Zero waste

I've made great progress over the last few years in ditching the disposables and trying to reduce the amount of waste I produce.  And I was doing pretty well in only producing a small bag of rubbish every two or three weeks.  Unfortunately, living in an apartment now I have no possibility of setting up a composter anywhere (no garden, no balcony and don't even know anyone who I've been able to persuade to set one up in their garden), which means that I now have a full small bin full of rubbish every week and sometimes twice or three times a week during the height of canning season.  Funnily enough, I've found that the habits I've built up over the last few years are more difficult to break than the habits they were replacing, which I'd had for much longer.  So even after more than four years it still bothers me every single time I throw something in the bin that I know could be perfectly well added to a compost heap.  I've considered trying to get a small wormery going in the kitchen but I don't really have space for it and there is a clause in my rental contract that states that I am responsible for ensuring there are no infestations of insects or bugs.  I've already managed to acquire moths (of the clothes eating variety) and somehow it seems to me that bringing a whole lot of worms into the building might not go down too well.

Germany was probably one of the first countries to introduce rubbish separation and recycling so we have three bins available to us in our building.  One for paper and carton, one for plastic packaging and one for general waste.  I'm also lucky enough to live just across the road from some glass bottle banks, for those bottles that don't have a deposit to be claimed once you return them to the shop.  Once I've separated out all the stuff for those bins I don't have much left to get rid of except for veg peels etc.  Switching from disposables has certainly made shopping a lot easier, too.  No need to remember to buy sponges or dishmops every couple of months, I just use my own knitted cloths.  No need to remember to buy serviettes, I have cloth ones that I bought nearly fifteen years ago that are still going strong.  No need to remember to buy kitchen roll, I have lots of rags and cloths to soak up any spill.  No need to remember to buy toilet roll except once a year or so, I have an old towel cut up into squares that work so much better than paper.  No need to remember to buy sanitary towels, I have my mooncup and washable pads.  And no need to pay for any of those things anymore makes it all even better.

I don't think I'll ever get to the stage of producing zero waste but it's still a goal worth aiming for I think.  Top of my list for the next place I move to, though, is enough outside space to have a small composter or wormery on the go.  Until then, this post marks the end of the April A to Z challenge.  It's been interesting but I'm not really sorry that it's over.  I may take a few days rest from blogging now.  Or I may be back tomorrow already, since it's a bank holiday here and all.  Can't believe it's May already, time is really flying by.  A sign that I'm getting older, apparently.  I like to tell myself that that's balanced out by my getting more childish, though.  You take what comfort you can get, I suppose. :-)

Shopping - 14th Feb

From market:
148g turkey salami - 3.48
122g duck tornados - 2.43 (a kind of kebab with duck meat in a spicy marinade)
114g turkey pieces - 0.92
I also bought six eggs from this farmer but realised today she didn't charge me for them, will have to pay next week.

6 elstar and 2.5 kg bag of boskoop apples - 3.70

1 kg potatoes and 100g mushrooms (both organic) - 2.40

From kaisers supermarket:
Milk - 1.09 plus 0.15 cent deposit on bottle
Bar of chocolate - 1.89
Jar of yoghurt - 1.09 plus 0.15 cent deposit
Frosch washing-up liquid - 1.59
Bacchus wine - 4.69

From baker (this is my main foodie treat of the week usually):
Half a loaf of organic wholegrain rye - 1.60
2 organic slawiner (a type of bread roll) - 0.74
2 chocolate croissants - 1.96 (only actually asked for one but had a newbie serving me so didn't make a fuss - was glad of it later as I had to go straight from my new tai chi class to a four hour choir rehearsal and was famished by the break so the second croissant and an apple went down very well)
1 slice organic apple cake - 1.60

Yesterday was a good day. I had one thing planned which I didn't manage to get to due to sleeping later than I thought I would. I found out that the VHS (volkshochschule - local community college) also has an organic garden in the town where you can go along and help out on Tuesday afternoons or Saturday mornings from 10. As I'll now be doing tai chi from 12 every Saturday morning I would only be able to spend maybe an hour there but it would be good to be doing something outside and, hopefully, I might be able to start bringing my fruit and veg peelings there to compost. Otherwise it was a long, busy, tiring but satisfying day.

