vine ripened tomato
I am thankful for Michael Pawlyn’s TED talk about the beauty and application of biomimicry (13:47 minutes) because it brought my attention to some elegant and beautiful ideas that we can and are using as not just sustainable development but restorative design.
He talked about closed loop ways of using resources of which I have been thinking about for some time now. “In biomimicry when you get an under utilized resource , you don’t think, “how am I going to dispose of this?” you think, “what can I add to this system to create more value?”.” For me this makes me think about water, carrots and potatoes.
Water:
I keep the water container for my plants in my kitchen, not far from the sink.
This way I am able to catch water when rinsing carrots, sprouts, green leafy vegetables or any of that kind of thing. I definitely grab my plant watering can to catch the water when getting slightly hotter or colder water for drinking or rinsing.
Other benefits I have noticed are when I have to purposely fill my plant water container it is a tell tale that I have not eaten many fresh vegetables the passed few days.
Because I sometimes pour the rinse water from sprouts directly into my other plants, sometimes I have a small crop of what ever the sprouts were. One caveat is to be mindful to only harvest sprouts from under plants that are not poisonous. I don’t know for certain but if the plant kills most other plants that come in contact with it, I suspect it isn’t all that good for eating.
Carrots:
What do I do with the peelings? They smell and take up unnecessary space in the trash. A possible solution? Peel the carrot on a plate, leave the peelings to dry over night or a couple of days then rub between hands to make a fine powder and sprinkle in house plants in the winter when a compost bin is unavailable.
Potatoes:
Potatoes taste best to me cooked. When I use the oven to cook them I put something that can be cooked at a lower temperature on the burner that has the oven vent underneath it. Some examples include but are not limited to warmed over soup, stew or just some beans. When I boil a pot of potatoes I will use another pan as the lid for the potatoes so that I can cook two or three things at one time.
Why do I bother with this?
- I don’t like having to deal with taking out a bunch of trash.
- I prefer not to smell the trash.
- I love growing my own food, it brings me a lot of joy.
- I like knowing what fertilizer is in my plants .. that blue stuff gives me an ookey feeling.
- I don’t like shopping. I especially don’t like having to drag home soil or fertilizer on the bus. Putting dried waste veggies in the soil builds it up.
- I have tomatoes, herbs or whatever growing in my home all year round.
- Having a tomato fresh off the vine when it is -25C outside is seriously awesome!
- I like the challenge of testing and finding ways for things to work more effectively.
- I really value having safe clean water and fresh food. (Thus I am mindful to preserve and conserve it.)
- I enjoy spending money on things like new seeds and plants as opposed to utility expenses.
- The thought of living off the grid someday excites me .. a lot!
- This is practise for living in my earth ship.
- I had a lovely bowl of soup this evening from a warm bowl, served on a warm plate with a warm roll because I used the bowl as the lid for the soup pot, placed the roll in the bowl (crust down so it was crusty on the outside and soft inside.) and then placed the plate on top of the works.
- I really like good food!
