Dennis Barrow

I grow climbing peas along the fence of my garden.  Anything on the outside is for the deer, inside for me.  No problem with the amount of peas I get.  I do grow a LOT of peas as my grandkids and I love to just "graze" through the gardens.

It looks great!

Even the picture where the "Almighty Paul" is showing a bit of leg for the ladies.  

I'm about ready to break out my 25 piece patio set:

1 plastic chair and 24 beers.

Nina Surya wrote:

This is an interesting thread!!!
Ultimately we want to stop our subscription to the trash service (picking up our trash once every two weeks) alltogether, but are still too new on our property to be free from the supermarket - we are not yet self sufficient enough.

But; I'm super interested in learning about HOW people reduce their amount of trash, like in your post Dennis, you mention helpful, effective and fun solutions!
Growing our own food will cut out a lot of packaging material, but what are the other nifty ways to reduce trash - drastically?

Thanks for this thread!

We had trash service, 2 large cans twice a month.  But I am paying taxes for trash and we have a  trash drop off  about 6 road miles from us.  Problem is I hit the limit around January 1st and start getting bills after that, but usually under $20 a month. (My kids do give me a few bucks towards this).  Way cheaper than the trash service.  That was almost $300 a year.

I have to take a trip once a week to the dump.  It is not my trash but my families trash.

My wife and I might produce 2 bags of trash a month, maybe three if we make a Costco run to stock up on things.  We compost a lot and the chickens get quite a bit also.

I have a Daughter and our 2 grandkids living with us, separate living area,  (2-30 gallon trash cans a week),  walkout basement, and a Son with daughter-in-law and grandson living in an off grid cabin on our property, (1-40 gallon trash can a week and usually a box or two of other stuff.  They are trying at recycling much better that the daughter and I believe it is because they are off grid.

We, (wife and I), recycle everything we can.  I actually go to the recycle center in nearby town of Helena 4 times a year.

Try very hard to have the others recycle.  Maybe a 20 % recycle from them.  Separate bins for cans, glass items, plastics doesn't help much.  

Also doesn't help that they get so much "junk", ie: plastic toys and stuff.  We didn't gift to much "junk" to the kids when they were growing up, 1, we didn't have the $$ and 2, I was raised with useful gifts, books, homemade toys, things that would last and we wanted to pass that on to the kids.  (I still have some of the few store bought toys that were given to me as a child, well made.  I'm 72).

We wrapped gifts in the Sunday funnies.  Colorful paper and I remember reading the funnies again before opening gifts.

So how much trash do you produce?

Joshua States wrote:

Your waxy coating observation makes me think about whether chopping them up would help speed up decomposition.[/quote wrote:

I know that chopping them up will speed up the compost cycle.  I try to chop up our kitchen waste that doesn't go to the chickens and it composts about 10 times faster.
My mom used to have an old blender just for chopping up food scraps for compost.

On Monday we start
Diarrhea Awareness Week.

Runs until Friday.

Bob Waur wrote:I have been using pine needles as mulch over potatoes for several years. I have a chicken yard that is 50' x 50' divided into two sections. I run the chickens in one for a year and then in the other one. I plant my potatoes in the one the chickens vacated three months before. This gives the manure time to 'mellow'. To plant I make trenches about four inches deep and place my seed potatoes in them with one foot spacing. Then I pull the dirt over them. When I see them beginning to sprout I mulch with pine needles one foot deep. As they grow I will add more pine straw. I get good production and very little scab as my soil tends to be slightly acidic. When the plants die back I rake the needles to the side and the potatoes are easily harvested since they were not planted deeply.
Gotta go stir the shrimp and sausage gumbo...

Thanks Bob for making me more confident in using pine needles!  I am in a bit of a different climate than you but that won't matter that much.

I was stationed in Germany in the 70's for 4 years.  I loved traveling by train!
I remember one time a girl friend and I took a few weeks and traveled through Austria, Italy, Spain Portugal and France.
When we were in Spain we took a train to the "end of the line".  It went way up into Basque country and the tracks just ended.  It was pretty wild.  There was a small station there and an eight hour wait for the return train to "civilization".
While sitting in the shade of the station I thought I heard someone around the corner speaking english.  I went over and found 2 college girls there.  They were from Montana just hitch hiking and riding trains around Europe for the summer.  There were attending school at Bozeman, which is where my brother was attending at the time.  Asked them on the off chance they might know him.  Turned out not only did they know him they were all taking the same classes together!!

Small world at times.

Joshua States wrote:I am going to watch this thread to see how this goes. I recently moved from 9a to 6a and also have an abundance of pine needles to cope with. I'm lucky that we have a lot of oak mixed in with the conifers here. I have already started composting piles of needles, leaves, and bark to prepare mulch and raised bed filler for the new garden. Santa brought me a woodchipper/shredder and the idea is to create loads of shredded organic matter. I have already used the needles and leaves in raw form to mulch over the garlic beds and the saffron corms. Potatoes won't go into the buckets for a few months, but I plan to use the same to cover them. I might just try a 50/50 soil to needles and leaves mix in one pot and see what does better. Thanks for the idea!

Joshua States, you must have been a good boy last year to get a woodchipper !  lol    If I had a chipper I think I would try running pine needles through it.  The pine needles I have are all from Ponderosa Pines.  Nice and long.  Chopped up they would make a better mulch.  Guess I need to be better this year and maybe Santa will bring me one.  ;-)

I am getting the itch to plant, but have to keep myself in check.  Several feet of snow yet at my place.  A few years ago I started in January on my sun porch, WAY to soon,  It was a jungle before I could plant outside in mid May.  I do have a green house now, but will wait until end of March to start seedlings.