Don't throw out your leaves!

Do-it-yourself leaf mold is great to improve your garden's soil

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Instead of raking the leaves in your yard and garden together, putting them into plastic bags and setting them on the curb to be picked up and added to a landfill, where most will end up via the municipal waste stream unless your council operates a green waste recycling scheme, turn them into leaf mold.

The dark, crumbly finished product of leaf mold is a great soil amendment and conditioner and if we are going to be dealing with droughts in our gardens in the future, which no doubt we will, increasing the moisture retention of our soils is important. Leaf mold is better still than wood chip mulch in this department as it improves the soil much better and quicker.

Finished leaf mold can be used as a mulch to suppress weeds and trap moisture, blended into the soil of garden beds, and added to container gardens and making leaf mold is, in fact, ridiculously easy. If composting seems too complicated and involved for you: give making your own leaf mold a try. All you need to create leaf mold is a space, leaves, water and time.

The easiest way of making leaf mold is to rake all of your leaves into a pile in the corner of your garden or yard. Once you’ve gathered the leaves into place, wet the pile down and keep it moist for the next six months to a year. If your leaf mold pile is at risk of being thrown about by kids, pets or the wind create pen to keep it in place.

Make a round or square frame out of chicken wire, reclaimed wood or similar to the DIY compost bins the designs of which you find all over the Internet. You can also put the leaves, ideally shredded, into black plastic bin liners, moisten them and then tie up the bags.

If you have a mulching mower you can speed up decomposition by riding over your leaf mold pile and shredding the leaves into smaller pieces.

A few years ago while watching one of those cable documentaries on the drug trade, I saw a cocaine farmer use a weed trimmer to shred cocoa leaves to process them faster. And you know what? It works! After you’ve corralled all of your leaves in place you can run a weed trimmer through the pile to break it down. Shredded leaves not only break down faster, but you have room for more leafs and taller piles.

All leaves you collect in autumn are good candidates for making leaf mold, though some are better than others when it comes to breaking down and decomposing. Smaller leaves, such as birch, alder and Japanese maples, can break down in as little as six months. Oak and hornbeam leaves similarly break down rather fast.

The bottom of your leaf mold pile can be ready to be mixed into your soil, used as a mulch, or mixed into your favorite container gardening soil mix in as little as half a year. Therefore, take some time this season to rake up your leaves – and those of your neighbors – to improve the soil in your garden. You will be keeping valuable organic matter out of landfills and preventing your neighbors from making burn piles this autumn.

The leaves have sequestered carbon over the year and this carbon is released into your soil when added to it and will feed your plants. So thus you should not waste it.

If you grow your own – vegetables that is – in the way that I do in “containers” of various sorts you can use the so-called lasagne gardening method and, in fact, add the leaf mold after six month to the bottom of the container and spread a thin, about four or five inches or so, layer of soil and compost above in which you sow your seeds or plant your plugs.

Waste not want not is the old adage and it applies also to those autumn leaves.

© 2012

Saving water

Saving water, during a drought and in general

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

“Don't rush to flush if it's only a pee” was the water saving eco-advice given in a booklet produced by the office of the Mayor of London under Ken Livingstone and this is a good advice.

Using less water in our homes (and elsewhere) is not only good environmental practice, it also makes financial sense, especially if you are on a water meter. If you are not than, in financial terms, there is no benefit but in the long run you too will benefit as there remains enough water to go round.

Once again we have seen how our water resources are stretched, especially in the South, South East and East of England where several dry winters in a row have given us another, though by now rather wet, drought and hosepipe bans are in place and the there was the threat, almost, of also other restrictions.

How a country such as Britain where it rains a great deal though, as said, the last couple of winters have been rather dry, bar some snow the year before last and the one before, ends up having water shortages confuses most of our European neighbors. The problem is that unlike most of the Britain does not have a national water grid and makes every excuse under the sun for not putting one in place.

The other problem, especially for the Southern Counties and the Home Counties, is that there are simply too many people living there and too much industry situated there; both of which impacts seriously on the water resources.

Furthermore the water infrastructure is so old, in many places dating from the Victorian era, with little to no investment having been made into it for at least three quarters of a decade. Pipes are so porous that one could almost say that they appear to be resembling a sieve in many places and the water companies seem to be incapable or unwilling to actually get on top of that problem and plug the leaks.

