The cup that becomes a self-watering pot

The self-watering cup is the small answer to large sub-irrigated pots, so you can sprout seedlings or grow a small bunch of herbs on your counter. More is coming soon!

Most readers look at UFO’s website in the morning.

I looked at my website’s statistics, hosted on bluehost, and found that most of UFO’s readers check its site between 7 and 8 AM. On average about 10 times more page visits take place in that period of the day that any other. I never knew! I guess that’s a good time to send twitter updates as well.

Lifecycle of earthworms

The life-cycle of the compost worm Eisenia fetida (Oligochaeta) was evaluated in a sicentific study by Venter and Reinecke im 1988, published in the South African Journal of Zoology, Volume 23, pages 161 to 165.

Eisenia fetida were placed in a cattle manure medium at optimal temperature and moisture levels and observed for 600 days. Earthworms were shown to:

• be reproductively active for more than 500 days
• Each cocoon produced 2.7 hatchlings on average, after an average 23 days of incubation.
• Hatchlings attained sexual maturity after 40 to 60 days
• In another study by Spurgeon and Hopkin in 1996 showed earthworms produce one to 2 cocoons per week on average. Only some of the cocoons are fertilized and some of the hatchlings survive

In a study by Tripathi and Bhardwaj in 1994 Eisenia foetida was shown to produce 9 net hatchlings per months.

Information from scientific publications on earthworms is accessible from scholar.google.com (or at least the abstract is).

How a prototype started

Yesterday I was looking for milk crates, that i will use in building a prototype for a mini waste-processing plant, based on earthworms. I accidentally found a grocer on my street that agreed to sell me his old empty crates! I then hailed a cab that was amused by my project, and did 2 trips to help me haul the crates to my place. A few hours later my first test user, an organization called food share in Toronto, asked me to install one in their greenhouse. If this prototype goes to market, it will have a funny origin!

Ecohomes

Are there low-tech, or affordable alternatives to these green techs for the home?
Some bloggers (at bottom of house illustration) wrote about DIY wind turbines…

3D printing, not yet a viable method of manufacturing, but we would like it to be soon

An article in the economist on 3D printing describes it as a technology that frees us all for the bottle neck in manufacturing. The bottle neck is the cost of molds, the capital costs. The article leaves out price tags however. Small objects that can be sold at high prices can be 3D printed. Large objects that must sell at moderate prices can’t. It would be perfect if they could, but it’s important to identify the problem, to better solve it. For now 3D printing is still too expensive. It’s makes for a nice news article, that the future has arrived, but that will only be true when the new technology is affordable. I speak as an inventor who looked up 3D printing that had to walk away from it because of its cost and limitation, and reluctantly rely on injection molding and factories.

Aerated food waste does not smell

Odor occurs when anaerobic bacteria breakdown organic material, and release Volatile Organic Compounds (smelly stuff) as a byproduct. That’s fermentation. Most compost catchers cause this to happen because waste rests on the surface of the container, with no air underneath it or around it. This means liquid builds up, aerobic (oxygen-using) bacteria dies and anaerobic (odor-causing) bacteria takes over. The air-tight lid contributes to this fermentation too.

The Plant Feeder on the other hand is designed to create replenished air chambers around, in the middle and on top of the food waste. The design is based on the food waste’s need in oxygen. If this oxygen is supplied, the food waste won’t ferment.

Try this as an experiment, put 2 cups of waste in a closed container, and spread 2 cups of waste on the counter, on paper towel. The waste that is exposed to air, and gradually dires out, won’t smell. Try it and tell us how it went!

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