DIY Vertical Garden Planter - Finished Product (Post 2 of 2)

About a month ago I posted about a vertical planter I made.  I wanted to share the finished product so you can see how it turned out, and share the final materials list and cost, in case you'd like to make one yourself.  I adjusted the design a bit because the upper shelves needed more soil than I originally provided for.

If you don't have much space in your yard, or just have a balcony or other outdoor space this design is great for getting a lot of planting space out of a small amount of surface area.  For a spice or herb garden this would work awesome.  For larger fruits and vegetables I would opt for a deeper planter or for optimum production in the ground.


Tools:

1. Saw
2. Drill (with Phillips head bit)
3. Tape measure
4. Level (I didn't use this, but if you want everything perfect would come in handy to check yourself)

Materials:

1. 6 - 1" x 6" x 8 foot lumber
2. 2 - 5/8 " x 1/2 " x 6 foot cedar fence boards
3. 2" wood screws (box)

Directions:

1. Cut 8 foot lumber in half, resulting in 12 pieces, each 4 feet long
2. Separate pieces into 4 groups, with 3 pieces each.  Screw together lengthwise at right angles to create shelves
3. Attach first shelf at bottom of cedar fence boards to create base, putting screws through the side of the cedar fence boards, which are the vertical pieces
4. Measure up 15 inches from top of base and attach next shelf, repeating to the top of the fence boards.
5. Vertical garden planter is now complete. Add organic soil and plants as desired.
6. If water is not draining down from the upper shelves, you can drill a few holes in the underside of the shelf, in the middle of the board to help.

I used Fox Farm Ocean Forest soil for my planter, my first time using the product, and it has been awesome.  I'm not always the best at growing potted plants and have been really impressed with the results.  I highly recommend this product.

My total cost for making this planter was 49.89 and the cost for each material is posted here.  I've been really happy with the turnout so far, and have my first ever banana peppers, serrano peppers, and paprika peppers ready for picking.  Here's a photo of the finished product.

Front profile

 The plants I'm trying out are (from upper left):

• Banana pepper
• Serrano pepper
• Malabar spinach
• Purple basil
• Hungarian paprika
• English thyme
• Okra
• Burpless cucumber
• Dinosaur kale
• New Zealand spinach (my favorite of the items in the planter - really awesome)

Thanks to the Horton Plaza Farmers Market, City Farmers Nursery, and the Little Italy Farmers Market for the plants. :)

Side profile

Happy planting (and eating)!

10 Steps to Greener Flying

Everywhere I travel, tiny life. Single-serving sugar, single-serving cream, single pat of butter. The microwave Cordon Bleu hobby kit. Shampoo-conditioner combos, sample-packaged mouthwash, tiny bars of soap. The people I meet on each flight? They're single-serving friends.

- Fight Club

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Today's post: how to be more environmentally friendly when flying. Suggestions are in a 10 top list format, although not necessarily in order of impact.

