Useful green living sites

Today I wanted to post a few useful sites that I think everyone interested in sustainability should check out. Besides gardening sites quite a few have to do with sustainable design and building (in no particular order of preference):

http://www.thedailygreen.com/

Daily Green focuses on green living trends but it has some pretty fun posts and useful information although it is not as in depth as it could be.  Check it out if you are interested in buying green products more than learning to make your own. Their blog roll also lists some of the best green living and sustainability sites I’ve heard of.

http://permaculture-media-download.blogspot.com/

This blog has a little bit of everything: give aways, gardening, education and more. It is extremely in depth and also features some excellent interviews. Check it out if you want to learn more about permaculture.

http://webecoist.com

Webecoist, a blog from the same folks who brought me my favorite design blog (dornob), is a sort of best of/list blog with pictures. It is a vast store house of images and links and should definitely be in your bookmarks.

http://ofrf.org

The website of the Organic Farming and Research Foundation sponsors organic farming research, education & outreach projects.

http://www.urbanorganicgardener.com

This is one of my favorite sites and one of the few I check faithfully. The guy who writes this fun instructional blog originally started his first urban garden on a fire escape in the middle of New York. He has since moved but still lives in relatively small apartments and faithfully documents his adventures growing food in planters.

http://planetgreen.discovery.com

This is the green living related section of the discovery TV shows website. Pretty cool, mostly science related info like research, studies and more.

http://www.gardening-guides.com/index.php

Basic gardening how-tos for the rest of us (ie: the ones with black thumbs or unwitting plant assassins). Easy to follow, clear instructions, general gardening info on everything from flowers to exotic decorative plants. Not a very good liking site though, if that matters to you.

http://www.dinnergarden.org/index.html

This site is another gardening site, but strictly devoted to all things food-growing related. Very good info on safe/natural fertilizers and pesticides as well as recipes. Another one of my faves, particularly because of their focus on education and out reach.

http://www.earthshiphomes.info/

This blog is NOT the original earthship site (you can find the original at earthship.net) but it does give readers a more in depth look at how an earth ship is designed, as well as having videos of the actual building process for those who want to learn.

Please tell me about any sites you like or think I should check out by leaving a comment below.

Read more »

Dust Storms

My room mate & I have been working on getting supplies to fix up the back yard. Currently it looks like a stereotype of a desert, just with less cactus and more dust. We haven't drawn out any plans yet but we've decided to build a large green house, a storage shed for our various bikes and a firepit. Oh, and a pond, just for fun. And there will be chickens. I tried to get one through Freecycle (www.freecycle.org)but I haven't gotten a response yet. Stella, my roommate, is designing (she is a welder) a chicken house and run that can be moved from plant bed to plant bed during the winter so the birds can scratch up the earth and fertilize it with droppings. The thing I'm most excited about is our green house. We will make it by buying dozens of old windows from Habitat for Humanities ReStore (near San Mateo & Zuni Walmart: http://www.habitatabq.org/restore). Incidentally I plan to volunteer there. Please support your local ReStore by donating old household items and building supplies so poor people like me can afford to make their home look nice.

Read more »

Fruits and veggies nom nom nom

On Monday I got the project itchies and decided to go on an adventure. After rampaging about on my bike for a few hours, hitting the library and borrowing 10 DVDs and a similar number of books and stopping at Talin, a local "world food" market for coconut water, I somehow ended up at Walmart (oh no I just looked up and there's a giant spider crawling up my wall 0_o it has a yellow stripe down it's back). Now I knooooow that Walmart is a bastion of unethical corporate behavior but..... they do have cheap products.... So I wandered in through the gardening section.
Basically I went nuts.

Read more »