When it comes to saving water, and not only the householders need to think about that; business need to also, there are a number of things that can be done and using the flush on the toilet only when needed is but one.

When it comes to using water a home it is a case “when not necessary don't run the tap” also and that means especially when brushing your teeth. Way too many people – and the reason for this beats me – leave the tap running when cleaning their teeth. Use a beaker as we always did and I still do to rinse. Much better anyway than sticking your head under the tap.

Take a four-minute shower instead of a bath. That saves a great deal of water especially considering how many gallons of pure clean water is being used with each and every bath.

Get a rainwater butt – or more than one – for use in the garden. Rainwater is also much better for use with your plants, be those flowers or vegetables, than is tap water. The chlorine is what cause the problem of leaf burn when watering is done during the day (though watering during the day when the sun is high is not a good idea as the water will evaporate) as chlorine is, basically, a salt.

More water savings could be achieved if you use gray water in the garden, for instance, or for the flushing of your lavatory. Gray water is that kind of water that you have been using for washing your hands, during a shower and such. With the right tools it can be captured and used another time. The only gray water I would not suggest using is the one from washing the dishes as that may, aside from detergent which would not be all that good for watering plants, grease which would cause a problem also when used for flushing the lavatory.

Gray water use requires a little forethought and diverters where certain types of water are used for specific applications, such as the water from your washing machine for use only to flush the lavatory and not to go for watering the garden, for instance.

Those are but a few suggestions that could save you money, if your water use is metered and you pay according to that, and which, and that is most important, can help conserve precious water resources.

© 2012

Get ready for the water wars – and not just in the Southern USA or the dry areas

If the 19th century was about land, 20th century was about oil, the 21st century will be about water

by Michael Smith

There are more of us and if we all drink, wash, flush, generate, irrigate, manufacture, etc., and continue to use and especially abuse and waste water the way we currently do we are going to be in dire straights.

This is not primarily because of droughts in say the Southern USA or in Australia but simply because of the way that we use water and the fact that we flush thousands of gallons of that previous resource down the drain daily, more often than not needlessly. We cannot continue to go on like this; no way.

A decaying highway, plunged deep underwater after Lake Hartwell was dammed in the 1950s, sits exposed once again across what remains of the bay outside Big Water Marina.

This is a depressing reminder of the toll from a stubborn Southern drought that only recently began to abate with replenishing rains this fall. Much of the region has recovered, but a ring stretching from northeast Georgia to the western Carolinas remains stuck in "extreme" drought.

However, it is not just the empty or part empty reservoirs in drought areas that must concern us. We all must think about the way we use water. In addition to that our immense consumption of bottled water, which removes so much of the spring water and other such from the source before it ever even reaches such reservoirs.

It is at times not due to drought that such reservoirs have run dry but because of the water extraction elsewhere for other purposes, and bottles water is one of those that does just that.

Neither is this, necessarily, a result of the so-called “Global Warming” or “Climate Change”, but more often than not bad water management and especially bad water usages and great water wastage.

When the UK had a couple of extremely dry and warm to hot summers and we were put under drought orders in several regions we were also told that it would take years of steady rainfall to refill the reservoirs and especially the aquifers.

Then came the wet summer of 2007 and after just a few days of nigh on continuous and also heavy rain, something that should not have, according to the experts, been filling up the aquifers, we suddenly heard on the news that, unless the rain abated rather soon all the aquifers would be overflowing. But, I thought it would take years of continuous steady rain for them to fill up again and heavy rain in only a few days would not do that. So, at least the experts told us.

Our water usages and the wastage of this precious resource is what is causing most problems. Cars are washed willy-nilly and lawns watered, even during droughts. What for? Toilets are flushed all the time even if it is only for a wee. Each and every time a toilet is being flushed that are about ten liters – 2.5 US gallons – of clean perfectly safe drinking water literally down the tube.

As regards to Hartwell, a massive 56,000-acre lake straddling Georgia-South Carolina state line, is near the epicenter. Even after a spate of recent downpours, its water line is nearly 18 feet below normal levels.

"We never thought we'd see it. We never thought the lake would go this far down," said Jane Davis, who built the marina from the ground up with her husband. "Everyone needs water, but Hartwell has finally given more water than it can take."

Some residents blame the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which sends millions of gallons of water from the lake each week downstream to the Savannah River to help supply Savannah, Augusta and other cities.

They also worry that the Corps and another federal agency, the Southeastern Power Administration, focus too much on generating electricity and too little on keeping the lake full.

