May was a great month for the garden! I spent a lot of time out there and am pleased that it looks as good as it does. It has rained quite a bit and everything is extremely green! I stepped back for some of these photos so you can see the design of the garden [...]
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Tags: 2011, arbor, backyard, blackberries, dogwood, ecological, edible, flowers, food, formal, fruit, garden, gardening, green, growing, hazelnut, hill, home, home grown, house, landscape, landscape architect, landscaping, lonicera sempervirens, May, missouri, native, organic, perennials, photos, plants, produce, raised beds, raspberries, spring, St. Louis, strawberries, sustainable, trees, trellis, trumpet honeysuckle, urban agriculture, vegetable, vegetables, wildlife 
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Here are some photos from my garden in April 2011. It was a very rainy month and some of the photos really turned out nice…they are worth a click to see the larger image because the thumbnails really don’t do them justice. I particularly like the way the rain droplets look…I think my favorite photo [...]
Posted in Uncategorized Tags: april, bluebells, celandine poppy, ecological, fern, flowers, forsythia, garden, gardening, gnome, growing, hellebore, home, home grown, Hosta, landscape, landscaping, native, perennials, photos, plants, residential, shade, shade garden Comments Off
The heating and cooling systems on our trusty suburban ranch was more than twenty years old when we decided it was time to replace them with new, high efficiency models. So Mary and I began our due diligence on the subject and started comparing available options. When I first learned about geothermal heating and cooling [...]
Posted in Saving Energy, Saving Money Tags: air conditioner, alternative energy, amount, conservation, cooling, cost, credit, data, earth, eco, ecological, economical, efficiency, efficient, electric, electricity, energy, energy use, expense, federal, gas, geo thermal, geothermal, green, ground, ground source, heating, home, hot water, house, loop, midwest, missouri, money, natural gas, photos, residential, saving, savings, St. Louis, suburban, sustainable, system, tax credit, taxes, technology, time-lapse, utilities, video, water No Comments »
Time for another tour of the garden! June is a big month for the garden!!! Things that were small in the beginning of the month are huge now. Beans and corn that were still seeds a month ago are now over 5 feet tall! Here is a gallery of photos I took, mostly from June 21st (solstice) [...]
Posted in Growing Food, Uncategorized Tags: backyard, eco, ecological, economical, edible, food, fruit, gallery, garden, gardening, growing, home, home grown, landscape, landscaping, organic, photos, plants, produce, raised beds, residential, suburban, sustainable, tour, trees, urban agriculture, vegetable, vegetables, victory garden No Comments »
Last updated April 25, 2011 We are implementing energy saving strategies to attempt to reduce our energy use at our home by 50% In this post I am going to be updating graphs showing our total energy use for Electric and Gas showing the difference between the average energy usage of the last 5 years [...]
Posted in Saving Energy, Saving Money, Uncategorized Tags: alternative energy, amount, conservation, conserve, cost, data, eco, ecological, economical, electric, energy, energy consumption, energy use, existing, gas, geo thermal, geothermal, graph, green, ground source, home, house, missouri, money, natural gas, reduce, reduction, residential, save, saved, saving, smart, st. lous, strategies, strategy, suburban, sustainable, utilities 1 Comment »
2010 EDIBLE LANDSCAPE PLAN DRAWING 11X17 click this link to download I thought it was very important for you to have access to the garden design for the Sprawlstainable Garden. This drawing shows the entire site, the legend to all the edible plantings of fruits and vegetables, the house, the gardens, the patios, etc. The download [...]
Posted in Growing Food Tags: backyard, design, download, drawing, eco, ecological, economical, edible, food, fruit, garden, garden design, gardening, green, growing, home, home grown, landscape, landscape architect, landscape design, landscape plan, landscaping, legend, organic, pdf, plan, plant list, plants, produce, raised beds, residential, suburban, sustainable, trees, urban agriculture, vegetable, vegetables No Comments »
These are the amounts I am using to calculate how much the food we grew would have cost if we would have bought it at the store. I got the majority of these numbers by pricing organic produce during May and June 2010 at the Whole Foods Market in Town and Country, Missouri. It would probably [...]
Posted in Growing Food Tags: agriculture, amount, backyard, beans, berries, blueberries, carrots, cost, cucumber, currant, eco, ecological, eggplant, food, fruit, garden, gardening, grow, growing, home, homegrown, jostaberry, lettuce, list, money, mushrooms, organic, produce, saving, Saving Money, serviceberry, storebought, strawberries, suburban, sustainable, tomato, urban, value, vegetable, vegetables No Comments »
Final Totals This is a portion of my spreadsheet that lists both the amount of food we have grown this year and the cost of buying this amount of organic food at the store. Also included at the bottom are the totals, including the percentage we have eaten of the produce (I am keeping track [...]
Posted in Growing Food Tags: amount, backyard, cost, cost of food, eco, ecological, edible, food, fruit, garden, gardening, green, growing, harvest, home, home grown, list, local, local food, organic, plants, produce, raised beds, residential, saving, suburban, sustainable, vegetable, vegetables, victory garden 1 Comment »
One of the factors to consider when choosing a geothermal heating and cooling system are the ramifications of the exterior installation requirements. Unlike traditional systems, there is quite a bit of work that needs to be done outside the home to place the lines in the ground that are needed to carry the liquid that [...]
Posted in Uncategorized Tags: alternative energy, closed loop, conservation, eco, ecological, energy, geo thermal, geothermal, green, ground source, heat pump, home, landscape, landscaping, residential, sustainable, trenching, vertical suburban No Comments »
We’ll be doing a number of posts about our new geothermal heating and cooling system. It is a substantial investment in our home, and will go a long way towards meeting our goals of reducing our energy bills and our carbon footprint. These videos are made from time lapse photography we captured during the outdoor [...]
Posted in Saving Energy, Uncategorized Tags: alternative energy, closed loop, conservation, cooling, drilling, eco, ecological, economical, energy, geo thermal, geothermal, green, ground source, heat pump, heating, high efficiency, home, hvac, loop, residential, saving, sustainable, time-lapse, trenching, vertical No Comments »
