The Canny Gardener

how to grow, cook and use plants, plus some philosophy!

Tag Archives: reuse


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Making a terrarium

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I travel quite frequently for work, so while I like to see greenery indoors, I found that I can’t really take time over indoor plants.  From books to plant feeds and self-watering systems, and once, even leaf shining wipes (embarrassing!), I have tried many ways to look after these plants.  Inevitably these have been a waste of time and money.  I have been responsible for many shriveled and dead plants.  So now I have made a terrarium.

While I looked at many Youtube videos and web based advice before starting out, I was also keep to make it out of what I had at home and not buy more stuff.  I also took inspiration from the Princess of Wales greenhouse at Kew Gardens, London.  I learnt that there were some key ingredients for a terrarium-

  1. An inert base made of charcoal, especially if there were plants needing frequent watering.  The charcoal helped to absorb odours, keep the terrarium free of fungal or insect infestations, like it does in aquariums.
  2. Moss- which helped to regulate moisture in the air, absorbing the excess
  3. Main plants that you want to use inside and any ‘decorations’

Charcoal is useful if you are going for a closed self sustaining system but as I was using cactus and succulents, my terrarium needed to be open and so I didn’t need the charcoal.  So I made the base of used match sticks, found the moss in the garden and I already had the pasta jar which I cleaned before use.  I reused the compost that came with the succulents and cactus to which I added some sand.  Believe it or not, the aloe plant came as a decoration from a plate of rice ordered in a restaurant!  I needed to have a vision of what I wanted the terrarium to look like before starting.  If you like, you can draw a rough sketch before inserting anything inside as it can be very fiddly to take things in and out and also this risks damaging the delicate plants.  You can use chopsticks, or tweezers or any kind of grabbing instrument to place the plants.

I first laid out the matchstick base, then put in the soil over which I laid the moss. I kept space in between these where I wanted to place the plants.  These plants do not need depths for soil- they are happy with shallow soils as their roots don’t go very far.  What you need to be careful with is the amount of water you use as these plants need good drainage.  After I inserted everything including the ornaments, I sprayed the inside generously.  Then I forgot about it!  It has been one month now and the cactus has sprouted a little baby and the succulents, aloe and the moss are doing fine. I spray water every 3 weeks and that seems to keep it fine.  Too much water and everything will rot.  My next project will be to make a terrarium for orchids.


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Buildings, beauty and plants

Even the most ugly buildings get transformed by flowers.  I have been photographing beautiful flowers on buildings.  As John Ruskin realised during the Industrial Revolution ‘that the quest to make a more beautiful world is inseparable from the need to remake it politically, economically and socially’. Tsunesaburo Makiguchi believed that beauty, benefit and goodness provided the basis for a creative society.

I am currently working on a project that is bringing beauty in the form of plants and flowers, sustainability in the form of rainwater recycling and solar panels and benefit in form of public seating in a rather plain London overground station.  Here are some photos that I took for inspiration ranging from pubs, houses and stations

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Natural dyes

 

Having an Armenian link in my family, I decided this year to make traditional Armenian Easter eggs alongside a traditional meal. Making these Easter eggs involves using onion skins, turmeric and other natural dyes to colour eggs. Here are some of my efforts. I collected red onion skins- shopkeepers were happy to get rid of them. I also put in some chilli flakes that I was not using (these also make the water red). I boiled these for about twenty minutes and left it to cool overnight. In the morning, I pasted some leaves I found in the garden on the raw eggs using water. I used organic hens and duck eggs. Then I put the eggs inside cut up old stockings and boiled them further for about 20 minutes. After removing them from the stocking, I left them to cool. When they were cold to touch, I polished them with some olive oil to make them shine. Even though the duck eggs were less successful, the over all effect of mottled colour with silhouettes of leaves, was charming on both types of eggs.

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What about waste?  The skins were put in the compost and the leftover liquid was used to dye an old white silk blouse which is now a pretty pink colour. No waste- perfect!