"You're going to have to put lake levels on the priority list," said Mike Gray, a real estate broker in nearby Anderson, S.C., who has a growing list of unsold homes on the lake's banks.
The Corps, which has reduced water releases from Hartwell by 15 percent this month, said producing electricity is an "incidental" byproduct of sending water downstream.

Atttitudes like that are really the worrying thing, in my view, when it is more important for those like that real estate broker, that the lake is full so that people can have their big boats on their and go playing rather than whether people have water to drink or electricity.

This is a man-made lake, a reservoir, and it is there to be used for water for drinking, power generating and other uses, but not, primarily, for boating, however nice this may be for the residents around that lake.

Until such a time that the world gets its priorities right, and I mean here the people of the world, we are going to be a deep you know what. Too many with the money – they still have some it seems – are more concerned as to where they can play with their boats and impress their friends with having a boat at a marina, and such. Time for some changes, methinks.

Reservoirs are there to store water for times of needs and not whether some boats can be sailed on there, or whether there is great fishing. That all is secondary and should be thus. Time everyone woke up to this fact, whether at Hartwell or elsewhere.

Water is needed for people, wildlife and nature; the boats are not needed. It is time those that think they can do because they have the money get real. If there is no water to irrigate the fields then they have no food either. But, I guess, they'd simply reckon that they go an buy imported stuff. Brilliant – NOT!

I rest my case.

© M Smith (Veshengro), December 2008
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10 liters down the drain – every time

by Michael Smith

Each and every time that you flush your WC in the UK – and I assume that this is not much different in the USA and Canada, for instance – you flush about ten liters of good clean drinking water down the drain.

The advice that was given last year or so by the then Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, or let's better say, by his office, of “don't rush to flush if it's only a pee” is something that we should take to heart.

Water, water to drink, is going to become more and more precious and rare if we do not stop flushing it down the drain and ultimately into the sea when it not all comes back to us as water, in the form of rain. In fact much of it is lost to us.

This is why we must make an effort to stop the wastage of water, and the flushing of the WC each and every time that we go for a pee, for instance, may be something that we must curb.

If we do not make every effort to reduce our wastage of water we will be facing a problem in the future.

Those 10 liters mentioned here is the amount of water that every flush of the lavatory sends down towards the sewerage works and then the sea, most of it never ever to be seen again on dry land. In addition to that there is the water that is wasted by taps left running while brushing teeth. It always beats me why people insist on having the tap running while they brush. It is just as easy to turn the taps off. Also, what is wrong for rinsing to use a beaker instead?

The way we treat water is as if it is just simply there. We have this “who cares” attitude about it, as if we are thinking that it will be there for ever. It may not the way we carry on.

The only way we get fresh water is through rain and that rain has to actually end up in the aquifers and not run out to sea, yet again.

However, due to the fact that we have so much of our ground concreted over and tarmacked over, the water, especially during heavy and prolonged periods of rain – if we have them – just runs into the rivers without going through the soil and ground first, causes flooding and then is off to the sea. Most of that water that thus heads that way is then lost to us for ever. The hydrological cycle that those of us that have gone to school have had explained does not actually work that way at all – at least not anymore. Hence we have to conserve water somewhat more, and this may and maybe should include rainwater harvesting.

For the use in the flushing of he lavatories gray water and harvested rainwater also could and should be used and many new housing developments in Britain, for instance, now have to have rainwater harvesting and gray water as standard, and a good idea this is, methinks.

There are, however, countries and areas where rainwater harvesting, even on a small rain barrel in he garden scale, is illegal, such as a number of States in the United States. There is it a felony to divert the rainwater away from its natural flow. Sorry, but methinks that is more that silly. In fact, I would say, it borders on the insane. Then again many statutes here and elsewhere appear to have been drafted and then passed by people who are, in fact, a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

Ii honestly sometime wonder as to whether it is a requirement to be a politician to be stupid and and imbecile, for the more I see of them and the more I observe the mammals of the genus “politicus grandicus” the more I believe this to be thus.

While we must not waste water, the opposite in fact; that is to say we must conserve it as much as possible, we should and must be able to capture and use the water that comes from the roofs of our homes in order to conserve the tap water, in that we can use it in our gardens and to flush the lavatories and such.

© M Smith (Veshengro), December 2008
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Fix that leaky tap

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The amount of “greening” of your home that you can do depends on whether you own or whether you rent, obviously.

