Personal Website of Yakov Shafranovich

Hacking Your Garden

According to Wikipedia, life hack means:

In more recent times, the same phrase has expanded to any sort of trick, shortcut, skill, or novelty method to increase productivity and efficiency, in all walks of life. Or, in other words, anything that solves an everyday problem in a clever or non-obvious way might be called a life hack.

In my previous post about our garden, I pointed out several of the problems I constantly ran into when gardening including bad soil, weeds, pests, etc. What I have found in the last year or so can be best called hacks for gardening – all kinds of ways to think out of the box and save time/effort/labor when gardening. Some examples are:

• Lasagna gardening – gardening in layers without weeding or tilling
• Growing potatoes in old tires
• Vertical gardening using plastic pockets on a wall
• Growing veggies upside down using old soda bottles

My favorite so far has been Square Foot Gardening – growing plants in a raised bed with a special soil mix divided into 1 foot squares (I will be posting more on that in the future).

All of these “hacks” share a common theme – they assume that the way we garden has been carried over from commercial farming and lot of the approaches and techniques used in commercial farms do not apply in gardens. It remains to be seen whether this in fact is true – all I could so far is anecdotal evidence, not something rigorously checked by a scientist.

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More on Conaway vs. Meister lawsuit

(For previous posts see here and here)

One thing that both Belinda Conaway and Adam Meister agree on is that she did in fact sign at least four legal documents on a piece of real estate outside Baltimore City and claimed it as her residence at least four times. She may argue it is her mother’s house, or that it was a mistake, but the documents do exist and can be easily looked at (BaltiLeaks got most of them).

What is interesting is that the lawsuit is probably causing Adam Meister not to be able to talk at all about the matter, going straight into election season. Ms. Conaway is up for re-election and the primary is only a few months away. This time, she even has a challenger in her district (Nick Mosby). All she has to do is drag the lawsuit past the September primary and then it won’t matter anymore. This may explain why the co-defendent, Examiner.com, never got served – they are not the target. Given that Ms. Conaway’s father is the clerk of court, delayed the lawsuit maybe not be too hard.

UPDATE: Looks like a hearing has been scheduled on August 1st, 2011.

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Health Tip: Add Veggies and Fruits to Every Meal

There is a large body of medical research out there that shows that veggies and fruits have a lot of benefits. However, for many working people there simply isn’t enough time to go and buy fresh fruit/veggies and then cook them. Especially, since they tend to spoil pretty quickly.

A quick tip that I once saw somewhere – in order to get yourself used to eating veggies and fruit, is to make sure you have some of that at every meal. It maybe something small like a fresh apple or some baby carrots, or for the really lazy among us, some canned peas, but getting to like veggies and fruit as part of your daily meals, will make it easier to eat healthier down the road.

And no, french fries do not count as veggies

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When Bloggers Strike Back (Legally)

About 6 weeks ago, I wrote a post about an interesting local story – a local councilwoman is suing a blogger for $21 million after he alleged that she does not resided in the city proper. Now it looks like this blogger, Adam Meister, has retained pro-bono services of a major law firm and has filed legal paperwork in the case. It is interesting to contrast the fact that the councilwoman’s lawyer is best known for DUI and criminal defense work, while the blogger’s lawyers are a large firm no doubt experienced in defamation cases. Of course, it remains to be seen what exactly will happen, especially since the councilwoman’s father is the clerk of Baltimore City Circuit Court – the venue where this lawsuit was filed.

However, reading the legal paperwork yields several more nuggets that are pretty interesting:

• The Maryland SLAPP law is being invoked to expedite the lawsuit and dismiss it early. It goes without saying that First Amendment rights are involved as well.
• While the lawsuit was filed on April 11th, 2011, Adam Meister was not served until 3 weeks later on May 1st. His co-defendants have still not been served.
• One cannot claim defamation against something based on their own words. In this case, the councilwoman signed an affidavit in conjunction with a real estate transaction, which is the same as her own words.
• There have been other cases where defamation claims have been dismissed based on third party information, but here it is even better since this is her own words.
• Someone cannot say something and than retract it later and sue for defamation based on the original statement.

The entire set of legal records makes a fascinating read, and I would encourage everyone to go through it.

