Gardening With Children
4/30/2008
Posted by Anthony 7:34 AM 3 comments
Labels: video
Ornamental Grass
4/07/2008
At the end of winter or in early spring, it's a good time to trim your ornamental grass. Cutting away the dried up grass makes room for new growth.
You can trim your ornamental grass with hedge clippers, a very sharp knife or even plain old scissors just like I'm using in this video.
Posted by Anthony 4:12 AM 5 comments
Planting Peas
3/25/2008
Do you love to eat peas but don't live near a supermarket? Have you wished you could grow peas in your own garden but never tried because it was just too complicated?
Well wish no more because with the Planting Peas instructional video, you'll be planting peas in no time.
Posted by Anthony 7:35 PM 3 comments
Labels: seeds, vegetable garden, video
Earth Hour 2008
3/19/2008
What a good idea this Earth Hour is. In case you haven't heard about Earth Hour yet, here's what they have to say about it on their website.
It started with a question: How can we inspire people to take action on climate change?
The answer: Ask the people of Sydney to turn off their lights for one hour.
On 31 March 2007, 2.2 million people and 2100 Sydney businesses turned off their lights for one hour - Earth Hour. If the greenhouse reduction achieved in the Sydney CBD during Earth Hour was sustained for a year, it would be equivalent to taking 48,616 cars off the road for a year.
With Sydney icons like the Harbour Bridge and Opera House turning their lights off, and unique events such as weddings by candlelight, the world took notice. Inspired by the collective effort of millions of Sydneysiders, many major global cities are joining Earth Hour in 2008, turning a symbolic event into a global movement.
Sitting in the dark for an hour sounds like fun and I'm sure my kids will love it. I haven't heard much about this event but if more people participate this year (like me) maybe it'll continue growing. Remember that last year it was only Sydney.
Let's see, with all the LCD clocks on every appliance in the house, I'm going to have to flip the main breaker. Otherwise I'll be pulling out plugs for the entire hour. And anything with a remote control is also using power even while it's off. The stuff in the fridge should be fine for an hour as long as no one opens the door. It'll be interesting to see the electric meter actually stop spinning for once.
I guess the hour after Earth Hour is reset your blinking clocks hour. But for a good cause like this, I really don't mind.
Posted by Anthony 7:04 AM 7 comments
Labels: video
Michael Pollan at TED Video
3/16/2008
Here's a video from the TED Conference (Technology, Entertainment, Design) of
Michael Pollan
The video is a little long but it's worth watching.
Posted by Anthony 3:11 PM 4 comments
Labels: video
Why I Grow Mint In The Garden
3/10/2008
Some home owners avoid growing mint because it tends to spread all over the place. Well I say let it spread. You can never have enough mint. And does anyone know where I can find a hardy lime tree?
Posted by Anthony 1:00 AM 3 comments
Labels: video
How To Start A Compost
3/06/2008
In this video, Bentley “The Compost Guy” Christie is being interviewed by GreenerBusiness about compost. I recently discovered his blog and have been glued to his Bokashi updates. I've been meaning to try Bokashi for a while now but couldn't really find any good instructions until I found The Compost Guy blog.
In the video he discusses starting compost, worm composting and Bokashi. If you're like me and starved for any form of gardening and sick of the cold weather and snow, then it's definitely worth a view.
Posted by Anthony 7:35 AM 1 comments
Aero Garden Videos
12/17/2007
After my Aero Garden post, I decided to hit the search engines and see what I could learn about this thing. Well I don't know how much I learned because it looks like two of the three videos that I found on YouTube are actually from the Aero Garden people. I guess that's what you have to do now a day to market a new product. And I still think the Aero Garden looks like a cool gadget.
Posted by Anthony 12:40 AM 14 comments
Labels: aero garden, lights, seeds, video
Aero Garden
Has anyone seen the Aero Garden? The ads call it the "World's First Indoor Smart Garden." For those of you who haven't seen it, it's an appliance that makes it easy to grow herbs and vegetables right on your kitchen counter. You take a grow pod that has seed in it and drop it into the Aero Garden where it's treated to a "near perfect rainforest growing environment." It has it own lights that are on a timer and it'll tell you when it needs more water or nutrients. These nutrients come in tablet form and you just drop them in. So it's really a hydroponic setup with no dirt involved what so ever. And the Aero Garden people claim that you'll get maximum growth from your plants in a lot less time.
Now, my fondness of compost should be apparent to my regular readers. Getting my hands full of dirt and working in my yard makes for a good day in my book. Not only do I make my own compost but I do my best to keep my yard totally organic. So you'd think that I'd be appalled at growing seeds without dirt in a bath of water and nutrients, right? Well I am, but I still totally want one.
I tried to hate this thing because the idea of growing plants without dirt sounds kind of test tube babyish to me but my love of gadgets won out on this issue. And the idea of having fresh salads and herbs right there in your kitchen, even in the winter sounds great too.
If anyone has any experience with the Aero Garden, I'd be really interested to hear from you. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think. There's a good chance that I may find one under the Christmas Tree this year. It'll probably be marked, To: Anthony, From: Anthony but there's still a good chance that it'll be there.
Posted by Anthony 12:22 AM 4 comments
Labels: aero garden, lights, seeds, video
How To Compost
10/25/2007
While I was stumbling around the internet the other day, I discovered a new site called MonkeySee. It's a YouTube-like video site but they seem to focus on How-To videos. So, in order to test it out, I did the same thing that I do at all the new websites that I visit, I type "compost" in the search box.
And unlike the time that I was looking for compost at Disney.com, MonkeySee actually had some search results. I was pleasantly surprised to find Ed Bruske's Video Series on Composting. You really don't see a lot of videos about compost or even gardening on YouTube either.
Ed made 15 short videos about everything you'll need to know about compost. He's no Paul James, but he definitely knows what he's talking about. I've embedded a sneak peak below.
Posted by Anthony 6:06 PM 9 comments
Compost Tumbler Tumbling
6/15/2007
Google has just announced a cool new sandbox type of place where Blogger.com bloggers can try out new features before they're ready for primetime. It's called Blogger In Draft and it's sort of a beta, laboratory type of environment. And the first new feature that they're testing out is video upload. I don't know about you but when I think of uploading video the first thing that comes to my mind is compost.
What better way to test out this new video feature than to post a short video of my parent's Compost Tumbler. With regular images it's hard to capture the true beauty of making compost. Now with this new Blogger In Draft feature I can post a tumbling tumbler video all from within Blogger. No more uploading to YouTube or Google Video and then adding the codes to the blog posts. Everything's all in one place now.
Yes my Mom and Dad are turning into quite the green parents. In fact my father is planning on installing a 40 foot, 2KW wind turbine at his house in CT this summer. And raising the tower will definitely make for an excellent video too.
I'll be sure to provide windmill updates this summer but this video is of an Urban Compost Tumbler
Posted by Anthony 9:06 AM 6 comments
Labels: compost, compost pictures, video
