…
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Planting the Seed
I was about eight when I started my first garden. My mom helped me tear up a two foot by about ten foot strip of grass next to the west side of the house and we planted beans, carrots, and a few other items. It was a small patch, but I thoroughly enjoyed taking care…
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How to Live Sustainably: A Journey to Self-Reliance
Over the last few months I have been reading and thinking more about what a self sufficient life would look like in today’s modern world. It was not that long ago that people still made, grew, and fixed broken items themselves. Today companies intentionally make products to be thrown away when they break and make…
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Composting Toilets
One of my toilets is inconsistent in its ability to function as such despite repeated attempts to fix it. When I told my husband, in a mostly joking manner, that we should get a composting toilet to replace it, I’m sure he envisioned something old fashioned like a bucket with sawdust that was carried out…
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Three Sisters Gardening
At some point this winter I came across the idea of three sisters gardening and made a note in my planner to do some more research before spring. Well spring is here and I’m hopefully just a few weeks away from planting so I dove into some research on the topic hoping it would make…
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9 Ways to Reuse Wood From an Old Deck
Two weekends ago my husband and I decided to tear out the massive deck on the side of our new home. What appeared to be a nice outdoor space when we purchased the home was revealed to be in rough shape as the snow melted away. The previous owners attempted to patch it up and…
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Compost Bin 2.0
A little over a year ago I built my first compost bin and while it worked okay and was cheap to construct, it had several disadvantages. I diverted 16 months worth of food scraps and several trash cans of leaves from the landfill. The biggest problem with the bin was the fact that it did…
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Backyard Composting
My first zero waste change was a fairly easy one. While living in the Twin Cities metro I was first introduced to composting. In Columbia Heights the City provided residents with a starter kit that consisted of a 5 gallon bucket, roll of large compost bags, and a few coupons. There was one central location…
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Rain Garden Myths Debunked: An Informative Guide
If you asked me a year ago what a rain garden was I would not have been able to explain it correctly. I believed one of the many misconceptions, that rain gardens are filled with water. A properly designed rain garden infiltrates the water into the ground within 24 hours. That is their primary purpose,…
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Becoming a Master Water Steward: My Journey
For the past six months I have been attending Tuesday night classes to learn about water. Organized by the Freshwater Society, the coursework is designed to equip each new wave of students with the tools and skills necessary to create positive change in their neighborhoods. We began with the basics, starting with the water cycle,…
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The Planning Lady 