I had to call out of work today because a sinus migraine hit me yesterday afternoon and brought a (thankfully mild!) fever with it. (We aren’t allowed to go in with any fever.) 25 hours later the migraine is still here, but Jammer is still doing his best to try to purr it away. #catsofinstagram #catscatscats #fullservicecat #jammer #katzenjammerkid #jammerbammer #kittybabies #myson #sickly #mytreasures #darlingboys #mainecoon #rescuecat https://www.instagram.com/p/CCMgTEoDz1m/?igshid=a22mu9ilxnnn
A store-bought bag of topsoil, a roll of landscaping fabric, or a bag of cedar chips doesn’t go very far if you have a large garden or a very limited budget. Here are some ways to create the materials you need for a beautiful, organic, productive garden, by both re-directing household waste, and foraging in your local area. I use a lot of these tricks in my garden to make it almost completely free for me to continue growing new things, and expanding the workable area every year!
For soil
Save your food scraps to create a rich compost for growing veggies and amending your soil. There are numerous options for every size of dwelling and yard. Small space solutions such as Bokashi and vermicompost work indoors and don’t produce bad smells, so you can keep them underneath the sink.Worm towers, compost heaps, and outdoor compost binsare a great solution if you have more space. The more you add, the more rich, nutritious material you can make for your garden. I like composting because it means I don’t have gross smelly garbage bags to deal with, because food waste is diverted. It seems like a lot of work at first, but it actually saves time, money, and transportation.
There are three things that are essential for plant growth. These are nitrogen for leaves and vegetation (N), phosphorus for roots and shoots (P), and potassium for water movement, flowering, and fruiting (K). Commercial fertilisers will give the relative concentrations of each of these compounds with and “NPK” rating. Plants like tomatoes also need calcium to produce healthy fruit. You can create amendments for your garden and soil at home so that you do not have to purchase fertiliser.
Human urine contains 12% nitrogen, and it’s sterile. Dilute before adding directly to plants.
Legumes such as beans, clover, peanuts, and alfalfa fix inorganic nitrogen into the soil with mycorrhizal organisms and nodules on their root systems. Plant these crops every few years in rotation with others to renew the soil organically.
For phosphorus
Human urine is also a great source of phosphorous and trace amounts of potassium.
Many plants are particular about what the soil pH should be.
To make soil more acidic: add oak leaves, pine needles, leaf mulch, urine, coffee grounds or sphagnum.
To make soil more alkaline: add wood ash, shell, or bone.
Mulch
Mulch is decomposing organic matter that adds nutrition to the soil, while simultaneously keeping out weed growth and retaining moisture. It also attracts worms, fungi and other beneficial creatures to your soil. Free sources of mulch include:
Leaves
Garden waste
Grass clippings
Straw (often straw bales are given away after being used for decoration in the fall. You can also plant vegetables directly in straw bales using a technique called straw bale gardening).
Wood chips (if you can borrow a wood chipper after you’ve collected some wood you can have attractive wood mulch for free)
When mulch isn’t enough to keep the weeds down, many people opt for landscaping fabric. It can be quite expensive and inorganic-looking. Free solutions that both attract worms and can be replaced in small segments as they break down include:
Newspaper*
Cardboard*
Egg cartons*
Printer paper, looseleaf, etc. in thick layers*
*try to make sure you are using paper that has vegetable-based dyes, so you aren’t leeching toxins into the soil.
Soil density/drainage
If your soil is compacted and you have plants that require low levels of water, or excellent drainage, add sand. I don’t recommend stealing it from the beach, but ask around and you’d be surprised at how easy it is to get for free. Sawdust also improves drainage. Adding organic matter and mulch encourages worms, who also till and aerate compacted soil.
If the area still needs drainage, dig a hole and fill it with bricks or rocks to create a “dry well”
For drainage in pots, add crushed bricks,terra cotta pot fragments, packing peanuts, small stones, marbles, orsand to the bottom under the soil layer. I find these in construction sites, on craigslist, or at flea markets.
Pots and growing containers
If you have space, raised beds are a great no-dig way to establish growing space. If you are pressed for space (like working on a balcony) there are many cheap or free options for container gardens.
Creating raised beds allows you to build up the soil without digging. Free ways to do this include using rocks or lumber (like my DIY “lasagna garden” made with the sheet composting technique), using the “wattle“ method with sticks and posts you have found, using discarded straw bales, old bricks,paving stones,cinder blocks or really anything else you have lying around.
Hugelkutur raised beds, which fix carbon and provide drainage, can be made by stacking sticks and untreated wood, and then piling soil or compost over it. (Thanks milos-garden)
Rubber tire gardens retain heat in the night and allow for great drainage. They can also be painted in fun ways.
Herb spirals (here is mine: 1, 2, 3) can be built with stones, bricks, and other found materials.
I often use old cooking pots, barbecues, teapots, or other found objects as planters.