I intended to go and distribute leaflets advertising choir's next concert at a couple of other concers that were taking place in Dusseldorf today but it started sleeting around lunchtime and was definitely a day to stay inside. This morning I decided to make sure I did a conditioning vinegar rinse in my hair today and after heading to the bathroom to do that I decided that I should clean it first. I ended up doing a very thorough job (which was needed as I only skimmed the surface last week) and also trying something I first heard about ages ago but hadn't done before. I am now a very big fan of a lemon quarter sprinkled with bicarb as a method of cleaning hard water scum off the bath and taps. The taps on the bath, which I've tried before to get sparkling, are actually sparkling now. Once the place was clean I did the vinegar rinse on my hair and had a nice hot shower. And made an effort to keep those taps sparkling by drying them off immediately. I also moved a window wiper into the bathroom so that I can wipe down the tiles immediately after having a shower, which should help with the water deposit build up in future too.

Spent a quiet afternoon watching Jeeves and Wooster on the internet and then at one stage, after having gotten up to make a cup of tea, had a fit of energy and decided to wash the kitchen floor (also something that badly needed doing as I've just been making do with sweeping it for the last couple of weeks and mopping up any spills with a cloth). Of course, to make that worth my while I had to sweep well and since I had the brush (microfibre cloth type) out I did a quick run around the whole apartment. I also shook out the tablecloth (the thing about all the wonderful German breads is that lots of them come with seeds in them and they do tend to get everywhere), which meant I had to clear off the books that were on that. New tablecloth on table (white of course, just in time for me to spill a dirty big spoonful of chutney on it - what on earth ever possessed me to buy a white tablecloth!), floor swept, potatoes for dinner scrubbed and in a pot of water and then I washed the floor. Did a quick swipe around the rest of the place while I was at it but a really, really thorough job of the kitchen floor. Feels like a weight off to have done it. It's one of those things that preys on my mind when it's not done and yet I sometimes have the greatest difficulty just getting up and doing it. Switched the cooker on under the potatoes while I went away to let it dry and spent a while on the phone to my brother. So, kitchen is all tidy now, dinner dishes washed and put away and leftovers in the fridge for lunch and the makings of dinner tomorrow. Another good day. And time now for bed so that I can get a reasonable night's sleep and maybe get into work early tomorrow.

Pottering

Spent a lovely day yesterday pottering around the garden, in and out of the shade inside as well making and taking lots of phone calls. Great way to spend a bank holiday. I harvested compost from the plastic cone shaped composter I got from the council when I first moved into this house (over two years ago). Mostly I just kept putting more and more stuff into it and never turned it or anything, occasionally adding some organic liquid accelerator stuff (to use when most of what you're composting is grass) and some shredded newspaper. Then last year in autumn I chopped back a pile of branches from the fuchsia and dumped them in on top of all that as I had no time to cut them up small. So yesterday I tipped it over, harvested what was at the bottom (mostly well composted but quite dry and very little sign of worms but loads of earwigs). I got almost a full wheelbarrow full which I was pleased with.

Most of that went onto the bed in the front garden, where I also chopped back the last of the tulips and the comfrey. There are a couple of garlic plants growing away there and I did plant a few potatoes into it as well recently. Once I have seedlings sturdy enough to plant out I'm going to plant some out there are well.

I put the dead branches around the foot of the fuchsia, couldn't be bothered chopping them at the moment and they'll do there out of sight for another while. And I managed to tip the composter back into place without making too much of a mess of the last few weeks grass cuttings, which had been thrown in on top of those branches.

I kept some of the best compost from that lot to mix with bought compost and soil to pot on the seedlings I have. I planted everything a bit haphazardly at the beginning so ended up with tiny pots with loads of salad seedlings in them. Hopefully some of them will survive having been pricked out and re-potted in bigger pots. Ditto for the tomatoes. I'm not too worried about the five courgette and two squash seedlings as they were much bigger and sturdier. The leeks were very fragile though so am really not sure about them.

