Sprouting Lettuce

The Glebe Community Center where The Pantry is located

My lettuce has started to sprout! Photos will be in soon, because it's pretty exciting. I've been watering the seeds like crazy, which mean everyday except today because they got their fare share of rain this morning. My planter cups though got too filled with water and seem as if they'll start to decompose any second. Everything else though seems to be going fine! Carrots aren't do to germinate until about next Wednesday ish, so I have a bit of waiting time. This is a hectic weekend with all the relay for life stuff happening, but on Sunday I'm hoping to plant my red and yellow pepper plants into my garden, which is also pretty exciting. Although I just heard that my peppers wont even compare to the size of the peppers that we all know, they will probably be as big as my fits :/ Oh well! Still can't wait anywase. Today my mom and I went out for lunch in the Glebe at this organic vegetarian place called 'the pantry', and they had a garden that they were using for all the foods. It was seriously delicious so i hope my vegetables taste like that! Televisions goign pretty well, to be honest I haven't been noticing it much, I could use it to relax though, but instead of television before bed i took out my favorite childhood book series and have been reading that; Princess Diaries. Mia Thermopolis is pretty legit. I am also starting to miss Starbucks, its summer drink time now and everyone i see seems to be drinking a passion fruit tea lemonade ( I may just be seeing things though, like a Starbucks withdrawal). My mom would also like me to update that green cleaning has been going great, less chemicals in the carpets and floors because of it! wooo
Also here's a list of all the organic green restaurants of which the pantry is on: http://www.happycow.net/north_america/canada/ontario/ottawa/

The Gardening Weekend

So as most of you know, the gardeners all spring into a flurry of action the second they wake up on the morning of Saturday May 21st. This year, i was one of those keen gardeners. On Friday, my mom and myself trekked over to Richie Feed & Seed, with my new gardeners membership card and a ten dollar discount because of it. As lost as we were in this large human green house, we found our way to the small section containing organics. Seedling wise, Richie Feed & Seed had tomatoes, peppers, and herbs, tons and tons of herbs. Since I mostly wanted to concentrate on maintaining a vegetable garden i picked up a golden yellow pepper plant and a roasty red pepper plant from Bella Organics. Each pot of seedlings contained three plant's that had already sprouted approximately half a foot. This was a good start. We then moved onto plane old seeds, although there was nothing particularly plain about them. The organic seeds were from a provider called Aimers organics, certified by the center for systems integration. Theses seed are supposed to be excellent in performance and suitable to the Canadian climate, they also seem to be ten times the price of a normal packet of seeds sold at Canadian Tiger. So that's why people wouldn't necessarily buy the organics.

Anywise, Aimers Organic Seeds vouch and promise that its a 100% open-pollinated seed, no hybrids and certified organically grown seed. I believe it. Searching through the seeds I realized I would probably need a bigger space then the 4 by 4 space of our garden that my dad gave to me. My mom and I then started to brainstorm where we would put our plants, before we bought the whole store out of their organic seeds. We decided on windowsill containers, gardener pots, and if we can get our hands on a used wheel barrow, that would be pretty cute to grow our beans in. Back to the seeds now! Although much variety was provided we stuck with the vegetables that we would have to buy on a regular basis, that would be nantes coreless carrots, tendergreen beans, paris island cos lettuce, buttercrunch lettuce, and lastly laxton's progress pea's. On Saturday morning I gained the energy to start to turn the soil in my garden space, weed it, fertilize it with an organic Green Earth fertilizer mixture, and rake it. I made two rows for carrots, about 4 feet each, made a hole about 1/8 deep for the seeds, scattered about 30 seeds in this space, put dirt back over and watered like crazy! Next I took little earth decomposable planter cups and started to add soil, a pinch or fertilizer dig an inch deep, add a pea seed or a bean seed, and repeated. After a while, I finally realized how many I had planted. Favoring beans a bit I ended up planting 19 bean plants and 16 pea plants. That should give us about 160 peas and 190 beans in 50-62 days. Joy. Lastly in my first windowsill box, I planted some delicious buttercrunch lettuce. I made once again about a row about 2 and a half feet long, 1/8thof an inch deep and scattered about 20 lettuce seeds hoping 10-5 of them will germinate happily. Currently im watering then everyday, and just waiting for my pea and bean plants to start to sprout which will take 7-14 days, and then plant them into my garden with the peppers and carrots. More photos to come soon!

18 days down, 11 to go (I believe)

So far 18 days have passed practically TV-less, my TV at home hasn't been turned on once (by me) but as much as I struggled, at my best friends house yesterday i caught a glimpse of Modern Family. I saw Alex give her valedictorian speech at her middle school graduation, so heartbreaking! I haven't noticed the missing television too too much, but it has been getting worse through theses last few days. Through my excessive tumbler use, relay for life registration stuff, and  rugby I've still somehow managed a little bit of free time. Unconventionally my sister has her free time at most of the same times that I do and takes full advantage of having the remote all to herself for this last week. I've still somehow managed without my light ice passion fruit tea lemonade, and keeping the cleaning products completely green as well. This is the May 24 weekend, which some gardeners know well, as the weekend to get your crops out. So I have organized the space in the garden, registered as a Richie Feed and Seed member online, my ten dollar value gift card even came in the mail today! Gotta save as much as I can! Im heading out tommorrow, to buy some organic seeds, or seedlings (depending on their variety) as well as some boxes and soil for all the crops unable to fit in my 4 by 4 foot space.
More details and pictures about the garden are to come soon!

