Unless you’ve been living off the grid, you’ve probably heard about President Obama’s “all of the above” plan for America’s energy future, which embraces everything from oil drilling and natural gas fracking to wind, solar, and even pond scum.

In the last couple years the Obama administration has pumped billions into cutting-edge clean energy tech. But these all share a common problem: plugging into an electric grid that is mostly unchanged since the 1930s. Energy experts say meeting our carbon-footprint reduction goals will remain a pipe dream until we can revamp electricity distribution. The solution? The “smart grid,” a nickname for a sweeping series of updates on everything from power stations to the meter in your home, which promises to save power and money by being sensitive to your energy use.

In the second installment of Climate Desk’s Future Energy series, see how America is modernizing the largest machine on the planet.

by James West and Tim McDonnell, Climate Desk; wired.com

*photo courtesy of thetransitpass.com

After extensive research to plan my own potatoes-in-a-barrel, I’ve boiled all of the recommendations down to 4 simple steps to a winning potato harvest.

1. Select and prepare a container

You’ll need to pick out a container such as a 50-gallon trash barrel or one of those half whiskey barrel planters. Alternatively, you can buy used food-grade barrels or commercially-available potato planters. Just about any 2 to 3-foot tall container will work, but be sure to select a container that either already has holes in it, or is okay to cut holes in. Next you’ll want to clean your container with a mild bleach solution to get out any of the nasties that have been lingering in there. If you don’t want to use bleach, you can make a bleach alternative to use instead.

Good drainage is critical for the cultivation of healthy potatoes so you’ll want to cut or drill a series of large drainage holes in the bottom and bottom sides of your container. Alternatively, you can cut out the bottom altogether and place it on a well-drained surface like your garden bed.

2. Choose a variety and plant potatoes

Seed potatoes can usually be found at nurseries early in the growing season, but you should only have to buy them once. If you can, “chit” or sprout your potatoes before planting them by setting them out in an egg carton, the side with the most buds facing up, and putting them in a cool light room out of direct sunlight to sprout. Putting the tubers in an open paper bag can have this same effect.

Fill in the bottom of your container with about 6 inches of loose planting mix and compost. You’ll want to use a planting mix with a peat moss-like soil amendment like this product made from repurposed coconut husks, doing so will keep the soil from becoming too compacted and help it to store moisture for the roots. Next, add some seed potatoes on the layer of soil, making certain to leave plenty of space between each cube. You can use the whole potato but I like to cut the potatoes into 1 to 2-inch cubes for planting. Loosely backfill the potatoes with another 6 inches of your soil and compost mix and water to dampen soil. Keep the soil damp at all times but be careful not to overwater.

3. Add more soil

When they have about 6 to 8 inches of foliage, add another layer of your soil-compost mix covering about one-half to three-quarters of the visible stems and foliage. Repeat this process of allowing the sprouts to grow and then covering the sprouts and moistening the soil as the plants grow up toward the top of the barrel.

4. Harvest the potatoes

After about 10 weeks or until the plants flower and start to yellow, the potatoes should be ready to harvest. Carefully dig down with your hands to inspect the top-most layer. After you’ve confirmed your suspicions, dump the barrel out on a tarp and inspect your bounty.

Other tips to grow bushels of barrel potatoes

• After the first harvest, keep a few potatoes to use as seed potatoes next year.
• Bush beans are a great companion plant for potatoes.
• Instead of using soil, try growing potatoes in sawdust.
• Experiment with different containers, seed potatoes and watering regimes.
• If the above steps aren’t sufficient, do some more research. Try here.

by Timothy Hurst; GreenUpgrader.com

*photos courtesy of GreenUpgrader.com

The source of his vision was unconventional. The results of his mystical inspiration, however, have been practical successes in the real world.

Mike is the inventor of the Earthship, a home design that uses recycled materials and nature’s own solar machinery to create snug, self-sufficient houses. When I met him in 1982, he’d already been building Earthships for the better part of a decade. They were scattered across northern New Mexico and southern Colorado.

They weren’t like any other houses in the world. Mike had spontaneously — maybe instinctively — set out to solve several different puzzles at the same time. He wanted his houses to be energy independent, comfortable and beautiful, and he wanted to reutilize waste materials in their construction.

Mike Reynolds half-buried his houses in south-facing hillsides and created their south walls entirely from high-quality insulated glass so they would capture the heating energy of the sun. He built durable, moisture-proof roofs, buried them in insulating soil, and planted native plants on them so the roof could grow its own summer shade, which naturally thinned and let the sun warm the roof in winter. He invented a unique ventilation system that pulled cool air from outside and pushed overheated air out through skylights during warm weather.