But the big news is that I found out this weekend that I am being offered a job in Dusseldorf (for the same company I work for now, had the interview a week and a bit ago) so it makes it that bit more difficult to be bothered if things don't survive. I may not actually move until the end of July though so I have some time to get a harvest if things go well. Of the two better established tomato plants I have I realised one had a blackfly infestation on Sunday but have sprayed it with this stuff my brother gave me (something organic) - hopefully that'll work. And then despite my really not wanting to I finished off the day by clearing up the kitchen and then, after soaking my feet, I washed all the floors and had a lovely hot shower before heading to bed. I knew I'd appreciate having done that when I got up this morning and it was definitely nice to have a clean floor rather than one with dirt and grass all over it!

Growing stuff

My seedlings have started to come up, hurray!

I only planted them at the beginning of last week and I know I'm pushing it to get anything much this summer but hopefully I'll get some salady crops (have sown mizuna, spinahc, purslane and some mixed baby lettuce seeds and they're all going great guns). Garlic seems to mostly have given up the ghost but I will try again with it next year and this time pay attention!

Beets are coming up as well, no sign of tomatoes yet, courgettes and squash are flying along and, very excitingly, some leek seedlings appeared. Will have to sit down this weekend and actually write down the types I planted so I have a proper record.

A friend gave me two tomato seedlings about five weeks ago though and I potted both of those into bigger pots last week and they're growing well. And my brother gave me some potatoes which he had chitted for me (i.e. he hadn't used them before they started sprouting so decided he had been 'chitting' just for me) and I shoved them into the ground out front. No harm in trying. I never fully dismantled the potato tyre stack I tried last year (the three tiny potatoes it yielded were blighted) and now it's got a really vigourous looking plant growing again. However, I've read many places to be careful not to let any blight volunteers (i.e. potatoes from a blighted plant left in the ground by accident) grow so have to dig that out and get rid of it. I found two or three similar ones out front but before they really started to grow so it wasn't too bad. There's a healthy looking potato plant also growing out of the compost again so may need to do some investigating of that this weekend.

I like growing stuff.

Rats!

Well, a rat. A dead one to be precise. In my compost heap. The cheek!

I went down to add more stuff to the compost on Saturday morning (would have done the same on Wednesday but it was dark so didn't notice anything) and noticed some mangy looking fur lying on top of but kind of burrowed into one corner. I've seen cats climbing over the compost heap before (collapsing the top of it every time, I really should put a solid top on it) so although it didn't really look like a cat that was my first thought, that a cat had dug in for the heat. But cats don't like to get dirty, do they? I gave the fur a poke and it didn't move and then I noticed the big long tail at the end of the pile of fur. Eeeeww!!!! Which reaction caused me to think I may not be cut out for country life one little bit! I was also, to be honest, quite scared and had every fact/myth I'd ever heard about rats running through my head. I don't run or else I might very well have run screaming up the garden into the safety of the house. As it was there was definitely some shuddering and I was no sooner in the "safety" of the house when I remembered there's a cat flap in the back door (from previous owners) which doesn't shut and my head was promptly filled with visions of giant rats invading via the cat flap to take revenge on me for messing with one of their dead.

Hmmm. Yes. This is why I never watch horror films on purpose.

I left it alone and went out yesterday morning and it still hadn't moved so I bit the bullet, grabbed it by the tail and put it into a plastic bag and threw it in the bin. Really, finding a plastic bag was the most difficult part of the exercise. But I'm still a bit shuddery.

Now for the practical bit where I need to probably dismantle that compost heap to make sure there's no nest in it (it gets turned about once a month and I've never noticed anything before). Can I use that compost safely or should I make sure to only use it on flowerbeds and not edible ones? I'm sure I've seen this discussed so will have to go and search. Anyone with any tips please let me know.