If you can track down peat moss, cement, and vermiculite, you can make an easy Hypertufa planter in whatever shape you would like, provided you have a form in which it can dry.
Paving often requires a foundation of sand or another stable and well-drained substrate, and a covering of stones, bricks, or other weatherproof elements. Slowly collect stones over time, or free paving stone fragments to create a mosaic-type walkway. Often people give these things away on craigslist. I made a patio and fireplace out of free salvaged bricks, for example.
Save seeds from foods you like from the grocery store: consider growing peanuts, ginger, garlic, peppers, or a walnut tree: all of these and more can be planted from store-bought produce.
Learn to take cuttings. There is a tonne of info on the web about basic cutting propagation, layering, (like I do with rhododendrons) air layering, and numerous other techniques to take clones of plants you like. This saves going to a nursery and shelling out big bucks for all the variety you want.
For cuttings, willow tea and honey are great rooting hormones/antiseptics/anti-fungal agents, which can save you $40 if you were thinking of buying commercial rooting hormone.
I hope this helps you build your garden outside of the usual capitalist channels! It can be a cheap or free hobby if you are willing to think outside the box, and maybe put up with things that don’t look as clean or crisp as a hardware store catalogue.
If you have any further ideas, please add them! The more information the better.
The current wave of white nationalist attacks has its roots in
specific developments of the past period. But there is also, of course, a
longer history of white supremacist violence, stretching from the
original Ku Klux Klan’s terror campaign against freed slaves during
Reconstruction to the 15th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham
in 1963 to the Klan’s broad daylight massacre of leftists in Greensboro,
North Carolina in 1979.
Frequently in the past, the cross burners, bombers, and lynchers were
aided and abetted by sections of the police and the ruling elite who
have sought to use white supremacist violence to deal blows especially
to black people’s struggles for equality and justice. But the Klan and
other fascists have had other targets including Jews, leftists, and
labor organizers. Today the fascists overlap with the most extreme wing
of the “pro-life” anti-abortion movement.
Historically, fascism in Europe was used as a club in the 1920s and
‘30s to defeat the movements of the working class which threatened to
end the capitalist profit system altogether. In the U.S., racial
division, enforced through segregationist policies but supplemented by
state and white-supremacist violence, was used by the ruling class to
maintain its control.
At this point, the fascists in the U.S. are not in a position to
build a real mass base. But the influence of far-right ideas is growing
and there is no room for complacency. Besides the new wave of murderous
attacks, what is alarming is Trump’s success in increasing racial
division which undermines any effort to push back against the massive
inequality and exploitation which characterize neoliberal capitalism.
And if the labor movement and the left do not rise to the challenge of
the next period, the road would be open to something worse than Trumpism
developing a real base.
Black and white workers, natural-born and immigrant face different
situations but they also have common interests. At the end of the last
decade, tens of thousands of black women were victims of the “sub-prime
loans” pushed by the banks and lost their homes. This was part of the
massive loss of wealth by the black population caused by the economic
crisis. Meanwhile the scourge of opioid addiction has ripped through
white working-class communities in the Midwest and the Northeast where
good, unionized manufacturing jobs have largely become a thing of the
past. Deaths due to overdoses have contributed to a significant increase
in mortality among working-class people. Aren’t all of these working
communities victims of neo-liberal capitalism? Do they not share a
common enemy?
The Role of the Labor Movement
The Congress of Industrial Organizations, a union federation now part
of the AFL-CIO, showed workers in the midst of the Great Depression
that there was a different road: uniting against the bosses. They won
real gains for white and black workers. If a mass working-class party
had been built in 1930s and 40s period, far more could have been
achieved and capitalism itself could have been challenged.
When fascism sought to gain a mass base in Britain in the ‘30s they
were pushed back by the labor movement, socialists, and Jewish workers
at the Battle of Cable Street in 1936. Socialist Alternative’s forebears
in the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party mobilized 50,000 workers to
fight back against a fascist rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden
in 1939.
Today we see the beginning of a real fightback by working people,
which began with teachers in states that Trump won in 2016. Hillary
Clinton dismissed all who voted for Trump as “deplorables” but many
Trump voters joined the mass protests less than two years later in West
Virginia, Arizona, and Oklahoma demanding properly funded schools and
fighting the Republican politicians.
Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign in 2016 appealed precisely to
the common interests of working people against the “billionaire class.”
This is what made the billionaires so worried and what electrified the
hundreds of thousands who came out to his rallies.
Defeating the far right will not be achieved by better police
intelligence or liberal hand-wringing. It requires building a force that
is serious about fighting for all working people, against racism,
inequality, and capitalism which is the source of the hatred and
division. Just as many who voted for Trump would have voted for Bernie
if he had been on the ballot in November 2016, we can win back many
people seduced by the racist right-wing conspiracy theories. But to
truly isolate and defeat the reactionaries and fascists, people need a
vision of the future worth fighting for. This is why the struggle
against the far right is inseparable from the struggle for socialism.
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