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Phoenix Resident Shares His Green Philosophy - 1/2/2009 Arizona Republic

Captured inside the Sun and Moon Jars are a highly efficient solar cell, a rechargeable battery and low energy LED lamps. When the jar is placed in direct sunlight the solar cell creates an electrical current that charges the battery over a few hours. This energy is then used at night to power the three LED lamps inside the jar.

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Greg Peterson is a green living and sustainability innovator who is well-known regionally. He has appeared extensively on local television and radio and is a frequent guest columnist for publications.  His mission is “inspire people to embrace their own greenness,” which he does daily by living what he speaks.  He received his master’s degree in Urban and Environmental Planning (MUEP) in December 2006 from Arizona State University. His academic training has been augmented by 34 years of real world self-study, ownership of multiple businesses and a rich background in entrepreneurship, computer training, software development and management.

As a resident of Phoenix for the last 41 years, Greg is well-versed in urban sustainability and food production in dry lands.  He was first introduced to desert gardening at the age of 12. In 1991, he discovered the concept of permaculture, bringing together many sustainability concepts into one cohesive system.  Then in 2001, Greg created a new concept called the Urban Farm (www.urganfarm.org), a real world environmental showcase home in the heart of Phoenix, Arizona.  He applied his extensive background to transform this 1950’s built tract home into an innovative holistic home site.  The Urban Farmwww.urbanfarm.org), featuring an entirely edible landscape, including over 70 fruit trees, rainwater and greywater harvesting, three solar applications, and extensive use of reclaimed and recycled building materials. The site is opened periodically throughout the year to the public and offers classes, lectures and tours.

His experience in nurturing the Urban Farm gave him an emerging presence in the community and, in 2004, Greg partnered with Don Titmus to create the nonprofit Phoenix Permaculture Guild (www.PhoenixPermaculture.org).  Greg served as the director and organizer of the organization from its inception until December of 2008 and grew the Guild from a few events per year to an organization with a full board and hundreds of events per year.

In 2006, along with his business partner Amy Godfrey, Greg launched YourGuideToGreen (www.YourGuideToGreen.com), an internet portal designed to inspire mainstream consumers to go green by providing the right information and product at the right time in a fun, easy-to-understand, guilt-free way.  YourGuideToGreen has experienced a significant amount of success in both traffic and commerce, experiencing more than a thousand percent growth rate in sales from 2007 to 2008.  Additionally, Amy and Greg host a weekly green living podcast called Freshly Green! (www.FreshlyGreen.com)

Greg Peterson is a writer, teacher, and lecturer on many aspects of sustainability, green living and permaculture.  His passion is to present the concepts so that average people can conceptualize and implement sustainability concepts into their own lives.. He has been a contributing writer for Phoenix Magazine for two years and for Edible Phoenix for three years. He a primary writer and host for the pilot television show Smart Spaces: Inside & Out (www.YourGuideToGreen.com/watch).  His column, aptly named The Green Guy, is available for syndication.  Greg is also a popular speaker on green and sustainability topics for organizations and regularly draws hundreds of people for his Living Green, What Does it Mean? lectures.

Greg is available to speak and write on the following topics: 

• Living Green, What Does it Mean?
• Stop Recycling…Say What?
• Save Money, Live Green
• Create your own Urban Farm
• Edible Landscaping, What it is, Installation
• Greywater and Rainwater Harvesting, Uses, Installations, Concepts
• Permaculture
• Sustainability, What the heck does it mean?
• Greening Your Home, Life, the World
• Urban Orcharding, Urban Fruit Production
• Urban Food Systems, Chickens, Composting, Desert Gardening
• Living Green and Your Health
• The Green Living Continuum
• Community and Food Integration, 

From a practical standpoint the Urban Farm is a 1/3rd acre in north central Phoenix a mere 80 feet wide and 160 feet deep.  I purchased my home in 1989, primarily to garden and have spent the last two decades transforming the landscape into edible.  Then in 2001 as a result of my undergraduate work at Arizona State University I shifted gears and began including many other green technologies on the site such as solar panels, green remodeling & building, rainwater and greywater harvesting.  The same year The Urban Farm was born and I began opening up the yard to tours and classes to teach others about urban green living.  The Urban Farm has always been my hobby - I often tell people I just can’t help myself.

