The compost hunt is on

The compost hunt is on. The county sites are stocked, but will go quick. Community gardens are jostling for a complimentary delivery. Residents all over are looking at their woeful soils thinking, "I need some compost". Yes you do!

This is a perfect segue to highlight the compost bin sale that is happening now. Its also a great opportunity to reveal that the Hamline Midway Environment Group is hot on composting too, so much so they are working on a compost Google map much like the original community compost map of Philadelphia.

In this vein, I want to share a post written by Kirsten Saylor of Gardening Matters. It appears they have noticed the compost cries too.

"It's the time of year (spring), when folks start asking us about how to get some compost for their garden. This question comes up every year on the listserve. I recommend people checking out the COMGAR archives (search on keyword "compost") for additional advice and insight, but basically here's my quick recommendation...

If you're a community garden in Minneapolis or Ramsey County, there's instructions for compost on www.gardeningmatters.org. If you're a community garden not within Minneapolis and Ramsey County, then contact your city or county to see if they have any resources or policies about providing free or deeply discounted compost to community gardens.

If you're private/home garden, then here are some options for you...
1) ask neighbors if they have more compost than they can use. You may be surprised.
2) www.yardstogardens.org just advertised that they are trying to help people with surplus compost connect with those that need it.
3) make your own -- worms or a bin out back -- and I don't mean to be flippant, gardeners need to be on the vanguard of keeping valuable nutrients in their "ecosystem" and not letting any of that good compostable stuff get away and stuck in a landfill or burned for energy. If not gardeners, then who will?"

Happy Planting! Kirsten

Occurring now are two notable trends nationwide - 1) a rabid and valuable desire to grow-your-own food which requires good soil, and 2) a needy trash system which is overburdened with food waste. Compost intersects both of of these trends, each satisfying the other.

Rain barrel and compost bin sale on now through the Recycling Association of Minnesota

Rain barrels and/or compost bins are available for Twin Cities residents to purchase from the Recycling Association of Minnesota. For those folks living in the Hamline Midway, you can also take the additional CRWD discount found here (pdf).
Order by 4/22/2010 to pick up at the Living Green Expo at the Minnesota State Fair Grandstand North Parking Lot
May 1, 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. or May 2, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Accepting orders until April 22, 2010.

Compost Bin Available $55

The Earth Machine Dimensions: 33" x 33" Capacity: 10 cubic feet

Rain Barrel Styles Available:

Both styles $65

The Rain Catcher Dimensions: 24" W x 34" H Capacity: 54 gallons

	The Systern Dimensions: 34" H, 26.1" in diameter Capacity: 55 gallons

Payment by credit card only. Prices listed above do not include sales tax.

Rebates offered for residents residing in: -Capitol Region Watershed District -Ramsey-Washington Watershed District To find out more, CLICK HERE (pdf).
DIRECTIONS FOR ORDERING: -ST. PAUL (Living Green Expo): May 1-2 (pdf)

Earth Friendly Family Travel - Breakfast Milk in the Bud Light cup?

My family took a two day get-away to Duluth last week for some swimming and sight seeing. While its fun to take those trips, we are quite disgusted by the way traveling generates so much waste. Disposable serveware at meals, beverages in disposables, no recycling bins and housekeeping are all culprits in filling up our hotel trash bin.

Earth friendly family travel for us means:

• Bringing our own water bottles and thermoses so that we do not need to acquire disposable beverage containers.
  
• Bringing along a small set of dishes including a cutting board, knife, and small mixing bowl.
  
• Collecting all recyclables and toting them home- paper, cans and plastic! It is a bit easier to commingle these while on the road and then sorting them once home.
  
• Collecting all compostables and toting them home to the composter- coffee grounds, orange peels and paper with food waste are all examples. Yes, we really do this on car trips. Its not really that big of a deal once you designate a spot for compostables to go. The hotel ice bucket sure works well for this job!
• Bring along a dishwashing wand and dish soap to clean up our dishes. The kids are sure more eager to help with this job when we are vacationing.
  
• Reusing any plastic cups and plates that we do acquire. Who wants their breakfast milk in the Bud Light cup?
  
• Bringing along some food. Takeout meals means takeout food packaging. By having sandwich fixings, fruit, a bag of salad and snacks on hand we can make lunches in our room and avoid more packaging while saving some change. A few spare sandwich bags in the suitcases allows us to have the sandwiches with us on the road.
  
• Declining housekeeping during our stay. Many hotels are doing this more routinely, even promoting their "eco-business". These claims are often akin to greenwashing considering the rest of their practices are so wasteful (Where are the recycling bins exactly?). But regardless, by declining housekeeping, we minimize the amount of laundering required for our stay along with less garbage bags, plastic cups, shampoo bottles consumed.
• Bringing our own shampoo and conditioner. There is never enough in the little hotel bottles anyway.
  