The Earthships needed to store solar energy to use overnight and during cold, dark weather. Mike designed massive, 4-foot-thick interior walls and positioned them in the sunlight streaming in from the south-facing windows. He constructed thick floors of concrete and adobe that soaked up sunshine all day and then radiated warmth at night.

Old tires, bottles and tin cans were overflowing our landfills, so Mike decided to use them as building materials. The thick interior walls of his Earthship homes are made from old tires. Other walls use cans and glass bottles in the same manner as bricks, mortared with concrete or adobe. The “bottle walls” are left exposed so that sunlight shines into whimsical rooms through a mosaic of multicolored bottles and jars salvaged from the dump.

To stay off of costly, inefficient utility grids, Mike outfitted his houses with photovoltaic solar electricity, wind turbines and water collection systems. Other systems in the houses filter water from the sinks and bathtubs and reuse it in the toilets.

Because creating an Earthship is a labor-intensive process, Mike kept the mechanics simple. He figured few contractors would sign up to build Earthships. They are effectively handmade. They take a lot of hours. So he developed building techniques for amateurs. Anyone can quickly learn how to build a wall from concrete and tin cans or bottles. He invented a method of packing sand inside stacks of used tires to create the thick, stable interior walls. You can master the process in a few hours. After they’ve been stuccoed, Earthship homes have a beautiful natural shape and store a lot of thermal energy. In winter, they exude warmth through cold nights. In summer, they stay cool in the heat of the day.

Built-in planters grow food year-round inside Earthships. One owner picks bananas in the middle of winter from a tree that sits in the window of an Earthship situated at 7,000 feet elevation in the Rocky Mountains. Some of the unique structures include indoor goldfish ponds.

Mike built several Earthships himself, but soon he was coaching an army of Earthship builders, most of them do-it-yourselfers who wanted to play a personal role in the creation of their own homes. Earthships have been built in every shape and size imaginable, from little one-room, beer can bungalows to late actor Dennis Weaver’s multimillion-dollar Earthship estate in Ridgeway, Colo. Construction of Weaver’s 8,500-square-foot home reportedly repurposed 3,000 old tires and more than 350,000 discarded aluminum cans.

There are Earthship subdivisions and complexes of Earthship condominiums. Earthships now stand in Jamaica, Mexico, India, Japan, South America, Europe and Africa. Mike is the subject of a documentary film, Garbage Warrior, and has been interviewed on every major television network.

Not every Earthship home is beautiful, at least not to passersby. But look in the eyes of Earthship owners and you’ll see an unmistakable glow of enthusiastic affection when they talk about their homes, especially if they built the houses themselves. To their owners, even the funkiest Earthships are lovable. And some of them are architectural wonders.

Some of the early prototypes were experimental. Some of them seemed to soak up cold right out of the earth, and no woodstove would heat them. Others broiled their occupants, summer and winter. Sometimes Mike went back and fixed them with a new idea or two. Sometimes the homeowners sorted out the solutions themselves.

Still, nearly 40 years after their invention, Earthships are at the cutting edge of residential architecture.

I’ve ridden up and down dirt roads with Mike, looking at Earthship homes and listening to him talk about them. Although he was a licensed architect, the history of architecture wasn’t interesting to him. Obviously he didn’t operate in any established tradition. He didn’t even seem to be interested in the history of the Earthship, his own creation. Mike talked mostly about the future — a future in which the Earthship philosophy of beauty and efficiency would be a major force in the world. The Earthship was, after all, invented for the future. Mike incubated the contemporary philosophy of “humanitarian design,” the practitioners of which now include Nathaniel Corum, a man who designed hurricane-resistant housing in Haiti, built straw bale homes on a Navajo reservation, and built the cabin for Plastiki, the yacht made from discarded plastic bottles that sailed across the Pacific Ocean in 2010. Whether they realize it or not, present-day architects owe their identity, in part, to Mike Reynolds.

You don’t see many references to Mike’s visiting wizards on any of the thousands of websites about Earthships these days. Wizard visitations obviously don’t get a lot of credit for the achievements of today’s humanitarian designers and architects. But I’ve kept my copy of A Coming of Wizards as a reminder that sometimes a visionary needs to “de-normalize” how we think about things.