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I will be trying out more natural dyes made from vegetable waste or origins such as blueberry juice, coffee, tea, etc. I have already used such colours in creating a portrait of person who likes spicy food (turmeric and onion skins), tea and coffee and more mineral colours.

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Reuse, recycle

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At the end of events, I always ask to take away flowers that might be placed on our table.  The reason is that such decorations are always almost thrown away.  What a waste!  For example, Anthuriums are one of the most popular tropical flowers with a long vase life of about six weeks and even more depending on the variety and season.  The staff are also happy to see the flowers go to a good home and it saves them clearing away.

Here you can see flowers and foliage from a corporate event, mixed with my own Christmas holly (yes, they are still going strong after more than two months!) and ‘Ruscus’ leaves from my Buddhist altar.  When these wither, then I will compost them.


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Beauty and the beast

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This is a new project undertaken by our local council to manage rubbish tipping. For almost seven years, these trees had all sorts of rubbish left there. I was always amazed to find out these trees attracted such bad treatment.

Last week, I saw the workmen digging- I wasn’t sure what they were doing.  A day later, I found this.  It looks so much better and so far, hasn’t had any rubbish left there.  A simple, beautiful and lasting solution to rubbish.

 


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Compost update

Those of you following the blog since last year will know that I created a small home composting system.  This consisted very simply of putting a plastic pot inside a large planter and covering it with a double lid.  Today, I went to see what it was looking like. Here it is, some compost made from kitchen waste six months ago without any additional help-

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As the stuff gets composted, it gets compacted and goes down and so I added some more fresh peelings and kitchen waste into it today.  I will also be using some accelerator to see if that helps to speed up the composting.  As the weather has been so wet, this is not ideal but at least it seems to be working.  Inside my kitchen, I have made a four part sorting system- one bin for composting, one bag for cooked food waste, one for dry rubbish and a big bag for recyclables.  I tried using a normal sized rubbish bin and realised that it was taking weeks to fill up with the result that the cooked food waste thrown in was getting mouldy.  I also have very little cooked food waste which is not compostable in the above manner and so this four part sorting means that I can use my peelings and tea and coffee grinds for compost, crushed egg shells for staving off slugs and also for sprinkling on the pots.  The small rubbish is kept in crisp packets or similar size bags that I was going to throw away anyway.  This way my kitchen also doesn’t have any mouldy stuff while I save on buying bin bags!  Of course, this kind of system will only work if you have small bits of non compostable rubbish and don’t eat lots of meat, etc.  Here are my carrot tops growing in my home made compost.

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container composting experiment

I have been looking into composting for those living in apartments in cities with only containers.  So far there are not many options apart from communal composting and small wormeries/bokashi bins.  Worms are quite delicate creatures and the thought of killing the worms has prevented me from using worm composting.  Bokashi bins also need investment in terms of buying the bokashi powder and perhaps also having a wormery to go with it.  So having tried the composting using plastic sheeting last year, I thought of another variation.

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This consists of taking elements of composting bins and using them differently, utilising my knowledge as an architect.  So I took an ordinary plastic pot and have started filling it up with kitchen waste.  It is covered up to prevent flies and other vermin from reaching it.  But the main thing is it is placed inside the container as shown in the photo on the right.  The holes at the bottom of the plastic pot drain into the soil and therefore there is no mess.  The nutrients reach where they need to.  The soil around the pot keeps it insulated much as a piece of carpet or double walled construction would.  At present, as you can see, the plants are loving it and I have had no problem with this.  The waste keeps getting compacted automatically and I keep putting new material in.  You have to be careful with the balance of dry and wet materials- I found out.  Too much wet stuff like apple or pear cores is not good- I balance it out with onion skins, twigs, dry soil etc but this is much easier than using a shop bought composting bin and reuse of the many plastic pots that come free with any plant purchase.  Also, so far no cleaning has been involved and no smells!  This home made ‘mini composting bin’ has been working well.  I hope to report later in spring to see how it all went.