On a related note, a local whisteblower site, BaltiLeaks, has been posting copies of all kids of real estate documents where Ms. Conaway, the councilwoman, has signed that she is a resident of Baltimore County, not the city. See here, here, here, here and here.

While the councilwoman claims it was a mistake signing those documents, BaltiLeaks summarize it the best: “If Conaway committed an ‘oversight’ in signing these documents, they did it four different times.”. This is besides the fact that someone who makes her living writing and passing laws, signs legal documents without reading them?

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Saying GoodBye to Palm and Sprint, Part IV

(followup to parts I, II and III)

I ended up getting rid of my Samsung Intercept and getting a new LG Optimus V. The difference is striking – everything I have thrown at the Optimus, it had no problems running, even at the same time as other apps. On the Intercept, by contrast, even syncing with Google Reader would lock the phone down. I am very happy with the Optimus V and would highly recommend that phone as a good Android option for Virgin Mobile.

Once again, I do not recommend the Intercept, especially since it is more expensive. The Intercept retails for around $179 by Virgin Mobile, while the Optimus V is $149.99. I was able to snag one on Amazon for $129.00 from a third party seller. Another tell tale sign was when I ran through several buyback sites such as Gazelle to see what I can get back for our two old Intercepts. With exception of Best Buy, no one offered more than $25 for the phone, while the Optimus V fetches around $50.

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Financial Tip: Easy Way to Always Save 5% on Gas

With the higher cost of gas, people are always looking for ways to save money on it. In the end of 2010 when I did my annual review of our personal finances, that was one of the things that I looked it. I wanted an easy way to save money on gas that did not require me to jump through a lot of hoops or learn some new crazy way to drive (i.e. hypermilling). What I have found to be the easiest for me is a gas company issued credit card. (It goes without saying that unless you can pay off your credit cards every month, it is not a good idea to have more of them – so if you cannot control your credit card habit, this suggestion IS NOT for you).

However, there has been a recent trend with store-specific cards that come with prebuilt permanent discounts. For example, Target currently offers a 5% discount at checkout for holders of the Target credit or debit cards. I think that Lowes has something similar. The logic behind it is that when retailers process cards internally without going through the VISA/MC networks, they don’t have to pay the processing fees which usually average around 2-3%. Add another 2-3% to attract consumers, and you got a store-specific card.

What I did is go out and look at the available credit cards for gas, compare prices of gas stations in my area and see if it made sense. I ended up getting a BP VISA issued by Chase which comes with a 5% cashback for BP gas. I have about 4-5 BP stations within one mile of my house and their prices are pretty similar to other stations. I do know that a lot of people stopped patronizing BP gas stations after the Deepwater oil spill, but they don’t realize that the gas does not come from BP and most stations are franchises owned by local owners.

My experience so far has been positive – the card works as advertised, and I already earned my first cashback reward. I pay the card off every month of course and I don’t use it for anything other than gas. While Chase allows you to get paid in many ways, I choose a BP gift card which I promptly used to fill up. Now when reading the fine print, be aware that there is a $75 limit on cashback per month (I think) as well as a limit on how much you can spend on a single fill up. But for most consumers, this card maybe an easy way to save 5% on gas without doing much.

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Saying GoodBye to Palm and Sprint, Part III

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Why I Use Amazon for Most of My Online Shopping

While I had been online for a long time, over the years I gravitated to use Amazon.com for most of my online shopping. While I do not necessarily like big companies, in this case a lot of what Amazon brings to the consumer is something all online companies should learn from. I often find myself getting something from Amazon for a little more money just to get the benefits they offer. And as the range of stuff they sell expands, I am constantly surprised by what I find – I have bought seeds, lawn mowers and even a snow blower from Amazon in the past.

Here are some reasons why I like Amazon:

• Free 2-day shipping and cheap overnight shipping – I have an Amazon Prime membership and take advantage of it. For a busy family, it is often easier to order something online than to actually visit a store. A new trend has been is third party merchants qualifying for Amazon Prime shipping when they use Amazon’s warehouse services.
• Reviews are a great resource – many of the reviews, especially the negative ones are unabashedly straight forward and strong. I have found, time and time again, that user reviews steer me in the right direction.
• Great returns policy - for most items, they can be returned hassle free without paying shipping if something does not work. Even when I no longer want the item, it only costs the shipping itself to return something, and I often able to get cheaper shipping myself.
• Guarantee for Third Party merchants – one of the great things about Amazon (unlike Ebay) is that they guarantee most of their third party transactions, so even when things are not being bought from Amazon itself, there is still protection there.