A documentary

The weekend is over, and I somehow managed to go television free. Today although I watched a documentary as my first 'screen' thing in a while. As stated in my statement of intent I allowed myself to watch movies :) Anyway, the documentary was crazy. It was about a church who believed only members of their church would go to heaven and they would picket soldiers funerals and stuff. Here's the link to it: http://documentaryheaven.com/louis-theroux-most-hated-family-in-america/ It's about an hour long but totally worth it. Throughout the documentary I honestly tried to view their way, but it just didn't make any sense. Apart from that, I've been completely television-less, which was going great until today in class Mr.Grant mentioned Modern Family. Which completely killed me..
This whole no tv project has given me full rights to my new completely unhealthy addiction to imgfave.com, which also contains many pictures about modern family and kills me all over again.
Well here we go, starting another week without starbucks, without chemical cleaning products and without tv.

The Countdown Begins

Glee was on tonight. Feature Adele.. only my favorite artist.  Although I am becoming a bit upset about missing glee I feel rather comforted that all my new episodes will be online in any minute, so I can save them to a folder in preparation for May 30rd. The day my television comes back, and so my countdown begins. There is officially 20 days left. Apart from glee, this whole no television business hasn't been that hard. No television has given me time to start studying for my bio test coming up Friday, in which I have more or less completely put off until this afternoon. My moment of weakness is usually right after school, so rugby takes care of that. Forcing me to arrive home later then usual, and usually just in time for supper. After supper is usually homework time, so all in all it's not too shabby. Of course, much like anyone else, I find plenty of other ways to procrastinate. For example my folder named 'tumblr' on my desktop has accumulated more then a few new pictures, all thanks to imgfave.com, as well as I have created a bunch of 'to do lists' for myself, all of which I can guarantee that more then half of the tasks will not be completed. I think the worst thing about the no television thing is that because my house is so small, sound travels quite fast. So when my sisters laughing at something funny that Ross or Pheobe just did or said, I know exactly what I am missing out on.

The Statement of Intent

Colin Beaven has defiantly made an effect on many peoples life styles, and recently mine as well. For the next three weeks I will be partaking in a few environmental aiding activities in hope to increase awareness and lower my carbon foot print. The first ‘project’ I will be doing is drastically lowering my television use. This means I am letting myself do a few things such as continuing to watch anything on disc's, for example movies, but if the movie isn’t playing the television is unplugged. I am also allowing myself to watch television if needed at other people houses because it is their carbon footprint and not my own. I decided to do this because I watch way too much television. I watch re-runs of re-runs; constantly have the television on unless I have something better to do. By unplugging my television when it is not in use, I could save as much as 9 kWh per year. Which is significantly lowering my carbon footprint, as well as saving me bit of cash, not much, but a small amount. Secondly, I will be advancing the use of my organic garden. The organic garden that we have at my house is pretty 'limited' at the least to say. We currently grow herbs, tomatoes, and raspberry. By expanding on this I am in hopes of growing an additional vegetables such as; cucumbers, lettuce/cabbages, beets, onions, squash and broccoli. Since the growing season, really shouldn’t start until the weekend of May 24^th, I intend on growing my vegetables in boxes inside, until its significantly warm enough for my vegetables to succeed. Looking in your local supermarket, maybe, one or two name brand will be certified organic. This means that there must be a label with ‘COG 2011’ on it, not just copy right named branded ‘Organic,’ which is what many companies to do their products now. This is the tricky part, for example I do my part in buying certified organic food and products, and so while I was at Shoppers looking for make up, I saw a new brand on the shelf. The name was you guessed it, ‘Organics.’ Well, I took this mascara bottle and looked for the certified organic label on it, and much as I presumed it was no where in sight. So advancing my organic garden will stop putting pesticides into my body, lessen the amount of chemicals being put into the troposphere. Hopefully my organic garden as well will be noticed by my neighbors and keep the aware about their food decisions. Lab tests and industry disclosures indicate that 60-75% of all non-organic Supermarket foods now ‘test positive’ for the presence of genetically engineered ingredients. This means that none the less you are putting pesticides into your body (assuming a large company that modifying its seeds, are using pesticides) but you are no longer eating the same dna that an apple would have had, maybe four or five years ago. As I was telling my mom about my Environmental & Resource Management’s class’s take on Colin Beaven’s project she said she would do her part in only buying the organic line of cleaning products. This means the product was made with plant-based biodegradable cleaning ingredients, with no harsh chemical fumes or residue, and to top that off it was never tested on animals. Now the affect of not using theses harsh chemicals would be incredibly hard and possibly impossible to detect how much chemicals we are saving from putting into the environment, but if we stop putting theses chemicals into the air now, it will save the 2030 generation once they rise up and aid in ozone depletion (assuming we have any left). On top of the no televison, organic garden, and green cleaning products I am going to stop myself from buying my favorite fast food out there, if it’s even considered fast food: Starbucks. For that matter no one will be able to hear me say “Hi, can I have a grande half sweetened vanilla caramel apple spice with low fat whip please.” Although one might think the Starbucks cup could either be compost-able or recycled, from a recent article about this exact question the answer provided was shocking. "Starbucks white paper cups, used for hot beverages, are made of paper fiber and the industry standard liner (low-density polyethylene plastic). The paper provides the rigidity for the cup, while the plastic layer keeps the paper layer intact by protecting it from the hot beverage. This plastic layer also makes the hot beverage cups unrecyclable in most paper recycling systems. We are continually evaluating alternatives to the current plastic coating, and are currently conducting life cycle assessments for bio-based plastics." Stopping myself from my daily Starbucks trips will also lower our garbage, and hopefully my friends will too (which is more then a long shot). If you think about it, Starbucks distributes about 2.3 billion paper cups a year in Canada, and every single one of theses cups should be thrown into the trash, so for the next while it’s ‘bring your own mug’ or no Starbucks at all.  All in all, I am hoping to lower my impact on the earth in many ways over the next three weeks, and if I can keep it up hopefully longer. Enjoy the blog! :)