1. Don't fly or fly less often 
1. For most of us, flying is the biggest single contributor to our annual greenhouse gas emissions. One flight equals about 15% of our annual personal emissions. especially if flying multiple times a year. Cutting out one flight a year goes a long way towards being more 'green'. Plus, you might discover something really awesome closer to home.
2. But sometimes flying is better than driving
1. Driving solo in a car can produce more emissions than taking a flight, especially if over a long distance. Here's a calculator to help you determine which method of travel may be the best choice for you.
3. Opt for direct flights over connecting flights
1. In addition to saving time and being more convenient, taking a direct flight also produces fewer emissions than having a connection.  Takeoff and landing produce about 50% of the emissions of a flight so avoiding an additional stop makes a big difference on the emissions of a trip.  Also, a direct flight means fewer air miles because of the more direct flight path.
4. Just say no to free food and drink
1. As tempting as it can be to take full advantage of all the freebies on a flight in hopes of getting back part of the hundreds of dollars you paid for the flight and baggage fees, fight the urge to consume as many 8 ounces servings of soda and peanuts as possible on the flight.  It's tempting to fall into the trap of "it's free, I'm taking all I can" - the same mentality that can put placid adults into a frenzy over a free XXXL t-shirt at a sporting event.
2. Most of the freebies on a flight are highly processed food and beverage items, in single serving containers that are often made of plastic and will likely not be recycled.  It's estimated that about 20 percent of the recyclable items in the flight industry are actually recycled.
5. Take a water bottle
1. To help stay hydrated, save some money, and reduce your footprint take a water bottle with you and fill up in the airport.  Remember it has to be empty to go through security but you can easily refill at a water fountain on the other side of the TSA vanguard.
6. Take snacks and food with you
1. Pack food to take with you. This will help to avoid the single-serving snack temptation, be more healthy, and save you some money if you can skip the terminal eateries.
2. Some favorites of my favorite items to take, all of which are OK to take through security, are:
1. Oranges
2. Raisins
3. Almonds
4. Loaf of bread (freshly baked the morning of the flight)
5. Apples
6. Bananas
7. Take public transport to / from the airport
1. Public transit instead of a car or cab is a more eco-friendly way to travel, and helping to support public transit increases the likelihood of expanded routes and dollars for public transit in the future.
2. Some cities also have options like Car2Go here in San Diego, which is an electric fleet of vehicles shared among customers.  Other cities, like perennial bicycle power Portland, have bicycle resources so you can cruise to and from the airport on two wheels.
8. Pack lighter
1. Everything put on a flight increases the amount of fuel needed to haul it.  If you can cut out 5 pounds, or take one bag instead of two, you can help to reduce the amount of fuel needed for a flight.  Having fewer, or smaller, bags will also make it easier to navigate the airport.
9. Take a coffee mug
1. This mostly applies if you drink coffee or other warm beverages. As with a water bottle suggestion, reusing and avoiding waste makes sense.  You can even double up a mug for both coffee and water to cut down on packing needs.  Highly recommend a stainless steel (double walled) option, with a really good lid.
10. Give feedback to businesses and airports
1. Let the businesses you interact with know your thoughts.  Whether it's a positive - thanks for recycling! - or a negative - can you please recycle? - companies are more likely to respond when they hear from their customers.  You can give feedback in person, via social media like Twitter and Facebook, send a letter to the corporate offices, or in any other way you can think of.  It's not complaining, it's giving businesses a chance to keep or increase your business with them.  That's something that businesses will nearly universally embrace.

Happy travels!

- John

Sweet home San Diego.

Simple Syrup - Cocktail Must - Recipe

Amelia and I are relative novices to the world of cocktail making, and generally prefer beer to cocktails anyway.  However, in our limited experience with making cocktails one clutch ingredient we have become big fans of is simple syrup.  Many drinks call for sugar and using simple syrup in place of stirring in sugar will help your cocktails to turn out more consistent, and ensure that you don't have undissolved sugar resting at the bottom of your glass.

To improve the legibility and ease of sharing recipes I decided to create an AllRecipes.com profile.  I really like the site and it makes it easy to convert recipes for different serving amounts.  Plus, there is a huge searchable database that we regularly use when we are cooking.

Simple syrup is very easy to make and our recipe can be found here.  We make extra and then keep it in a mason jar in the refrigerator so that we don't have to wait for it to cool every time we want to use some.  You can buy simple syrup in almost any grocery or liquor store, but as with most items if you make your own you'll save some money and also be more aware of the ingredients you are consuming.  Additionally, you can  probably avoid some preservatives or fillers in your drinks that you don't need.

Happy Friday and happy cocktailing!

- John

Recycling Habits

Old habits die hard.  I grew up without a recycling service and except for aluminum cans, which we could take to a recycling center for cash, we didn't do any recycling at home when I was young.  College was a different story and there were recycling bins in each room, as well as around campus.  However, college isn't quite the same as the 'real world' so I would count my first true experience with a recycling program as my years in Chicago - from summer 2006 through summer 2009.

The Chicago city recycling program when I lived there was known as the 'Blue Bag' program.  At grocery stores you could purchase a roll of blue plastic bags, and recyclable items were placed into these special bags and deposited in the same garbage cans as trash, which was put in the standard white or black plastic bags.  The blue bags were supposed to be separated from the trash and then sent to a recycling center for further sorting and processing.  Eventually the blue bags were replaced with blue plastic trash cans and the blue bag program was retired.  It was widely known as a failure and the city stopped even separating the recyclable blue bags from the regular trash sometime in 2008, a couple of years before the program was formally scrapped.

If you've lived in Chicago or are familiar with Illinois politics you probably wouldn't be surprised to find a poorly managed public service in waste management, or other areas of government.

Although the items I attempted to recycle in Chicago likely never reached a recycling center and are probably in a landfill tomb somewhere today, it was still a good learning experience in getting used to sorting the waste types and becoming more cognizant of which types of items can be recycled and which can not.  The obvious items like plastic bottles or aluminum cans were easy to remember to put in the blue bags and I was used to doing so from childhood and college.

