Regrow: Tomatoes and Potatoes

I'm starting to think about a spring garden. There's nothing tastier than a tomato that's 10-seconds fresh off the plant, and you know that you grew it yourself!

The good news is tomatoes are SUPER easy to grow (I am not careful with reading directions, and not a patient care-giver.) This year I'm going to try potatoes as well. Both tomatoes and potatoes are grown from scraps or waste.

True confession: around Thanksgiving, Safeway had "Buy a 10 LB Bag of Potatoes / Get One Free" special. I made my way through the first bag, left the second in the garage, and now have a bag of sprouted potatoes. It seems like a huge waste of food, even if they were free, hence my desire to start growing potatoes this year. :)

If you want to sprout potatoes on your own, leave them in your pantry in their regular bag for a month or so, and they will sprout on their own.

So I'm reading up on how to go about planting these, and the interwebs recommend cutting the potatoes into pieces, with each piece containing a couple sprouts. Then you leave them out for 24 hours before planting 4" deep in soil. They say potatoes do best in 45-80 degrees F, so these will be started inside in planters. I'm still early in this process and will keep you posted in the coming months about the results.

A couple weeks ago, I decided to start my tomatoes. I've been doing tomatoes the last few years, but have been starting too late, planting my seeds around April, and unfortunately losing a lot of green tomatoes in October. So, this year, I figured I'd get the ball rolling in February, and am hoping for a fuller season. Yup, these sprouts are just a couple weeks old!

Getting the sprouts started is as easy as starting with a tomato. I took a regular tomato that I was dicing for dinner, and scraped the seeds straight into a 1" deep pocket in the soil, pulp and all. You don't need to clean or dry the seeds, and bonus, they were free. Add a little water, forget about them for a few days, and you've got sprouts!

Once the weather warms up, and your seedlings are about 6" tall, you can transfer them from their indoor pot into the garden. You'll want to plant them on a very sunny side of your house, and once they're outside, they'll need daily watering or a drip sprinkler. Lots of sun + lots of water = lots of tomatoes!  

Happy almost spring, everyone. What are you thinking of planting this year?

Shop and sell: Half Price Books

OK, guys, I have a confession to make. I am oooooold school when it comes to my media. I like physical paper books, and CDs. It's part habit and mostly sentimentality.

I like the smell of the paper.

I like listening to an album as a whole, and thumbing through the lyrics, photos, art, and poetry of liner notes.

I like folding down the corners of my pages when I take a break from reading. And I want to be on my own timeline. (Both of which make me a bad candidate for using the library.)

I like browsing through rows of books and discs, and thumbing through things until one catches my eye, and I read a little, and decide it's spoken to me that I should bring it home.

If you are a digital media consumer or library user, kudos to you for already reducing your footprint. If you are an old soul like me, enter: Half Price Books. Half Price Books is a used book store with over 120 locations in the US.

Any used book store is a great way to participate in reduce, reuse, and recycling. These stores take overstock from regular book stores as well as buying back books or taking donations from members of the community.

A few additional things that I love about HPB:

• They are participants in their communities. They donated 1 million books last year to non-profits, schools, jails, community centers, libraries, and more. 
• They have an environmental mission, from their base mission of re-using books, to their employees' yearly participation in Earth Day, to responsible sourcing for their stores, to hosting an additional website of green tips: http://www.becomegreen.info/
• Educators can receive an additional 10% off their purchases. 
• They commit to people by having responsible supply train transparency and profit-sharing with their employees. 
• Some of the stores have special events like author readings and children's story time. 

If you haven't gone to a Half Price Books before, it's pretty easy. The front looks pretty much like any other bookstore. They have new/overstock items up front, and then rows and rows of bookshelves, movies, and music. Usually in the back is their sell counter. You bring in whatever you'd like to move on from your home, wait about 10 minutes, and then they make you an offer on the items. To set expectations, it's usually pennies on the dollar, because they need to make their cut and they'll be selling the items half off. But I'll bring in a bag of items, and leave with $5-10 dollars to either buy MORE BOOKS!! or a cup of coffee. :)

Me "Thinx" I Like It

Hi gents, this post is for the ladies. Feel free to stick around if you have a lady in your life who sends you to the store for monthly supplies. :)

Ladies (and men who love ladies), let's talk about the realities of how much waste is created by tampon applicators and disposable sanitary pads. It astronomical, when you consider the ~2 billion women on the planet of the right age range X multiple products per month. Outside of the applicators, the tampons themselves contain plastics, if you aren't purchasing organic cotton, and some users question the health effects of chemicals used to bleach them.

I'm in a few circles of women who are concerned about the environmental and health impacts of their monthly cycles, and swear by menstrual cups. It's definitely a matter of personal style, but I'm not quite ready to go there yet. So when I started seeing ads for Thinx underwear, I was intrigued. These are absorbent panties that are supposed to replace up to two tampons worth of flow. This is the same concept as a reusable pad built right into the underwear, or for you mamas out there, the choice between disposable or cloth diapers for your little ones.

I ordered a few pairs, tested them out, and am pretty stoked overall. They come in a variety of styles, so you can wear the cut that matches your regular style. Things to note: they are a little bit thicker than my regular underwear (more like wearing bikini bottoms) so I worry they would show under leggings or more fitted clothes; however, they were discreet under medium weight jeans. I was also interested to see that that nude colored Thinx were black on the inside - no signing up for stained underwear.

Thinx definitely delivered on their promise. They were effective, kept me feeling dry, and no leaks. Ultimately, this probably comes down to personal preference. Having been both a pad-user and tampon-user at different points in my life, pad-wearers will be getting an upgrade. These keep you dryer than with a pad, substantially less bulky, and you don't have to worry about overflow. For tampon-wearers, it may be a little bit of adjustment getting used to free-flow. These are a no-brainer for light days, and great for tampon backup on heavy days. For super-heavy days, a you'll probably need to switch to a new pair at night.

Now, these panties come at a premium price, averaging about $34 a pair. I'm definitely not used to spending that, so I did a quick breakdown of when I'd break even. The answer? If I ditch tampons for a year, I break even at 3.5 pairs. This may or may not make sense based on your laundry cycle, but the good news is you won't be spending extra money for the greener option.

$10 x 3 pairs regular panties
$7 (1 box of tampons) X 12 months
=$114

$34 x 3 pairs of Thinx
=$96

Not entirely ready to make the leap? Thinx has a happiness guarantee, and offer discounts when you purchase multiple pairs. Next best thing: opt for organic cotton and applicator-free disposables.