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 »

My Beginner organic farm plan

Hi readers! I’m sorry it has been so long since I have updated here. First winter came and killed off my sweet peppers right on the vine, although my cherry tomatoes lasted a little longer…

Anyway, since the last time I updated here a great deal has changed in my life, most importantly that I am moving to China. I have given away all of my plants in Albuquerque and made a small kitchen garden for my brother with some of my seed stash. Currently I am visiting my family and friends in Puerto Rico before flying to Changchun, China.

This is all part of my new 5 year plan, the end result of which I hope will be to develop an organic farm here in Puerto Rico. My plan is relatively simple at this stage: Go to China, save mucho dinero, come back and buy a convenient chunk of land, build an Earthship style home and begin growing organic and heirloom foods.  The specifics are a bit more complex…

Puerto Rico simply does not have a sustainably minded culture yet. So little in fact that when my friend and I asked the bartender to reuse our plastic cups for the next drink, he looked at us as though we were mocking him and threw them out. My family is presently quite confused about this goal. They understand in theory that it can be done, they just do not believe it can be done HERE. I am inclined to agree with them. Puerto Rico does not have a barter culture either. To get around these problems my current plan is to resort to sites like couchsurfing.org. I plan to offer people a free place to stay here in lovely tropical PR in exchange for helping me do some predetermined project such as putting up solar panels or building a wall. My old roommate seemed pretty excited about this idea since she is studying architecture, so she will be able to go crazy with the design. As for building materials, I will probably use soda cans filled with local clay, glass bottle for interior walls and cement in place of adobe/cob since it is quite rainy here. I think I will be able to get the majority of the building supplies for free or very cheap by offering to haul trash for people. However I will still probably have to buy the interior building supplies like cabinetry.

I plan to visit some rice patties in Guillin, China to try and learn how they build the platforms since I think a modified version could work really well since I want to buy cheap, steep mountainside land. Instead of having water filled platforms I would have well drained platforms to avoid dengue mosquitoes and landslides (PR is a rain forest so water will be a problem). Then I plan to plant a variety of local plants and non invasive heirlooms; mostly organics. Local food I plan to have include green pigeon peas (gandules verdes), plantains,  ajies dulces,  bananas, various tubers and starchy tree fruit, coconut, papaya and pineapple as well as herbs such as recao and cilantro. The more standard stuff would be carrots, peppers, onions, various potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce, mesclun, legumes, cantaloupe, watermelon and more along that line.

Besides all of this, I hope to have at least a few animals, like chickens, a pig and maybe a few goats. It would be really cool to learn to make goat cheese. My bro the cheese freak would really love that, especially if I could make blue cheese.

Anyway for now I estimate it will take me between 18-24 months for me to save enough money to do this, although if the US $ stays as low as it is or gets lower I may be able to come back sooner than planned.

What do you think of my ideas? Have any suggestions? Know anything I should consider? Tell me about it! And in the meantime check out these books:

   

Read more »