Granted, we buck the disposa-society trend hard, and definitely are not within the norms set by our fellow vacationers. However, the reward of a trashcan NOT filled with clamshells, foodwaste and recyclables is motivating, and allows us to have a more carefree vacation. We are looking for more ideas, please suggest yours!

Christmas Trees and Natural Decor can go to Ramsey County Brush Sites

Smart thinking Ramsey County! There are a few winter dates being made available at the compost sites, just in time to take holiday greenery. Additionally, a handful of sites will be open once per month during the winter season. Details can be found here.

In the Midway, you can bring holiday greenery to Pierce Butler near Vandalia on January 9th (9am-5pm) or 10th (11am-5pm). Please remove wires, ribbon, ornaments, lights, tinsel, tree bags and tree stands prior to drop off. Leaves, branches, natural wreaths and other plant waste are also accepted.

For gardeners, hen keepers, and home composters, this is a valuable back-up to our systems we have at home or if we have a tree come down during the winter.

Household Organic Waste: The Crib Sheet

This is a table I have been updating for the neighbors near my henhouse who contribute food scraps to our feathered friends. Just for comparison, I added the vermicomposting column too. Together, these 3 food waste options sure take care of almost any organic material from your household- some inedible. As I continue to learn about this topic, I plan re-post the crib sheet when new information has been added.

Organic Waste	Chickens	Compost Bin	Worms
coffee grounds	No	yes, the filters too.	Best place for coffee grounds as worms consider this bedding. Unbleached filter are OK
dried fruit	past their prime is fine, but if the dried fruit is hard and tough, then soften first before serving.	OK	OK
cheese (cream & cottage too)	OK if has a touch of mold. Hard cheeses like Parmesan or dried out cheese edges are great but need to be diced. Yogurt must be soaked up with old cereal or similar. Try to serve these early in the day so that there isn't protein sitting in the chicken run overnight attracting mice/rats.	No, attracts vermin	OK, but very liquid products should be avoided.
grain products: breads, cereal, crackers & other grain -based foods	This is the best place for grain products. Stale bread is perfect for hens, but bread can't be hard and dried out when served to chickens. Soften with leftover milk, soup, sauce. Same for hard crackers and pretzels and hard pizza crust. Best chunk up into nickle size pieces to keep squirrels from stealing it all. Rice, noodles, quinoa, oatmeal, uncooked oats, etc.	No, attracts vermin	All, but only if whole grains (100% white flour products are not good for worms, or for you)
eggs & eggshells	Hens love cooked eggs. Empty hells of hard cooked eggs are great too (no raw eggshells though due to passing bacteria). The trick is that the hens can't know that they are eggs! They will start to eat their own and its very hard to stop that behavior. Crush any shells into tiny bits. Try to serve these early in the day so that there isn't protein sitting in the chicken run overnight attracting mice/rats.Provides good calcium for layers.	Shells are OK even if raw.	Shells are OK even if raw. They provide needed calcium to the livestock.
egg cartons (and packing material made of the same stuff)	No	OK, great source of carbon	super for bedding, would need to be torn up first.
drier lint and kitchen sink gunk	No	OK	OK
meat / stockpot leftovers	Hens will definitely eat meat leftovers. Can't be rotten though, and needs to be diced if its hard or grisly. After stock-making, Hens will love to pick the bones clean (remove bones later in the day). Try to serve these early in the day so that there isn't protein sitting in the chicken run overnight attracting mice/rats.	No	OK
meat drippings	Mixing meat drippings with hen feed, or even cat food until soaked up becomes fine hen food. Think Suet served to wild birds.	no	no
nuts	Most nuts are hard, so really need to be ground up, like a coarse cornmeal consistency. Rancid is just fine. Try to serve these early in the day so that there isn't protein sitting in the chicken run overnight attracting mice/rats.	No, attracts vermin	OK
Fruit: citrus, melon (rinds & seeds too), apple/pear peel & cores (seeds removed), berries, bananas,	Fruit is a real treat! Apples must be diced in order for the hens to take much. Apple seeds are toxic, so I usually cut that part out before dicing. Grapefruit halves are welcomed, even after eating.	All can go in no matter its state	All plus worms will take peels that hens won't
paper towels, napkins and tissues	No	All can go in unless there was a chemical cleaner used on the towels.	unbleached paper products only, no cleaning product on them
take-out and plate scrapings	Generally all good. Pizza should be diced, if crust is very hard best to soften with liquid. Try to serve these early in the day so that there isn't protein sitting in the chicken run overnight attracting mice/rats.	No, attracts vermin	OK
packing material - cornstarch peanuts & egg carton materials	No	OK!	Maybe
tea leaves	hens like the size of loose leaf	OK, with any paper teabag too	OK, with any paper teabag too
pizza boxes (unrecyclable corrugated due to food residue)	No	Yes, the best place for pizza boxes. Take the time to tear up the box, but it is not necessary	No
vegetable scraps:corn lettuce, chard, beet greens, tomato, pepper seeds, cucumbers	Hens will take anything leafy without any prep and OK if they are not particularly fresh. Corn cobs with bits of left overs on them are well loved. Hard veggies should be diced. Root veggie scraps work best if cooked first to soften. I have read that folks suggest to go light on items in the cabbage family as egg flavor can be impacted.	This is the best place for onions, carrots and anything in the cabbage family, & avocados. These items are either toxic to, or not preferred by hens. Otherwise, any vegetable waste in any condition can be put in the bins.	Worms will take it all, but may have to limit onion.