For more information about Earthships and the man who invented them, check out these MOTHER EARTH NEWS articles: Building an Earthship for Off-the-Grid Living, Earthship Homes: Affordable, Energy-Efficient Building and Michael Reynolds’ Energy-Efficient Buildings. — MOTHER

by Bryan Welch; Mother Earth News

Photos by Earthship Biotecture; top photo: Let the sunshine in! The lush indoor vegetation loves this glass-faced Earthship in Phoenix; middle photo: This Earthship in New Mexico includes several solar panels. Its owners call it the “Sol Ship”; bottom photo: Reused glass bottles add color and brilliance to the interior bedroom walls of this Earthship.

Fiddlehead Ferns

If you love weird-looking vegetables, you’ll love fiddleheads, the tender young coiled forms of fern fronds that unfurl as a fern matures. Similar to asparagus in taste, the curlicued greens have a nutty, slightly bitter flavor and can be used just as you would asparagus or asparagus tips. Most fiddlehead aficionados recommend eating them the day you buy them, as their flavor diminishes quickly. Their short, fleeting season lasts for just a few weeks in early May, so grab them while you can! (Note: Buy your fiddleheads from a reputable market grower. If you plan to harvest your own, do some research first, as some fiddleheads may be toxic and improper harvesting may kill the plant.) For cooking ideas, the University of Maine has some suggestions.

New Zealand Spinach

Spinach is one of the best, healthiest crops to peek above ground in spring. Unfortunately, its love for cold nights and mild days means it doesn’t grow past May. That’s when you should start looking for New Zealand spinach. A warm-weather cousin of the regular stuff, New Zealand, or ‘Maori’, spinach will start appearing in stores and farmers’ markets just when local spinach disappears. And it grows all summer, so you can get all the iron, calcium, and vitamin K of regular spinach when that crop is out of season.

Garlic Scapes

People who love garlic will love garlic scapes, the long green tendrils that shoot out of garlic plants around mid-June. With a milder flavor than pure garlic, scapes have been described by some foodies as a garlic lover’s nirvana. Because their flavor is so mild, you can use them in everything from scrambled eggs to pesto without drowning your food in pungent, garlicky aroma. You can even eat them whole as you would green beans. Belonging to the garlic family, they also provide all the same benefits as those aromatic cloves: helping to prevent heart disease, cancer, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure, and even warding off infections.

Sea Beans

Salty with a slightly briny aftertaste, sea beans taste like what they sound like. They belong to the Salicornia family of plants that grow wild along salt marshes and seashores, although a number of farmers are starting to cultivate them. Eat them raw to enjoy their salty flavor, or blanch them and treat them just as you would green beans. Keep an eye out for them at farmers’ markets or at gourmet grocers, but keep in mind they’ll cost you a pretty penny. Even though they were referred to as “poor man’s asparagus” in the past, Earthy.com sells them for $14.99 per pound.

Scorzonera

Can’t find any oysters at the seafood counter? Grab some scorzonera instead. Originally from the Mediterranean, this root vegetable has a distinctive oysterlike flavor that diminishes quickly once it’s harvested. So keep an eye out for it at farmers’ markets and eat it the day you buy it. The roots are great sources of calcium and iron and can even be tossed into a mock oyster stew. But the best way to eat it is either roasted or sautéed in a little butter. Boil the roots first, which makes it easier to remove the skin; then drizzle them with olive oil and roast them or sauté them in butter. A lot of European chefs recommend serving scorzonera with some sour cream on the side.

Stinging Nettle

Anyone who suffers from seasonal allergies needs to stock up on stinging nettle while it’s in season, which is now. Iron-rich and loaded with vitamin C, the leaves also contain histamine, the chemical your body produces during an allergic reaction. So eating it helps you build up your body’s immunity. But more than just a medicinal aid, stinging nettle will add a peppery zip to any dish with greens. Use it as you might use spinach, but always blanch the leaves first to get rid of the chemicals in the plant that cause it to sting you (by the same token, always handle raw leaves with gloves on). Try them in this Wild Greens Risotto.

by Emily Main; OrganicGardening.com

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, transportation is also the fastest-growing source of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for 47 percent of the net increase in total U.S. emissions since 1990, and is the largest end-use source of C02, which is the most prevalent greenhouse gas.

You might think it would be impossible to attend to all your personal and professional responsibilities if you didn’t own a vehicle, but consider this: The Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey found that 25 percent of all trips are made within a mile of the home and 50 percent of the working population commutes five miles or less to work. Yet more than 82 percent of trips five miles or less are made by personal motor vehicle.

