Compost Is Heating Up!

Organic gardening and farming are based on the notion that when we build our soil’s natural fertility through composting we strengthen our environment and grow the land’s capacity to provide us with health.

It’s a pretty good system when you think of it. We throw out scraps, and the scraps become our food. So simple, so elegant, so effective.

At Giving Tree Gardens, we’re such big fans of compost because we’ve seen it’s powerful results. Our gardens and lawns have all quickly filled in and grown with health and beauty using nothing but good healthy compost for fertility.

Last spring Giving Tree Gardens began working with farm partners to build Grow! Twin Cities Urban Farm. At this 12 acre city farm growers with various talents ranging from tomato and potato farming to bee keeping and mushrooming have come together to grow food for urban eaters. This farm space has been the perfect place for us to launch our composting operations.

With consultation from local composting experts Peter Kern, owner of Kern Landscape Resources, and Professor Tom Halbach, from the University of Minnesota, we designed an 85 feet long compost pile. Friends of the farm and Giving Tree Gardens employees set to work transforming our greenhouse and hauling in the compost pile’s base layers of wood chips and landscaping waste.

We now bring in 2 tons of Minneapolis’ finest coffee shop, vegetarian eatery, and beer brewery waste per week to compost inside our largest greenhouse. Composting takes place inside the greenhouse for two reasons. First, composting in the greenhouse means that our pile doesn’t stop cooking all year long.  Second, and more importantly, the fact that we’re heating our greenhouse without any petroleum products means a huge environmental win for everyone involved.

If you’ve purchased food, beer, or coffee from Peace Coffee, Caffetto Coffee Shop, Tao Foods, or Second Moon Coffee Shop, then you are contributing to healthy soils, and local food production at our Grow! Twin Cities Farm.

If you’d like to support more of our farming and composting efforts, there are great ways to get involved. You can sign up to volunteer, donate to the farm, or sign up to follow our newsletter.

Many thanks to all the hard working compost helpers!

Gardening At School, Growing Healthy Kids

Whenever a young person learns to garden, the future grows a little more green and healthy. When an entire school learns to garden together, sustainability sprouts in the imaginations of tomorrows community.  This spring, Giving Tree Gardens worked with the Anoka-Hennepin School District to teach some of the basics of Earth- friendly food gardening to students at two schools in the district.  We had so much fun working with students and staff that we’ve just got to share the good times with the rest of the world.

Imagine what our communities would look like today, if all of us as kids had the opportunity to learn to grow our own food at school.  Instead of learning to grow food, the daily school lunch is the most engaging and oft repeated lesson that our kids get about food.  What is that lesson?

It was an honor for us at Giving Tree to be invited to garden with the students at Mississippi Elementary and Northdale Middle School in Coon Rapids.  Composting, edible weeds, the importance of avoiding chemicals, soil preparation, seed planting, native plants, habitat creation, and companion planting were the subjects of 3 all day gardening classes.  School staff and teachers brought the students out in shifts.  Over 400 students were able to get their hands dirty digging in to learn how to grow healthy food and habitat.

At Mississippi Elementary we built on a theme that we had started last year when we extended the garden installation within the schools Nature Center to include 6 crescent moon shaped garden beds.  Every grade came out to plant, and each got their own garden bed to prepare and plant with different companion planting arrangements.  Within each bed we also planted one native butterfly attracting plant so that we made sure to grow habitat for our winged friends along the way.

At Northdale Middle school we worked with 7th and 8th grade students in the schools AVID program to plant a highly accessible veggie garden and two fruit trees right out the back door.  Plants were all arranged in companionship groupings, and both the apple and pear tree that were planted were given their best friend plants of dill and mint to grow by.  Some of the students were very impressive with their strong knowledge about organic vegetable gardening!

Both of these school projects were funded by SHIP grants (State Health Improvement Program) from the State of Minnesota Health Department.  These grants are designed to “help Minnesotans live longer, healthier lives.” Gardening for medicinal and edible plants as well as sustainable habitat development are among the most effective long term strategies we have available for increasing health in our communities.

Imagine how healthy our children would be if all of our schools had organic student led gardens to grow even half of the food the kids eat for lunch.  Thanks to the SHIP grants, and the imaginative staff in the Anoka-Hennepin Schools and school district, we have planted the seeds of healthy change in a couple of local schools.

Community Design Forum

Is your block club, church group, or office place ready to go green? In this time of shrinking budgets we need to recognize the assets in our communities and help them grow into a sustainable future! Community Design Forums are meetings where folks come together to create action plans for moving forward with changes that positively affect their community's environment. By sharing needs, knowledge, and ideas communities get to know the power within their ranks and discover ways to help grow their green ideas.

Facilitated by Giving Tree Gardens owner Russ Henry, these forums bring together his skills as a professional Earth-Friendly Landscaper and a volunteer Restorative Justice Facilitator. Russ sits down with consultation attendees and asks them to share their concerns, ideas, efforts, and knowledge with each other so that communities can not only draw from his experience in the garden and landscape, but more importantly, attendees learn about each other's skills and abilities.

Worms Go To School

Worms eat our food scraps and leave compost in the soil.  Compost feeds the plants and the plants feed us.  This winter the pre-schoolers at Anishinabe Academy in South Minneapolis are learning how this simple and respectful cycle works by growing worms fed with the kids own food scraps right in their classroom.  While children at Anishinabe are learning in class about worms, soil, seeds, plants, food, and health, a team of energized, organized grown-ups from the school and community are learning how to grow opportunities for the kids to get their hands dirty in the garden.

I’m not sure if worms can smile, but I smile when I think about kids learning how to empower their health, respect their environment, and sustain their culture. 

Recently Jonathan Beutler, a community educator and worm grower offered to work with Russ Henry of Giving Tree Gardens and teachers from Anishinabe Acadamy, to facilitate worm bin classes and equipped the classrooms with all the knowledge and gear they will need to keep on growing worms and soil from food scraps all year long.

Red_Wiggler_Worms_In_Compost_
Red_Wiggler_Worms_In_Compost_

Allies come in all different shapes and sizes, so please don’t judge a worm by it’s squirm

Worms are easy!  Here’s a few do’s and don’ts:

DO use 2 opaque bins stacked inside each other with lots of air holes drilled through the inside bin and the lid.

DOuse shredded leaves for worm bin medium, wet your medium with lukewarm water till it’s damp, not soaked.

DO use a little sand (worms don’t have teeth and use the grit to help them digest)

DO Feed The Worms!  Red Wigglers like to eat a variety of foods including but not limited to: leafy greens, potatoes, banana peels, coffee grounds, egg shells, leaves and trimmings, tea bags, cereal, and grains.

DO tuck the worm food under the soil, the worms like to live in the dark and this also helps keep any smells down

MiaWithWorms
MiaWithWorms

Don’t drown your worms, they like a moist but not soaked medium,

Don’t have a stinky bin, keep out dairy or meat!

When your worm bin gets ½ full of compost, remove the compost by screening out the worms orsimply scoop all worm laden compost over to one side of the bin.  On the other side make up some new medium with sand and food scraps, most of your worms will find their way over to the new medium within a couple of days.  After you’ve got the compost mostly worm free, go feed the plants! Don’t put a lot of citrus in the bin, this may make the bin too acidic for the worms