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Tags: amazon —

Garden Project 2011: Introduction

As in the years past, my family is trying a hand at gardening this year again. In this post, I am going to outline what we have done in the past, what worked and what didn’t, before moving on to this year’s experiment. All of this information is for Baltimore City, MD, zones 7-7A. My house is located in the highest point in the city, about 490 feet above sea level.

WHY PLANT?

I find gardening an interesting hobby and it is useful for the kids as well. Additionally, being that we plant vegetables and fruit, we are hoping to eventually save some money on what we grow.

So far we have not broken even financially, primarily because the cost of transplants is high, and we buy new soil every year as well.

WHERE TO PLANT: LAND / SOIL / GROUND

In my back yard there is a section of ground right next to the neighbor’s fence, already surrounded with concrete and even has a small groove for water. That small strip is about 5″ wide and 45″ long, for a total of about 225 square feet. This is where we usually plant our garden. The problem is that the soil is extremely heavy clay, so heavy in fact that I can probably make pottery from it! I have looked into various possible solutions ranging from clay conditioners and just plain compost, but there is nothing that does not take a few years.

What we have done in the past, is weed whack the entire row, and than make burrows for the plants we are planting. We would then supplement those areas with freshly bought garden soil and hope for the best. The problem is that weeds tend to continue sprouting like crazy and a lot of work goes towards weeding. Another problem is that a lot of grass tends to grow in that area which makes things harder to plant. And to make things even crazier, there is a whole colony of kudzu in the end of the strip which spreads like wild fire. Because almost everything we plant is edible vegetables and fruits, I am afraid to use any sort of chemicals to kill the weeds.

Last year we have tried a new thing by using newspapers to block out the weeds and planting in soil on top of that. While that worked relatively well, the corn we planted did not make it in the end. There was a lot of work involved in stapling the newspapers to the ground, putting new soil on top, etc.

Earlier this year, we tried something new – putting out black plastic garbage bags to cover the ground and kills the weeds underneath. This worked somewhat well, but the weeds starting coming back after we took the cover off. The biggest problem however started once I begun preparing the ground – it is just way to hard to plow. Our neighbor spends several days with a pick ax doing just said, but don’t have that luxury. I did end up trying an electric cultivator but it did not work as well as I thought.

HOW TO PLANT: SEEDS / TRANSPLANTS / FERTILIZER

What we have done in the past is buy seeds from reputable companies like Burpee and Ferry Morse Co (Amazon actually sells a lot of Ferry Morse seeds). While we haven’t specifically focused on buying non-hybrids, starting this year we may begin to because non-hybrid plants produce seed that can be used year after year, forgoing the yearly purchase of seeds.

For certain types of plants like tomatoes and peppers, we buy transplants from Bonnie Plants, usually in Home Depot. We have never tried growing transplants in doors yet, but may try in the future.

I haven’t not used any sort of fertilizer in the past because we eat what the plants product. This may explain why some of our plants did not make it. Instead, we usually buy soil with fertilizer already in it and supplement our existing soil in the burrows where planting is done. It does not look like this is really working.

WHAT TO PLANT: Vegetables and Fruits

Majority of what we have planted over the years have been sweet bell peppers. One year there were only banana peppers left and we tried those, but they were not quite as good as the regular sweet peppers. The sweet peppers we used were various Bonnie hybrids. We have had great success with peas and green beans, in particular, Wando peas and Blue Lake green beans.

Cantaloupe, cucumbers, corn and watermelon were tried but all either got some infection or did not produce good fruit. We also tried sun flowers but couldn’t figure out how to dry the seeds properly.

NEXT

In the next few posts I am hoping to cover some of the experiments we are doing this year.

Posted in Personal, Projects | 2 Comments »
Tags: gardening —

Another ECB document

As a followup on my interactions with the Baltimore City’s Environmental Control Board, the state’s Attorney General’s office recently posted an opinion as to some of their practices. It is available here.

As mentioned before, all of my ECB documents are here: http://goo.gl/kdGZe.

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