How To Eat Fried Worms

Okay, so I won't be eating these little critters, but I'm hoping that they'll eat all of my food refuse and leave me with some top notch worm castings (poo) for the garden.

The workshop was put on by Food Share and I only had to shell out $10 bucks. I feel really bad that I can't remember the name of the man who ran the workshop, aside from being a wealth of knowledge and giving up his time for cost he was also full of awesome teacher/dad jokes.

I had no idea how easy a tower system vermicomposter would be to build. The only hard part would be getting the worms. There are a few people who sell them online (Cathy's Crawly Composters), but if you know someone with a manure pile there should be some wiggling around in there just remember to take a deep breath before digging in.

The materials:

* 5 plastic shoe boxes - they come in a 5 pack at Canadian Tire

* A small piece of landscaping fabric to cover holes in the bottom lid - this stops the castings from falling through the holes and still allows you to collect the liquid (compost tea) at the bottom.

[That's it!]

The plastic shoe boxes that we used had these three circles on the top of the lids that were perfect for marking the spots for drilling the large holes. We put the lid under the box to make sure the holes would line up when they were all stacked. The heat from the drill will melt the two piece together so we had to carefully pull them apart so as to not break them. We used a smaller drill bit (1/8") to drill some ventilation holes in the top lid.

Once all the drilling was done it was time to fill them up with bedding (damp shredded newspaper), worms, and a little top soil.

[Red wigglers and some melon rind]

[Inside the finished product]

Right now I only have the first level of my tower working, but in about 3 months it the other four levels should be operational and I'll have double the worms I started with. The fifth bottom box is for collecting the compost tea (it does not have holes in the bottom of it). Once the box I'm filling with organic food scraps becomes full I'll add the next box to the top and so on.

This is totally going to be a project for Eco-Club next year. I had considered doing it this year, but I'd like to make sure it works and become a bit of an expert at it before I go sharing my knowledge.

Dandelions 101

Today we started the solarization of the school garden. I hope that no one steals or messes with the tarps. The tarps will have to stay on for four weeks and then the planting will begin! But this isn't what I wanted to talk about.

As you may have noticed over the last few weeks the dandelions have started to flower and are likely taking over your yard. I have to be honest and say that I think dandelions (Taraxacum) a quite pretty and when they're done flowering there is nothing more fun than blowing all the white seed pods into the wind, making for some good pictures and a great way to make wishes.

But aside from all of that dandelions are really good for you and a lot of insects too! The yellow flower is an important source of nectar and pollen for early honey production. Dandelion pollen is also great for making bee pollen. If you find that you have allergies in early spring you may want to consider taking local bee pollen to help alleviate some of the symptoms (itchy eyes, runny nose, asthma, etc.). Butterfly larvae use dandelions as a food source and without food for the larvae there would be no butterflies! The numbers of both these insects are decreasing rapidly because of the way we effect their environments.

Okay, so they look pretty and they're good for insects, but I know that you're asking yourself "what do I get out of them?". I'm glad you asked this question. There are many ways you can use dandelion and it has quite a few medicinal properties too. Many naturopaths use dandelion to purify the liver and gallbladder of toxins. The leaves have large amounts of vitamins: A, C, D, and B-complexes. It also contains the following minerals: iron, magnesium, zinc potassium, manganese, copper, choline, calcium, boron, and silicon. I also find the leaves to be quite tasty. The leaves can be juiced or put into a salad and if you are able to pick them before they flower the leaves will have a less bitter taste. The root of the dandelion can be used to make teas and I've recently learned how to make dandelion jelly from the flowers, some people even make dandelion wine. I never knew that there were so many ways that one could prepare this plant for eating!

If you're living somewhere and don't have access to dandelions you should be able to find them at your local health foods store and your local grocer may carry them too. Since you're eating the leaf I would highly recommend that you buy organic to avoid all the unwanted toxins from pesticides. If you're living in Toronto I'll remind you that the city and the TDSB do not spray any chemicals to control weeds or pests, so take a walk to your local park or school field with big reusable bag and start foraging some organically grown delights!

Composting

I came across this on the internet today and had to share it with all of you.

Nature Mill is a company out of San Francisco that make composter for your home.

This awesome little unit can fit under your sink or in a cabinet. I think that this would be perfect for people living in apartments, condos, or don't have the ability to compost in their backyard.

The unit can do about 50lbs of organic waste a week, which work out to a family of four according to their website. In about three weeks you get soil that's perfect for the garden or topping up house plants.