If you rent, whether apartment or house, there are limits as to what you can – and also, I am sure, as to what you want to, as it it not your place – do as to “greening” the home.

You cannot, in general, add solar panels, for instance, or install double- or even triple-glazing, loft insulation and other such or do anything about the heating system. Nor can you add a wind generator, however small, to your home, especially if it is an apartment, in general.

The same also can be if you rent a house, especially of you have not the most secure of tenancies.

You don't then, I am sure, want to pay out money for expensive things that, while they may even give you savings and all that, you may not be able to take with you should have have to or want to move.

There is one thing, however, that all of us, whether we own or rent, can do as regards to greening the place where we live and that is ensuring that we do not – needlessly – use, or more precise, waste water.

Ensuring that taps, or faucets, as our American cousins like to call them, are not dripping, and the same for shower heads and other such reduced the waste of water and thereby your impact on the precious water resources of this planet. No drinking bottled water is another one of those reductions of impact on water resources, but that was not the issue here, really.

Too many of us allow a drip, drip, drip of taps and shower heads to continue day in, day out, to year in and year out as it is, as many often think, just a minor little problem that is less an issue than to get a plumber out to fix a new washer or – heaven forbid – a new valve even. Many of us thus think we are saving money but we do not; at least not if we have metered water supplies. Many such drip, drip, drip add up to gallons of water a year that are lost and which those of us that pay per meter have to pay for – in the end. Then again, in the end we all pay for water wastage; us in the developing world for higher water bills and in the way of lower river and ground water table levels and even droughts. We all end up paying for it in the end. Same as with the bottled water mania.

According to the United Nations, around 400 million people worldwide are currently facing severe water shortages, and by 2050, so it is said, that number will be 4 billion. The southeastern United States is currently feeling the pinch from a severe drought, approaching the point where flushing the toilet and brushing your teeth is a luxury. And now let's not even talk about Australia.

In these dry times, it is more important than ever to make sure that you are not letting water just drip down the drain, or leak out of your toilet. Here the culprit often is the cistern overflow, caused by a faulty valve inside the cistern itself.

According to the Earth Policy Institute, the average prices for water in America is about $2.50 per 1,000 gallons, which is about a quarter of what it costs in some European countries. It doesn't sound like much, but considering that a leaky tap can drip 20 gallons a day down the drain, and a leaky toilet 200 gallons. When you add that up then you might as well toss two crisp $100 bills, that is to say around £100 plus in English currency, down the drain each year.

Stopping these two leaks is easy, and definitely worth a couple hundred bucks. For your faucets, just watch them, or put an empty glass where a drip would fall; if it fills up in a few hours, you've got a leak. Your toilet can be a little trickier, as it can be tough to "see" the water you're wasting; test your toilet by putting a few drops of food coloring in the tank, and if you see traces of it in the bowl 5-to-10 minutes later, it's time to call your handy neighbor or your plumber. In addition to that, as I indicated above, there are the leaks from the Torbeck valve, the valve that stops your cistern (tank) from filling up over the top. In case the valve fails you have a pipe to the outside from the cistern to let any such overflow slow out. And when that flows it flows.

If you know what you are doing then at least the leaky taps, which often only require a washer to be replaced, are an easy enough DIY task. Replacing a Torbeck valve is a little more complicates but, theoretically, can also be accomplished by a DIYer.

So, let's stop them leaky taps and valves.

© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008

Water and Money down the pan - £3bn a year!!

Water costs money and will soon be costing a lot more when the cost of flood defences are loaded onto water bills. We each use 150 litres a day, 60 being used for toilet flushing alone. The flushing toilet is by far the biggest user so this is where the greatest savings can be made.

DO NOT buy a dual-flush, 'push-button' operated toilet, these are the biggest 'Trojan-Horse' of water saving ever because they ALL have 'DROP-VALVES' in the cistern, which have been KNOWN to leak for 160 years. The leakage rate in the USA is 15-30 litres per person per day and has been in textbooks for decades. At any one time in the USA, one in five valve toilets leak at over 20,000 US gallons per year. Do NOT fall for the 'lure' of simple 'Push-Button' operation, it will cost you plenty in leakage.

Stay with siphon toilets, characterised with their handle operation, these NEVER leak, the siphons proper name is the 'Water Waste Preventor' on account of it being invented in 1863 to replace leaky valves back then.