Other items, however, were equally recyclable and I never thought to separate them.  Many items I continued to throw into the garbage because I was still in a worldview where that was the standard and I relied on the habits I had developed in earlier years.  For example, a toilet paper roll is just as recyclable as a newspaper or other cardboard product but I never thought of recycling them until I attended an Earth Day presentation at work and they noted that item specifically is often overlooked.

I continue to learn and adjust my habits to be more Earth-friendly and over the past couple of years have found many items that I wouldn't have put into recycling until I thought more about what they were made of and thought more thoroughly about what we were throwing away.

If you have a recycling program (or don't but want to get into the habit of recycling for the day that you do) here are some common items that you may not be currently recycling.

1. Toilet paper rolls
2. CD and DVD cases
3. Batteries
1. This is especially important because many types of batteries contain hazardous materials like mercury, lead, cadmium, and nickel. Many post offices and other stores will recycle batteries for you.
4. Junk mail and other paper waste
1. Almost any type of paper waste can be recycled and junk mail is a commonly encountered item for nearly every American.

There are many other items that can be recycled, and as recycling programs continue to evolve and new technologies are developed the list of items that can be recycled continues to grow.  

Contact your local recycling program for details in your area, and if you don't have a program already talk to your local politicians and environmental groups to express your support for one.

The best option is to reduce consumption.  The second best option is to reuse.  The third best option is to recycle.

Food Choices & Purchases

As I learn more about the environment and related issues the more I realize how connected the many parts of our lives are.  One area I have been reading on and learning more about lately is food and agriculture.  In my efforts to live in a more Earth-friendly way I have been trying to reduce packaged and processed foods from our diet.  This began because I simply wanted to reduce the amount of packaging we were recycling or throwing away.  I've tried to replace these items with unpackaged produce and bulk bin purchases for which I can use my own bags and avoid packaging waste.

An added benefit of purchasing unprocessed, packaged foods and produce has been that I've learned a lot about cooking and how to use these items in various dishes, and about the effects that different foods have on our bodies.  There are many, many foods in the world and I'm just beginning to learn about them but even in a short amount of time I feel that my worldview of food and food production has been greatly changed.  In addition to the culinary uses and health effects of food, I've also learned a bit about the impact that different farming methods and products have on the environment, and directly or indirectly our health as well.

Some things that are of import to Americans I wanted to share, since it seems that we often think that eating more healthy or more organic is prohibitively expensive.  I certainly thought this way but have found that eating more healthy has been a minimal increase in cost, if any increase at all.

1. We spend a far smaller amount of our income on food today than in the past
1. In total, Americans today spend 15.3% of our income on food, compared to 40% that we spent in 1949.  In other words, if we paid about 3 times the price we currently pay for food we would be paying a comparable amount to what our grandparents paid for food.
2. Compared to other countries we spend very little of our budget on food purchases
1. For the average American household, food accounts for about 6% of all our purchases during the year.  (This differs from the 15.3% above because that figured is in total and the 6% is calculating food expenditures on an average household basis.) The US has the 12th highest GDP per capita in the world, $48,100 per year.  
2. Compare this percentage of income to a much poorer country like South Africa, which has the 105th highest GDP per capita, $11,000 per year, but where food accounts for 20% of purchases.  Or India, where food accounts for 35% of expenses and the GDP per capita is $3,700 a year - 163rd globally.
3. In fact, the US spends the smallest percentage of income on food of any country in the world, while being one of the most wealthy countries.  Although it makes sense that food is a somewhat fixed costs in terms of quantity (a person can only eat a limited amount of food) it is telling that our food costs are about half of an average European country which have similarly high income per capita.  For example, Norway has a higher GDP per capita, $53,300 (8th highest globally), but spends 11% of their budget on food.
3. The percentage of our population that is obese continues to increase
   As of 2009-2010, over one third (35.7%) of American adults are obese.
   

Although these figures vary somewhat between different studies and sources the overall picture is clear. We spend very little of our income on food purchases, and our health continues to be severely damaged by preventable diseases related to obesity (heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer).

In the future I plan to write more about food and how we are trying to improve our eating habits. Food and health are complex issues with many variables to consider, but eating more unprocessed foods is a simple first step to better health that has been enjoyable for us so far.

 to Honeycrisp

Switching from Golden Crisp . . .