Planning to spend the holiday weekend in the woods? The Be Green Crew outlines the rules of Leave No Trace camping to help you prepare for your next camping trip.

Whether you’ve made your own bin, or purchased a worm bin set up, a good worm compost kit will have a spigot to drain off excess moisture, or a tray to collect it.  If you have a spigot, drain off the excess moisture from your bin to make sure the bin doesn’t get too wet, but keep the drained off liquid in a separate resealable container.  If you have a tray, just make sure to drain the tray on a regular basis and, again, keep the liquid in a separate resealable container.  It doesn’t hurt to leave the tray filled with water however it can evaporate and you are losing a valuable commodity: compost tea.

Compost tea is the nutrient rich runoff from composting and can be used as a wonderful plant fertilizer/ additive.  Add the compost tea to your watering can and your plants can benefit from your compost even if they don’t get the soil itself. Read more…

image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sankax/3423629745/

Chances are if you are making your worms happy in their worm bin, there are other bugs that would also find their home appealing and some of them might just move in.

Millipedes and pill bugs actually eat the same things worms do and will happily coexist within a worm bin.  Generally, these “pests” are few and far between and a “live and let live” approach is probably the best approach in this case.  In more extreme cases, it may be necessary to “harvest” your compost and transfer the worms to a clean bin with fresh bedding but it isn’t likely to come to this. Read more…

So you have a compost bin and added worms, now what?

Worms should be fed a vegetarian (or more likely, a vegan) diet.  Although worms can eat items like meat, they prefer not to and if they are fed meat the result will be a smelly bin making both you and the worms unhappy.

However, worms do love most fruit and vegetable matter that comes out of a typical kitchen, items such as: banana peels, apple cores, tomato ends, carrot tops, spinach that has past its expiration date, lettuce hearts, pea pods, potato peels, and even fruit pits and watermelon seeds. Read more…

From our introduction yesterday, if you think worm composting might be something you are interested in there are all kinds of options available to get started.

First, you’ll need a bin. Read more…

It’s worm composting week here on The Greenists!

Stop by every day this week to learn about different aspects of worm composting from building your own to harvesting the results- but first, an introduction!

For those of you unfamiliar with the idea, worm composting uses live worms to turn food waste into high-nutrient compost, also called worm castings.  Worm castings are highly valued by gardeners because not only does it include the nutrients you get from other forms of compost, but it also includes all kinds of microbes from the worm’s digestive tract that keep the soil healthy, help prevent many plant diseases, and store more water to help plants through dryer times.  Read more…

About a year ago, some friends and I considered starting a blog. It never happened because we couldn’t settle on a topic or a layout design or even a name for our blog. The only thing we all agreed on was this: we want to encourage personal responsibility.

Just a few days ago, I ran across this quote by Shannon Hayes in an article she wrote for Yes! magazine:

“To have a socially just world, each of us must bear more responsibility for our well-being.”

That  is certainly a part of what my friends and I were trying to convey, and thank you, Shannon Hayes, for putting it into words. By taking personal responsibility for our own well-being, for our own actions, and for our own selves, we contribute to a better world. It’s not charity, mind you, nor philanthropy nor compassion for others — all we are saying is, take proper care of yourself and you’ll make the world a better place. It’s a sort of Me-Generation selfishness that coincidentally generates charity and compassion.

Read more…

Roof over their heads or organic food in their tummies? You know my answer.

Last night, I threw out a glass spaghetti sauce jar. The day before that, I bought two new Pack & Play sheets (buy one, get one – plus I had a 20% off coupon) without checking Craigslist first. Last week when I went grocery shopping, I didn’t buy any organic food AND I bought generic Dawn instead of my usual Seventh Generation. Oh, and I’m currently using Tide instead of a natural brand of laundry detergent. Are you shocked yet? Gasping for air and shouting to yourself, “And you call yourself a Greenist?” Well, I do call myself a Greenist…and yes, I’m experiencing a lot of green guilt right now – that feeling of I know I can do better. I know I can do more. But allow me to explain . . .  Read more…

Image credit: http://www.fotopedia.com/items/flickr-2222548359

Reduce, reuse, recycle.

You know that mantra, right? It’s been burned into our brains since way before the modern green movement, when recycling was still a new idea. But did you know those three terms are in that order for a reason? It’s true — they’re listed in order of importance. The first step in being green is reducing the amount of stuff you use. If you must use something, try to reuse it again in another capacity. And if that doesn’t work, toss it in the recycling bin.

The first, and most important, step to being green is reducing. So, in honor of Earth Day, The Greenists would like you to keep this in mind today: Use less.

• Are you doing a load of laundry today? Use less energy: Consider hanging your clothes or towels up to dry instead of using the dryer, or cut down on the amount of time they spend in the dryer.

• Using the dishwasher? Use less energy: Turn off the heated dry function.

• Eating lunch at the office? Create less waste: Bring your lunch in reusable containers instead of disposable bags, and skip the fast food today. Or go on a picnic!

• Doing some cleaning this weekend? Buy less: Use washable rags and homemade cleaning products instead of paper towels and toxic chemicals.

• Cooking a meal? Lessen your impact: Buy local produce from a farmer’s market or join a CSA.

Once you get used to the idea of living with less, it’s quite liberating to be free from a lot of the stuff you used to think you had to buy. It’s good for your soul, your wallet, and the planet. And who knows? Give at least one of these things a try, and you may find yourself living like every day is Earth Day.

What will you do to celebrate Earth Day today?

Here at The Greenists we’ve been trying to come up with one thing, just one perfect thing, one big important-yet-elegantly-simple thing to ask our readers to do on Earth Day, for Earth Day. Which is Friday. Tomorrow. Well I thought of my thing, and I don’t think it needs to wait until tomorrow. Or maybe I just don’t like to give away post ideas.

Here’s my one big Earth Day request: Use less.

Okay, okay… You’re right: That’s kind of something we hammer home in one fashion or another nearly every day here, or if we don’t it’s because it seems so fundamental as to no longer be worth mentioning. Besides, if The Greenists is already part of your daily internet time-wasting you not only don’t need to be told this, but you have the phrase “Use less” or some variation tattooed somewhere it can be easily viewed by the rest of the hippies in your drum circle. Or at least on the bumper of your microbus. Read more…