My Tribe Brother @elamental has come up with this really great contest. where you can get rewarded, by sharing with us all on here, what it is you do within your daily life to care for the earth. No deed is too small or too big and you can enter the contest more than once. Anything that encourages us and promotes us to be of service to the earth, has my 100% support. @elamental has been running this contest for a few weeks now and this week the 1st prize is 60,000 Up Tokens and A 15% up-vote from @TribeSteemUp, plus a second prize of 30,000 Up Tokens and a third of 10,000 Up Tokens.

You can check out more details for the contest here and the more people that get involved, the more that message gets out there.

EarthCare, is something we should all be promoting, because at the end of the day, what we do for the Earth we are doing for ourselves. It really is a no brainer and I personally would love to see lots of people get behind this great contest. We have a platform here, lets use it, to spread powerful messages promoting EarthCare.

Last week, I had some friends come over and help me get my winter garden started and now it feels so good knowing that all the ground work has been done and that I can settle back into tending my planted garden. Growing your own food is so beneficial for the earth, and for oneself. For me it is all about the soil, having healthy happy soil, soil that is full of life and nutrients. So soil building for me is the most important part of the garden. Getting to see big juicy worms in the soil, really makes me super happy, yes indeed I do love worms.

I have not always lived in places where I have had access to a garden, but I still grew my own food, whilst using recycled containers to grow them in. So this is my entry for this weeks Earth Deeds- Growing Food Anywhere Whilst Recycling..

Above is the food I was growing whilst we were living in our bus, we were moving around France at the time and it did take time to move all this in and out whenever we stopped and also to water them. But with my children I wanted them to help me find different ways in which to grow our food, to use different containers. We used baskets, boxes, drawers anything that we could find for free. As you can see we grew mainly salad, herbs and the kids favourite strawberries.

All of the containers that are in the picture above, I found either on the street or in bins, all waiting to be added to landfill.But instead I turned them into mini gardens. Everywhere we stopped I would off load my container garden and place it in the best spot for the sun, If we where parked up near a street, I would put them on the roof rack. I had so many ideas to make a roof top garden for our bus, but we ended up selling it, before that happened. What I really want to show you all though, is that no matter what amount of living space you have, you can grow food and there is no need to purchase plastic containers to do so.

Be inventive, look at what you have around you, use baskets, drawers, wine boxes, buckets, old boots, just make sure to line those made out of wood to protect your floor. And because you can move them around easily you can follow the sun. So whether you have a small patio of balcony, or just a windowsill get involved and grow your own, once you do you will never go back.

Another good way to grow food and reuse plastic at the same time is to use plastic water bottles and build a vertical garden. I done a workshop on this in France in a squat we parked up at about 4 years ago. What you are doing is creating Bottle Towers, which look like this

I used 1 and a half litre bottles for two of the towers and 6 litre bottles for the third tower. I used a total of 7 bottles for each tower. Basically you are cutting the bottoms off each of the bottles so that you can stack them on top of one another. In the neck of each bottle you need to make small holes for drainage, two is sufficient and they need to be opposite one another. Leave the lid on the bottle of the first one and then fill with soil, leaving about 5cms so that the other bottle can fit on top. Attach this bottle onto a fence using rope or wire and continue to do the same with the other 4 bottles, but this time without the lid on. Fitting them one on top of the other and securing with wire or rope.

The 6th and 7th bottles are to be used for watering, creating a drip irrigation system. Again you cut the bottom out of each bottle, you place the 6th bottle on top of the 5th, creating a funnel.. The 7th bottle you keep the lid on and drill a hole in the lid, when you fill this with water it allows the water to drip into the funnel and from the funnel into the tower, providing a really effective irrigation system. Then with a Stanley knife you go back to your lower bottles (1-5) and in the middle of each cut 3 lines as if you are drawing the top and sides of a square . This is where you will plant your food. It is best to plant herbs and salad , again keeping to shallow root plants.

The above has been taken from my original article Grow Food Anywhere : Container and Vertical Gardening that I posted 8 months ago, (that also includes pictures of the pallet garden I made) but I think it is so important to show how easy and enjoyable it is to grow food anywhere, whilst also recycling. We have so many resources around us, lets start to re use them.

OurTrue Home

Wrap me up in your greenery,
let me feel the wind,
blow through your blades,
The sweet scent of life,
running through your veins.
Childhood dreams,
of being small,
exploring caverns
and ancient halls,
of minuscule lifeforms
beneath the surface,
creating worlds
seeing whole universes
taking form.
This dream is our reality,
such complex life
beneath our feet,
which may not
be seen by our eyes,
but without them
our lives become obsolete.
Such knowledge
held within the earth,
our greatest learning
before our eyes,
yet ignorance still holds us back
afraid to see
our connection
and realize,
That we are part of nature
and our power lies
in opening up,
to this our greatest teacher,
our one true home
the earth.

8 Pillars of TribeSteemUp