A light goes on

Toronto Hydro is giving away free compact fluorescent lightbulbs this weekend and next. The first 350 people to show up at a participating Canadian Tire or Home Depot will get one. According to the flyer, they're "specialty" CFLs, rather than the usual garden variety.

This is good. Many fixtures don't take standard CFLs, and these "specialty" bulbs are designed for chandeliers, vanities and other such non-standard fixtures. There will also be in-store discounts on specialty CFLs and power bars with timers.

A power bar with a timer is a great idea, especially if you're one of those people who always forgets to turn off the lights. Or plug in televisions and other equipment that goes into a "standby" mode rather than turning off completely. By shutting the power off to these appliances you'll cut down on your house's phantom draw. That is, you'll cut the power that's consumed invisibly by appliances you thought you'd actually turned off. Phantom draw from one appliance may not be big, but it adds up. If we got rid of unnecessary phantom draw, we might not need our tax dollars funding a new nuclear plant or our energy dollars going to buy more coal.

So, while I'm not big on promoting big companies like Home Depot or Canadian Tire (though I must confess that I've long enjoyed browsing the latter), if you live near one and are planning on getting up for a morning walk on Saturday or Sunday, go in and pick up a nice new CFL. A list of participating stores, and details about the promotion, are on Toronto Hydro's "Spring Turn On" website.

If you're not in the Toronto area, check with your local utility. Are they doing something similar? If they are, please post the information in the comments section to share it with others. Green Tenant enjoys having readers from around the world (mostly from Canada, the U.S. and the UK, but we're also getting lots of visitors from Central and South America and from Australia), and I'd love to know what's happening where you live.

Changing my mind and planting out

In contrast to yesterday's torrential downpours, Toronto enjoyed a beautiful spring day today. Since yesterday (May 9) was the average last frost day here inspired me to look at my planting calendar. It suggested that this was the weekend to plant seeds for sunflowers, nasturtiums, carrots and onions and that I should already have transplanted my lettuces and broccoli...on April 4!

Since frost seems unlikely, I spent a few hours in the garden today. I'd already directly sown my peas (think I see one peeking up today), a few radishes (doing well), arugula (not sure if it's up or if those are just weeds) and fava beans. The fava beans are doing fabulously, as you can see from the photo above.

In that same photo you'll notice a lot of straw. David and Alison, who live upstairs, have two lovely, fluffy rabbits named Emma and Amanda. These wonderful little fertilizer machines have been providing top dressing all winter long. My plan had been to use their bedding as mulch and just open up spaces for planting. Gardening the no-dig way! Yay!

However, weeding through the straw is a pain and there are a lot of plants to go in. Rather than weed everything and shift mulch about nonstop, I decided to just chuck my grand plan out the window and dig it in (except in a couple places where I'd already begun planting, such as around the fava beans and strawberries). The good news is that, in the bed I planted last year, there are tons of big, juicy worms where there were only a few when I made the bed. My soil looks to be very healthy and I have high hopes for my yields.

Today I planted two large beds. The tomatoes, zucchini and corn have yet to go into the ground (a little early yet), but most everything else is in now.

Bed 1, which is by far the biggest, will have most of the tomatoes. Today, in it, I planted marigolds (the workhorse of companion plants), various salad greens, rainbow chard, basil, parsley, spinach and mint.

Bed 2, which gets the most sun, will eventually have some corn and zucchini. Today it got marigolds, chives, a new everbearing strawberry plant (to compliment the two my dad gave me from his patch), some lettuces and spinach, nasturtiums , leeks, carrots and nine rows that alternate between onions, beets and radishes. There's also garlic at the far end, around a little rose bush.

Tomorrow, as weather and work permit, I'll work on beds 3 and 4.

So far, my only disappointment has been the poor germination rate of my marigolds (everything else I ordered from Brother Nature has had a decent germination rate, so this is probably an anomaly). But a little shop on the corner sells them and they're very inexpensive, so no worries. I also bought my tomato plants from them. No rare heirloom tomatoes this year, just sweet 100s and romas. But next year I'll get my act in gear earlier and plant some that will be a bit more fun.

