Loudoun on Earth

On your own turf, such as your home ecosystem, it is relatively easy to reduce waste.  Outside of the home, such as a workplace or restaurant reducing waste can be a challenge due to the lack of circular systems in kitchens and bathrooms.  Cubicle life presents challenges to systemic change.  Typical office environments and building management companies are tough to persuade.  Well, even if the leadership is willing to adopt more sustainable practices, it takes a good bit of time to communicate the changes.  These are cultural shifts and culture is resistant to change.  That time can be the most frustrating of all.  Here are some considerations for reducing waste at a workplace.  The first step is to take an inventory of the waste produced.  Are you throwing away single use plastic wrappers/compostable food scraps?  In lieu of electric hand dryers does your building provide single use paper towels? If possible, the first step one...

Anyone with a backyard vegetable garden will tell you that nature provides surpluses and scarcity at uneven periods of time.  It seems like we wait and wait for tomatoes to arrive and then there are so many we do not know what to do with the quantity.  One remedy for this to preserve your harvests via food dehydration. I principally dehydrate beets and apples.  My kids love apple chips, I consider beet chips to be a premium snack.  In the autumn when the apples come in barrels, consider dehydrating them for consumption through the winter and spring.  Food dehydration is essentially the continuous circulation of warm air through the fruits and vegetables (and meats, if you desire).  After some prep work, such as thin slicing, you can place the food in a food dehydrator and after eight hours or so you will have tasty, preserved food that is great for off-season, snacking, and backpacking/hiking. The most challenging choice is what food dehydrator to purch...

I hear many folks around Loudoun County discuss ideas to start a honey bee colony to either use the honey or help local pollinators.  This causes me to bring up the differences and benefits to helping native bees.  Honeybees are not native to North America, rather they were brought to this continent from Europe in the early 1600s.  Interestingly, there is some indication that there was an extinct honey bee genius in N. America due to a recent fossil find in Central Nevada, however, most likely the many varieties of honey bees currently in use are from Europe.  For the purpose of this essay 'native bee' is not meant to discuss honey bees.   The more populous native bees in Loudoun are leafcutter bees and mason bees.  These bees are more docile than honey bees as they are not territorial.  Their main mission is to pollinate and breed, not produce honey in a hive.   I emplaced a bee house last March and had mason and leafcutter bees ...

Loudoun County has a superb public library system and exceptional facilities, yet their book collection on gardening and nature usually falls short of fulfilling a niche need for crafting a home ecosystem and rebuilding a micro habitat.  This can be remedied via a neighborhood/community library of some books or by having different neighbors purchase different books from, for instance, the Loudoun Conservancy, which offers pretty good used books. Regardless of the approach, rebuilding a micro-habitat is a unique effort and there are not many books that address the challenge and beneficial wisdom head on.  Here are some topical areas to consider should you be in the market for used and new books. Foundational Composting (outdoor general, as well as vermicomposting) Soil/soil microbe Native plant identification Invasive species identification Water: drainage/rain barrels/rain gardens System Enhancements Seed banks/seed harvesting Vegetable gardening and crop rotati...

This blog, now that I have had a few months to refine its purpose, is about production over consumption.  This information/knowledge is meant to help establish a green foundation around your home of any type.  Oftentimes we wait for the environment to change around us, leading to frustration and disappointment in the tragedy of the commons and its impact on our sphere.  This is a different approach, here you are meant to project positively outward from your span of control.  By building or revitalizing the micro habitat around your yard (or apt balcony or townhouse patio) connected to the greater ecosystem around your yard, you will support beneficial bacteria, plant life, and insect life, all of which will help replenish the greater ecosystem in your community.  The plant life around your home combined with sustainable practice are meant to allow you to produce as much of your own food and energy as possible, this is meant to reduce the consumption from other...

Composting is foundational to not only an organic garden, but also a less wasteful home ecosystem.  Vermicomposting, or worm composting is a method for using composting worms, oftentimes red wrigglers to consume and process kitchen scraps.  After the worms churn through your food waste they leave behind castings rich in nitrogen and highly beneficial for plants. How to integrate vermicomposting into your household waste management.  The same kitchen scraps (potato peels, carrot peels, coffee grinds, etc.) that you toss in the outdoor compost bin can also be fed to worms.  Oftentimes, worms will make it into your outdoor compost bin, as they are key macro-organisms in the composting and soil health cycle.  Vermicomposting is a more concentrated activity meant to use greater worm density and often a specific type of composting worm to consume household waste. Because composting worms pretty much each half their weight per day, you can divert pounds of daily ...