For 150 years we have 'pressed and let go', releasing the full cistern every time, a complete waste of water and money, literally down the pan.

For cisterns with FRONT handles, fit the INTERFLUSH, a DIY retrofit kit from www.interflush.co.uk, which converts the siphon to INTERRUPTIBLE flushing, just stop it when you like. Operation now becomes: 'Press, HOLD DOWN to flush, let go to stop the flush, as soon as pan is clear. Uses only what is needed, wasting none at all, saving on average HALF the flushing water, 30 litres per person per day. Costs under £20, saves thousands over the years, payback time of weeks not years. Norwich Union and Barclays bank are installing it. It cut Norwich Union's water bill by over 20%.

The above two measures can save UK consumers almost £3Bn a year and half a million tonnes of carbon emissions from reduced pumping and treatment.

Source: Ethical Junction

Green (Living) Review comment: In addition to the installation of such a device if the guys could leave their hands off the lever if it is just a wee then we also would save a lot more water. As the Mayor of London's Office suggested last year “don't rush to flush, if it is only a pee”. Also a suggestion, methinks.

M Smith (Veshengro), June 2008

Fourteen ways to save water in your garden

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

It is important, especially nowadays, that we all protect our precious water sources and water resources by using water wisely. This does bot mean, however, that you have to let your yard and garden dry up completely. The trick is to know when to water and how much water to use on the plants and also and especially as well as what to plant and when. The following tips will help you water less often and more effectively.

Please also remember that everything that you put in or on your plants and lawn to make them grow is also going to find its way either onto your skin or into your vegetables, and the excess will go into the groundwater.

Chemicals do not all decompose into meaningless neutral entities. On the contrary rather. If you have not done so already, it might be advisable to make a change t to organic or natural fertilizers and insecticides. They are safer to handle, safer for your pets and safer for your kids, plus they don't contaminate the groundwater.

Read the rest here...

Turn off the tap while brushing your teeth

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

I must say that I have never understood why anyone would want or need to have the tap running when brushing their teeth, especially in some case the hot tap, and have always found this rather strange.

This may, however, be due to the fact that I was raised with the beaker for use with brushing teeth, and we did not have running water, neither hot or cold, though the cold running water could be had when it was raining, as I am of Gypsy stock, and I grew up a rather old way.

Once we moved into a house this habit remained though, that is to say, the use of a beaker of water for the rinse after brushing teeth. There is no need whatsoever for running a tap while cleaning one's teeth, no need and reason whatsoever. If need be then simply wet your toothbrush before you begin and use a glass of water, as I said, to rinse your mouth once you have finished or, if you must, even in between.

Turning off the water while you brush your teeth will save about 4 gallons a minute. That's 200 gallons a week for a family of four. If your water is metered then you will find that you will also make significant savings this way. Where, like here where I live, we are but charged a flat rate – which is unfair in a way to those like myself that save water and who live on their own and do not use that much – there are not financial savings to be had this way but the environmental savings are still the same.

© M Smith (Veshengro), June 2008

Don't rush to flush -

- if it's just a pee

This is the advice given in the DIY Planet Repairs Toolkit (review of this little "kit" to follow soon) from the Office of the Mayor of London.

While the idea of not flushing the lavatory each and every time, even if it was just a “pee”, may offend some people and even be considered unhygienic and even unclean by some, it would save lots of water if we all would follow this advice. Each and every time the loo is flushed “unnecessarily”, gallons of perfectly good water are just literally poured down the drain.

If we see that even in countries as rich – at least in some places that country is – as the USA there are places where water has become so scarce that the supply has to be trucked in by tanker and then is released from a water tower to the community only for a few hours each day then such advice as given in that booklet from the London Mayor's Office might be worth more than just a little consideration. Who know is we not all, one day, be faced with similar water shortages as are being reported from the USA, if we do not learn to conserve water.

While households are one source of water wastage often, as with all too frequent flushing of the lavatory and leaving the tap running while brushing teeth (Why would anyone do that? What's wrong with using a beaker?), industry is one of the major users and indeed wasters of water, though only second in line after the water companies themselves who do not fix leaks and broken pipes fast enough. Before they should even be permitted to tell their customers to conserve water, however important and necessary this may be and is, they must get their own act together first and sort out those pipes that seem to be more porous than a sieve and that are for ever leaking gallons and gallons of water into the surrounding soil and elsewhere.

© M V Smith, November 2007