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Natures does not make waste

I used to wrap sweetcorn in aluminium foil and bake it- along with countless other times of using the aluminium foil for other things.   I learnt a more eco-friendly way to bake sweet corn from my vegetable delivery company last week.  And it is very simple too.  Just soak the sweet corn in water for 30 minutes without taking off the outer husk- it also keeps in fresher and sweeter for longer.

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Then without taking off the husks, bake it for about 25-30 minutes in oven 180 degrees.  Take it out but do not remove the husks until the last minute- they will keep warm.  Then serve with lashings of butter and a little salt if you like, delicious!  You can also barbecue the sweetcorn in this way, instead of using the oven.

I can reuse the husks to cover other stuff instead of using foil and they cover tricky shapes like ovals and circles as they stretch. Foil is of course, recyclable infinitely but the raw production of it is very energy intensive. Foil can be reused but most people throw it away after one use.  Used husks below are very easy to use- and after the second use, I have now put them for composting- Nature does not make waste!

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I found the following information about aluminium foil. http://www.green24.com/lifestyle/foil.php

Up to six tonnes of bauxite ore (the raw material for aluminium) is needed to produce one tonne of aluminium metal. Lot of of fossil fuels are used to mine, transport, and refine the ore (embodied energy). Foil in a landfill is said to last at least 400 years before breaking down. Burning aluminium foil with the waste from landfill sites (as many people don’t bother to re-use or recycle it) releases toxic metals and gases.  Health concerns have been raised about using aluminium cooking vessels so using foil should have similar concerns.  So why not use a totally biodegradable and natural material to bake or barbecue your sweetcorn?


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Palette clever

Last week, I created a plant and tool tidy from a palette. I am not a great carpenter and because I have arthritis, can’t do heavy sawing or nailing.  This is very simple to do and I used whatever stuff I had at home, being a believer in re-use and of course, being canny.  All you need a good quality palette, some pin nails or a stapler, a hammer and plastic containers and trays that you get from supermarkets and takeaways. If you can’t find a good quality palette (those are not easy to find, just use what you have)

1. First I nailed the trays and containers on the central timber stringer.  This can be a bit tricky because even though I have small fingers and used a small hammer, it is not easy to nail in the corners or the inner sides.  However the timber is soft and the pins go in quickly. I used pin nails as they are small. You can try a stapler gun on the outsides if you wish but this is simpler.

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2. Then I screwed in a hook to bottom of each of the top stringers to hold a variety of garden tools. I now turned the palette the right way up and put in the plants and the tools- Voilà it is ready!

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Because I used the supermarket trays, they also fit the pot sizes.

You can personalise this- perhaps write labels on the timber near the plants, perhaps have more hooks to hang things from or even paint it.  You can see I have a micro greenhouse for the ginger plant I am growing and you can add your own things as you need them.  In the winter, I intend to make a plastic cover for it and it will become my herb green house. Perfect for small patios and balconies.


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Re-potting the Cuban way

In the short summer season of the UK, there is much to be done.  I have too many plants, I know and I have been remiss in taking care of them.  One of these was the bay tree that seemed to be stunted and suffering.  So I decided to take it out of pot. I found that the root ball was terrible mass of dead and live roots, twisted into each other.  Root balls are particular problem with container gardening.  These roots often strangle themselves, leading to the destruction of the plant itself.

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When I finally managed to get the plant out of the pot, this is what it looked like.  Simply working with my fingers or a garden fork did not disentangle the roots.  I soaked the root in water in a bucket for many days, taking it out from time to time and untangling the roots, gradually.  Once the roots were free, I cut away the dead roots.  In the meanwhile I prepared the pot by layering alternate greens, dry leaves  and bought compost.  This is a technique I had learnt from Cuban horticulturists who have created amazing inner cities farms to grow food after the embargo on Cuba was imposed.  As they were short of materials, they created techniques such as this layering of green and compost.

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This way I reused the tired soil, revitalising it with fresh material.  My final and deepest layer was of new compost into which I planted the bay tree again.  The plant definitely looks happier.  I have used the Cuban technique  for other pots and again the results have been good and have saved me money.