It’s easy to see that eliminating some of these short car trips would drastically reduce your personal carbon footprint, save you money and probably time (the average urban commuter spends around 50 hours in traffic every year).

Here are three ways that you can give up your car without restricting your life to a two mile radius from your home.

Bike Commuting: Bike commuting is an ideal solution to the need for moderate physical activity, which can be practiced five times a week. A 130-pound cyclist burns 402 calories while pedaling 14 miles in an hour. Biking is the only form of personal transportation for which no fuel is required and absolutely no emissions are produced. Bikes are infinitely easier to park and cheaper to repair. If it’s been a while since you’ve cycled more than a few blocks, you can find great tips for biking safely and efficiently at www.bikeleague.org/resources/better.

Public Transportation: After bike commuting, public transit options are the second most popular form of alternative transportation. Let’s face it; snow and rain aren’t the best conditions for riding a bike. When you need a roof over your head but still don’t want to worry about fueling or parking a car, local buses, paratransit, shuttles, trolleys, light rail, and subways are a great way to get where you’re going. If you need help finding public transportation options in your area, visit www.apta.com and look for the “Find Public Transportation Near You” search bar on the right-hand side.

Car Sharing: There are some times when biking or using public transit options just won’t meet your transportation needs, like if you want to take a loved one out for a fancy dinner in the city, shopping for groceries, or out of town business trips. In these situations, utilizing a car sharing service can be a great way to maintain a small carbon footprint while still traveling in style. Zipcar is one of the only national car sharing services in the U.S., but there are dozens of regional and local car sharing services in urban areas across the country. If you have a car, but don’t use it every day, joining a peer to peer car sharing service provides a safe and legal way to share your car with your neighbors.

Do you currently have a car? What do you think would be the hardest part of giving it up? Share your thoughts in a comment!

Beth Buczynski is a freelance writer from Colorado. She enjoys exploring new energy technologies and home solar financing options over at GreenMarketingTV, the green entrepreneur’s source for interviews with the industry’s top thinkers.

Image Credit: Socialfirestarters

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Don and Daphne at Zephyros Farm have taken the farm visit a step further: more than just a tour, their educational visits give kids the chance to see earthworms up close, weed and plant, and cuddle any adorable quadriped that might happen to be grazing nearby.

Zephyros is part of the Kids On Farms program, funded by the Kampe Foundation; they’ve set up a curriculum that gives students a hands-on experience in organic farm life. Activities vary by season, but usually involve getting your hands dirty and sampling some of the produce or (mmmm) goat’s milk.
Don and Daphne are big fans of the agritourism movement, and welcome anyone who wants to come through and learn how things are done.

They also host gourmet farm dinners for kids and grownups alike who appreciate good food and the farmers who grow it. They’re both good teachers, incredibly knowledgeable, and (most importantly) very talented at this farming thing; their crops, livestock, and ability to rattle off Latin names of plants all hint that despite unassuming exteriors, these two are ag experts.

I wasn’t on the farm long enough to follow any classroom tours myself, but my co- WWOOFer Karina Salinas Heredia was; her photos are so good, and the classroom trips such a great idea, that I thought it was very much worth sharing. Enjoy— and if you’re a teacher or know someone who is, talk to them about helping kids get to a local farm. We could all use a little dirt under our fingernails sometimes, right?

View Jessica’s profile here.

For more info on keeping backyard chickens or goats click on the links below:
Backyard Chicken Basics
and
The Backyard Goat: An Introductory Guide

It didn’t take long for me to decide that the “quick & easy” design was less than adequate for a hardcore hippie like myself. The bin didn’t drain well, and the worms were always in danger of drowning, and it filled up too fast, and the overall result was completely and totally disgusting.

So when I moved into my new place last month, I decided to build a big bin, something designed for my admittedly prodigious composting habit. You can do this too: all you really need is a wooden box with ventilation, and voila! Worm bin. Here’s how I made mine.

I went to the Habitate ReStore and picked up two hinged closet doors for $5 each, to make the box. From the surplus yard, I got a useful-looking slatted piece for $2, to make the ends.

I removed the hinges from one set of doors, and attached them at a right angle with long wood screws. Then I attached the other door, leaving the hinges intact. Instant hinged lid.

I cut the slatted piece in half and attached one half to each end of the box. That’ll keep the compost in, but provide airflow for my wee wrigglers. Plus they can escape through the slats, should they wish to flee the scavenger’s heaven I’m about to create in there.

Uh… then I dumped a bunch of crap in it.