Oh, and the carrot patches should be fun. I mixed three different seeds. Every time I pull up a carrot, who knows what it'll be. Nantes Touchon? Tendersweet long hybrid? Purple haze? (Yes, I planted purple carrots. Part of the goal is to have fun gardening with my six-year-old son.)

In addition to the other two beds, I still have four or five pots and various window boxes. Because the garden has so many veg, I think I'll use all the planters for flowers. After all, a garden shouldn't just be productive, it should also be pretty.

Some gardening posts that might be of use to you:
Vertical gardening
A handy gardening book for apartment-dwellers

The long-running toilet

Ever since I moved into my new apartment, the upstairs toilet has had a habit of running. I'm tired of reminding visitors to "jiggle the handle," so today I got off my duff and did something about it. After dropping my son off at school, I rode his scooter over to the hardware store (needed a new nut for the wheel and... well... it was fun, too).

The problem with my toilet is a common one. The old plastic handle is cracked and that somehow causes it to jam in a depressed position. That is, it keeps the flap open.

Before getting into the step-by-step instructions, let's think about why we're bothering to fix the handle. It's quite simple: A running toilet wastes water. If a toilet flushes with 6 litres and takes 30 seconds to fill up (which is probably slower than in reality), then that's 12 litres per minute. Don't notice for five minutes and you've wasted 60 litres. Don't notice while you nip out to the shops for half an hour and you've just flushed away 360 litres!

Water systems are one of the biggest energy costs for most municipalities. A leak of this size will result in a higher water bill (if you pay bills directly), likely higher rent (if water is included in your rent), higher taxes (again, likely translates into higher rent) and possibly less money for the city to spend on more important things like social housing or public swimming pools.

There are lots of possible repairs to make on a toilet. If there's a shutoff valve at the bottom, they're all pretty easy to make. In my case, it's one of the easiest. You don't even have to turn off the water. Here's what to do.

Take the magazines off the back of the toilet and remove the lid. Put it somewhere safely out of the way and don't drop it on the tile floor. That would be nasty.

Unhook the chain from the end of the rod attached to the handle. If you can, hook it over something nearby so you don't have to fish it out of the water when you're done. Not that it's a big deal, there's nothing to fear from the water in the back of the toilet. It should be pretty clean. There's a great Canadian tradition of using the toilet tank to rapidly chill beer. But that's another story.

The handle is held on with a large nut, probably made of plastic. Using an adjustable wrench (my 10" one did the trick nicely) loosen the nut, then slide it off the end of the rod.

Slide the old handle and rod out of the tank.

If you're like me, you thought of fixing this problem while you were already out, and so didn't know how long of a rod to get with the handle. Thankfully, adjustable ones are quite common and cost $5-7 in Canada right now.

Hold the old one against the new one to figure out how long to cut the new one. Measuring is easy, as there are only three lengths and the adjustable models have marks to help you easily cut them to length. "Easily" is a subjective term. Scissors won't do the job on this thick plastic. Tin snips probably would. I found that, on the Moen model I bought (a dollar cheaper than the other universal one) it was easy to just bend and break the rod at the correct point.

Remove the nut from the new assembly, slide the rod in and then put the new nut on to hold it all in place. Make sure the nut is snug, but don't overtighten it. Don't want to crack it and have to walk all the way back to the hardware store (how can you tell I've made this sort of mistake before?).

Hook the chain into place and give the toilet a test flush. If the handle sticks in the open position, you may have overtightened the nut. If you encounter other problems, bring them up in the comments section and we'll see if the Green Tenant readers can't help you out.

Now put the lid back on the toilet and return your magazines to their proud, newly refurbished home.


For other water-saving repairs, see the following posts:

• Fix the drips: repairing a leaky faucet
• A grey-water barrel in 15 minutes!