I know what you're thinking, don't composters smell? This unit comes with a charcoal/carbon air filter that claims to last 5 years.

What a neat little invention.

Green Living Follow Up

On Sunday I decided to take advantage of the crummy weather and take in the Green Living Show. I ended up not checking out the 4hr wine tasting because the description was to vague to justify spending $40 bucks to learn about growing grapes organically in Southern Australia. At any rate I was happy to recycle my old cell phone for free admission, guess I'll have to find a new paper weight.

I was impressed with this year's show. I'm not sure if it was any larger than in previous years, but there seemed to be a bigger focus on food and if you know me you know that I love food.
I was able to check out some interesting booths and get some great information on community eco-events coming up in the future, which I'll be sure to share with you. The World Wild Life Fund was promoting Pin It For The Planet (May 30th - June 5th), going a week without your car and pinning your car keys to your shirt to show your support. I'll be sure to remind you closer to the date about this one, but if you see someone with car keys pinned to their shirt give them a thumbs up and know that it's not the newest fashion trend.

Okay, I've got to make a stop at a hardware store tonight! I slacked off this weekend and didn't get a drop sheet for solarizing the garden. I'm also going to a workshop tonight put on by Food Share where we will be building our own vermicomposters!!! I'll take some pictures and share them with you.

Still waiting to hear from Metro about getting our grant money, what a pain this has turned out to be, grrr!

Food Not Lawns

First off I should let all of you know the school garden has been approved, yeah!!!
Now we have to start prepping the planting bed, which means that we're going to solarize the ground (covering the ground with black plastic to kill/cook all the weeds and their seeds). Now were the heck can I get all this plastic? I'm thinking that I may be able to use heavy duty garbage bags, but I may have to check out a hardware store for some construction grade plastic, or a tarp. Anyone have any ideas???

Today the grade 1s and 2s planted some seeds that they'll grow in their classroom. We've got chard, romaine, arugula, pumpkin, watermelon, sugar peas, and snow peas. I hope that most of the seeds germinate and start to grow soon so that we can enjoy a salad before the end of the school year. Now I know that there is more than likely to be some vandalism or theft, but I'm going to keep my chin up if any of that happens. If we can keep the pumpkin and melons to the back of the garden maybe people wont notice them.

I've got to get ready for Eco-Committee meeting, then I'm off to hockey, and then I'm off to pick up my chest freezer (bought used) so that I'll have tons of space to freeze all the fresh local foods that are available at the farmers market this summer.

Things are looking good!

Green Living Show

This weekend is the Green Living Show at Exhibition Place. I was planning on skipping this year's show because I didn't feel like it was worth the cost of admission, even with all the freebies from the vendors. But this year if you bring a electronic for recycling you'll get in for free. I can finally do something with my old busted up cell phone, I knew that I should hang on to it for something. If you don't have an electronic for recycling admission is $12.oo for adults, students (13-17) $9.oo, and children under 12 are free.

Now if you're like me and you like organic wines you may want to check out the biovino. A 4 hour wine tasting and seminar. If you buy your tickets online they are $39.95, if you buy them at the door it's an extra 5 bucks. But this ticket price includes your admission. Maybe I should just hang on to that ol' cell phone of mine for another time. I don't see my favourite vegan organic wine, Frogpond Farm, on the list but I'm sure they will have some sort of representation there because they are Ontario's only certified organic winery. I've noticed that a few LCBOs are now carrying cab' franc in the vintages section.

Enough with the booze. I was checking out the website for the Green Living Show and found some cool links that might interest you. The first is the farmers market shopping list give a decent run down of what you may find at farmers markets and when. The second one I found is for all you iphone and ipod touch junkies out there, 5 apps to keep you green.

That's all for now, I've got to get ready for the garden approval meeting today. Cross your fingers!

Design Consultation

Tomorrow is going to be the big day. Will the garden get approved or not? I'm not sure why we have to get the garden approved again, but it seems like somewhere in the plans the idea got left out, even though a work crew was sent here last summer to clear out all the vegetation that was growing in the bed. At any rate I will make a drawing or model of how the garden will look and talk about our plan for watering it.
After the approval process it will be time to get working. This week I'll be working with the grade 1/2 class to start our seedlings. I'll also start spending some of this money that is yet to come from the Green Apple Grants.
I hear that it's going to be a hot summer, so the sooner we can get started on this the better. Watering the garden this summer will be a big job. I know that there are a few parents in the community who are on board, but the more the merrier. I'll be able to do some watering too and maybe I can get one or two other teachers to help out with that over the summer.