Please enjoy the UrbanFarm.org website and if you are in Phoenix on the day of a tour please stop in.  To find out about our extensive list of events visit our Event section on this web site or register for our monthly event email.  To learn more about what I do when I am not gardening please visit http://www.YourGuideToGreen.com or my blog at http://www.yourguidetogreen.com/TheUrbanFarm/

So my problem today is that I have an uber abundance of broccoli.  A few months ago my girlfriend Parri said I LOVE broccoli - well that was all I needed and I went overboard in my ‘Greg” fashion and planted, and planted, and planted.  So now we are reaping the rewards AND we can’t eat it fast enough.

So yesterday I did a google search and found the steps to preserving my bodacious broccoli bounty.  It is quite easy.  

1.  Harvest always the fun part.  I cut the broccoli a fair bit down the stem as the stem is great to eat, but I leave the plant in the ground as it will produce more florets.

2.  As my garden is organic we have a few bugs and I really don’t want to find them on my plate.  So search the florets for any freeloaders.  One site suggested that the broccoli be soaked in a salt brine.

3.  Cut it into bite size pieces.

4.  Lightly steam it.  Suggested 3 to 5 minutes - apparently it helps it last longer in the freezer.

5.  Then I spread the chopped broccoli on a cookie sheet and froze it.  The cookie sheet allows the florets to be frozen individually and not in clumps.  THIS lets me freeze them in gallon olive jars that I have collected from the local pizza joint so I don’t have to freeze them in plastic.

6.  Then when I am ready to eat - I pour just the right amount of broccoli into the steamer.

In the past I have also used this freezing process quite successfully with peaches.

I’ll keep you posted on the taste.

Farmer Greg

Technorati Tags: broccoli, David Spade, Preserving food, winter crops

A state law that starts Jan. 1 allows consumers to bring unwanted computer monitors, laptops and TVs to 200 permanent collection sites at no charge.

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What we need to do is recognize plastics as a valuable material resource, and then collect and recover plastics much like they do in Europe.

Landfills are designed to entomb things, not to encourage biodegradation

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Lava Lake Ranch raises certified organic lamb the way nature intended. The lambs drink their mother’s milk and graze on pesticide- and herbicide-free grasses, herbs, forbes and legumes, such as alfalfa, for their entire lives. They’re not confined and they’re never given grain, growth hormones, or antibiotics.

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The Drake Landing Solar Community (DLSC) is a master planned neighbourhood in the Town of Okotoks, Alberta, Canada that has successfully integrated Canadian energy efficient technologies with a renewable, unlimited energy source - the sun. The result is the first community to obtain all its water and space-heating needs from solar energy.

SOlar panels on the roof of every garage heat a glycol solution. The heated glycol travels along the roof overhang, down the end of the garage, and underground through a shallow buried trench system until it arrives at a heat exchanger within the community’s Energy Centre. The heat exchanger transfers heat to the water stored in a short-term storage tank.

During the warmer months, the heated water is distributed from the short-term storage tank to the borehole thermal energy storage (BTES) system via a series of pipes. The pipes run through a collection of 144 holes that stretch thirty-seven meters below the ground and cover an area thirty-five metres in diameter.

As the heated water travels through the pipe-work, heat is transferred to the surrounding earth. The temperature of the earth will reach 80 degrees Celsius by the end of each summer.

To keep the heat in, the BTES is covered with sand, high-density R-40 insulation, a waterproof membrane, clay, and other landscaping materials.

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Technorati Tags: Drake Landing, Solar Heating