MamaHun came to visit, and brought me worms from her own bin. I shredded some paper, wetted the whole thing down, dumped a little dirt on top with the remnants of my old compost bin… whee! Worm heaven.
It’s huge, imperfect in many ways, but it cost me $12 and under an hour of work, and I bet it’ll function just fine. Now I’ll have compost for spring planting.

PS – Why didn’t I cut the ends shorter so they don’t stick up? Because I’m lazy, that’s why. And because they hold the lid open so I can muck around in there with both hands.

PPS – A few months later, I decided to rodent-proof this box by stapling aluminum screen over all the gaps that were bigger than 1/4 inch. I recommend you do the same.

Want the definitive guide to worm composting? Everything you need to know EVER is here: Manual of On-Farm Vermicomposting and Vermiculture (PDF)

View Jessica’s profile here.

In a recent article, Times reporter Catherine St. Louis profiles a variety of people–including a paralegal, a salesman, an actor and the owner of a skin-care company–who bathe rarely and use deodorant even less. Their claim: it’s not necessary, and nobody seems to notice.

Your intrepid author washes her hair but once or twice a week and showers every couple-few days. Deodorant is for hot afternoons and important situations, but most of the time I don’t wear it. Unless I’m sweaty, I just don’t see the need for underarm perfume. Showering dries out my skin badly. So I bathe less, but I don’t mention it. People have a tendency to judge.

Catherine St. Louis describes our “culture of clean” as the result of incessant marketing. “Personal cleanliness in the United States has long been big business,” she writes, and 93% of American adults shampoo almost daily. But scientists are discovering good reasons why you shouldn’t: soap strips your skin of its natural lipids, aging it faster and causing dry skin and eczema. Thank jeebus there are expensive lotions for that, eh?

But lotions can’t replace the host of friendly bacteria that prevent infections and irritation of your skin. The chief dermatologist at UC San Diego told St. Louis that your skin bacteria don’t just fight disease, they’re “educating your own skin cells to make your own antibiotics.”

Last but not least: skipping a shower can save nearly 40 gallons of water a day. Yipes.

Everybody’s going to make their own choices about soap, shampoo, deodorant, perfume, toothpaste, lotion, body wash, night cream, conditioner… and you should always wash up after you ride the subway or go to the gym. Aside from that, there’s a lot of leeway.

View Jessica’s profile here.

Unfortunately, scientists predict that as the effects of climate change become more pronounced, extreme heat will become the summertime norm rather than the exception. When the temperatures climb above 80, 90 or even 100 degrees you need something more than a cold shower to stay comfortable.
Even the most climate conscious among us usually has to fire up the air conditioner once or twice during the dog days of summer. And even using a small air conditioner for a few hours a day is likely to have a considerable effect on your energy bills.

Although many people know that a home solar system can help offset their dependence on grid-supplied electricity, few realize that it doesn’t take a solar lease to reduce their utility bills.

This summer, many energy conscious families are turning to solar powered air conditioning as a way to reduce their bills as well as their environmental impact.
There are four main ways to utilize solar energy for cooling purposes:

1. Photovoltaic Solar Cooling: One of the simplest ways to cool your home using the energy of the sun, this method connects a solar photovoltaic array to an energy efficient conventional air conditioner. However because of the intense energy consumption of most conventional air conditioners, solar power only contributes about 10-20 percent of the power used.

2. Solar Powered Evaporative Cooling: Evaporative cooling is the process of reducing air temperature by drawing it over a moist surface with a fan. Because most evaporative cooling units (also known as swamp coolers) require far less energy to operate than a traditional air conditioner, the power can be supplied easily by a small photovoltaic array. The only drawback is that this approach tends to be successful only in arid climates.

3. Solar Powered Absorption Chillers: In this type of system, solar heat is used to separate the absorbent and the refrigerant from each other. The refrigerant is then compressed and evaporated to create a cooling effect for your home.

4. Solar Desiccant Cooling: Instead of actually cooling the existing air, this system achieves a cooling effect by reducing the amount of moisture in the air. Water in the air is removed when a fan draws it over special material called a desiccant. Once the material is soaked with water, solar heat is used to evaporate the moisture into the outside air. In this way, humidity inside your home is reduced, which has a cooling effect.

Beth Buczynski is an editor and solar enthusiast at GreenMarketing.TV the green entrepreneur’s source for start-up ideas and insightful interviews with the industry’s top thinkers. She also enjoys discovering socially responsible companies at EntrepreneursforaChange.com.

View Beth’s profile here.