Antigua Bread co-owner Miguel Hernandez and daughter Kathy combined a garden irrigated by H2O runoff from a cafe’s atmosphere conditioner. The cosmetic bottle trustworthy to a stick collects a H2O before being emptied into a garden.
HIGHLAND PARK — As we was walking from a Old L.A. Farmers Market to get my common crater of coffee-chocolate during Antigua Bread, we beheld a new flower bed in a behind of a cafe. Where there was once rabble and passed weeds, now there was now a pleasing wood-framed garden bed with colorful flowers and even some vegetables. But there was something opposite about this approximately 6-by-6 feet garden space. There was a wooden stick adhering out of a middle, and a cosmetic bucket was strapped to a stick with some arrange of tubing heading to a roof.
I went inside to speak with a owners, Dennis and Miguel Hernandez. The Hernandez brothers were both innate in Guatemala City, Guatemala, so they named their coffee emporium after their hometown. (Antigua is a name of a “old” Guatemala City.) They both changed to Los Angeles in 1999 as teenagers with their father. They both worked during identical jobs, including work in a food industry, that got them meddlesome in starting their possess coffeehouse After lots of work, they started Antigua during 5703 N. Figueroa in Sep of 2007.
Miguel told me that he had wanted to do something with a small bit of space in a behind of Antigua’s, a rather nauseous small mark where rabble would accumulate. So, with support and assistance from his teenage daughter Kathy, he built a little, sturdy-framed garden out back.
Recycling Coffee Grounds
“You know we chuck a lot of coffee drift away, right?” Miguel asked me. “Well, we filled that small lifted bed garden with lots of a coffee grounds. It’s a unequivocally good approach to recycle a grounds.”
Miguel forked out that they still finish adult tossing some used coffee drift away, since they use so much. They do give some divided to gardeners and fungus growers, and they devise to ceaselessly find a home for their used grounds.
Saving Water From Air Conditioning
“But what’s that cosmetic bucket adult on a post?” we asked Miguel. He broadly smiled and he told me that he satisfied a atmosphere conditioning for Antigua constantly drips out water. “I ran a tube from a AC to that bucket, and a H2O from a bucket drips down and waters a garden. Why not put that H2O to use?,” he asked.
Antigua’s A/C complement filled a five-gallon jug during slightest 3 times a day
Miguel wasn’t certain if a AC precipitation would be sufficient to H2O a garden, though to his surprise, he found that a H2O from Antigua’s AC complement filled a 5 gallon jug during slightest 3 times a day, and adult to 5 times during prohibited weather.
“There is so most H2O entrance off a AC,” explained Miguel, “that we run a tube to fill those crawl bottles, and we indeed take H2O home for irrigation.”
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Setting an Example
The small garden also has a small solar lamp, and a bird bath for a birds. It’s a good instance of what anyone – even in a civic sourroundings – can do to assistance save and recycle resources.
The Hernandez brothers also recycle as many of their used cans as possible, in that they accept certain food items.
“We’re only perplexing to do a right thing to give behind to a community,” explains Miguel. “And if we do this, maybe others will do so also, and we’ll all make a disproportion to a community.”
Miguel Hernandez and daughter Kathy work a Antigua garden.
Christopher Nyerges is a manager of a Old L.A. Farmers Market and author of “Self-Sufficient Home,” “Extreme Simplicity,” and other books.