Staff

Good organic garbage

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While this misguided attempt to make money off of high gas prices is going on, America for the most part throws its organic garbage into plastic bags that are sent to landfills, where it decays and pollutes ground waters. But what if municipalities across the country passed ordinances requiring homeowners to keep their organic garbage—paper, leaves, yard waste, kitchen scraps, and so on—separate? What if all this garbage was not discarded, but was taken to centers where it was treated with simple enzymes that turn starches into sugars, and those sugars were fermented into ethanol?

Everything you need to know, in order

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Like my title? Never let it be said I’m not ambitious.

A student in my class asked me for a list of skills we need to get ready for peak oil, prioritized. I admit, it took me about a day after she asked to stop thinking “Holy Crap, how do I figure that all out!” But it is an interesting question. And while it isn’t all just about food preservation, I thought I’d take a shot at it. I will, of course, be relying on my fearless readership to point out gaps in my thinking.

Building hotbeds for your garden

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A hundred years ago, hotbeds were used profitably near large cities to grow two crops of lettuce through winter, and then a crop of bedding plants for setting on in the garden in spring. As long as horse manure was available, and of course it was in great quantities, these hotbeds produced lettuce at the rate of forty to fifty heads per 3 by 6-foot bed at far less cost than it takes today to ship lettuce from warm-winter states or raise it in greenhouses. Farmers near such cities as Boston and New York operated as many as a thousand beds, providing jobs for many people and making a good profit, with the expenditure of very little fossil fuel.