February 2011

Gardening with Killers

Garden

One of the major challenges of urban gardening is finding the right space for your garden.  Ideally, a space that gets six to eight hours of sun each day, is conveniently located near a water supply, gardening equipment, and the gardener. I’ve found that spot, just.  In my tree-filled yard, it’s the only place big [...]

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Premium lightbulbs have their pluses, minuses

Green Up

Before I wrote two columns on CFL bulbs, I had never bought name-brand CFLs. It just hurt too much to lay out that kind of cash. But I took my own advice and bought some name-brand daylight CFLs to replace bulbs that had died. I bought GE. Sylvania, Westinghouse and Philips also have the bulbs. [...]

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Stick Plant Markers

Crafts

I’ve been whiling away part of the winter planning my Spring garden and whittling these plant markers. If you think you might like to make some, here’s what I did. Find a stick.  Any stick will do, from the size of a fat kindergarten pencil to about an inch in diameter is about right.  I [...]

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Practically Green: Beware of toxic mercury inside home’s compact fluorescent bulbs

Green Up

In my last column, I talked about the benefits of compact fluorescent light bulbs over incandescent and how to avoid some of their problems. But, I held out one so I could dedicate a whole column to it: Mercury. Mercury is a toxic element, and is currently an unavoidable part of CFLs. Each CFL contains [...]

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