Autumn! The Annual Leaf Harvest

My fellow HMEGer, Peter Hoh and I adapted a piece from the MPCA to get the word out that your autumn leaves are a valuable resource. -- they contain nutrients that your lawn, compost pile, chicken run, or garden needs! You can always take the material to the yard waste compost site, but here are a few eco-smart options that will benefit you for 12 months until the next fall:

• If you have a backyard compost bin, or plan to start one, save your dry leaves to use as a carbon source, or "browns,". "Browns" are essential to non-smelly, active compost and must be added to vegetable scraps (aka "greens") for compost success. You cannot avoid finding a "browns" source, so why not use what falls onto your yard?
  

• Create free and convenient garden mulch from your leaves by collecting your autumn leaves in a hoop of wire or plastic fencing. They will breakdown partly over the winter and come next summer, you will have a valuable mulch to use in your garden beds. Leaf mulch (sometimes called leaf mold) works especially well in vegetable gardens. If these leaves are mowed first they will fit into a smaller hoop, but this step is not necessary.
  

• Use a mower to break leaves into tiny pieces and leave them on your lawn. A leaf layer that is thin enough to still see some grass is fine for lawns.
  

• If you have pets, or backyard chickens, dried leaves are a source of free and sustainable bedding. See this earlier post.

• Whether you compost your own leaves or take them to the county compost site, it's important to make sure that you are not raking up dog waste along with the leaves.

HMEG wants to help you save autumn leaves for your compost bin and garden needs. For a short time, we are offering a length of plastic fencing that can be set-up into a hoop, at cost, along with zip-ties to hold it together. This means that you won't have to buy a large roll of plastic fencing. To get your leaf bin, contact Peter at midwaypete@gmail.com. (Enough fencing for a 3-foot diameter bin will cost $10).


You can also help keep our water and air clean by what you don't do with that pile of leaves:

• Don't throw yard waste in the trash. Mixing yard and tree waste with your trash is illegal in Minnesota.

• Don't rake leaves onto a city street or sidewalk. It washes too many leaves, and therefore nutrients, into the Mississippi River via the stormwater sewers.

• And last, don't burn large piles of leaves. Burning of twigs and yard debris releases large amounts of air pollution in to the atmosphere.

Resources:
More about the HMEG
More about Backyard composting
More about wood smoke pollution
More about Ramsey County compost sites in
More about leaf mold

Worm Bin Washout

I have been trying to get the last worm bin task for weeks now. In fact, others want worms and are waiting on me. The bin was now too heavy to tote in and out every time I think of digging in, so it sat in the backyard waiting until I could harvest the last of the worm castings. Then the big rain came. I had thought of this scenario, and while my bin's lid has some small holes in the lid for ventilation, the tarp I kept over the works should keep the rain out. Well, not so. When I opened up to finish the belated harvest with my daughter's help, the worms were in the top of the bedding trying to find some air with puddles encroaching all around. The whole bin was sogged out, the bedding had the consistency of a too-thick brownie batter.

What to do? The bottom-side spigot was already open. The bin's bedding had so much water holding capacity that tipping to pour off water only dislodge the whole mess. The bin contained too much dense mass to even consider that evaporation could dry it out.

I needed to add something that would absorb excess moisture. Since we augment our gas furnace with a wood pellet stove, the pellets themselves jumped into mind. These pressured bits of sawdust are handy when cleaning spills and turns out they can sop up a soggy worm bin too. I added them slowly and carefully incorporating as I went. Laverme's Worms warns of using sawdust in vermicomposting because they can dry out the bedding too much. In the end, the pellets turned out to be a save and my original bin is now three.

Hen Bedding

There has been recent discussion at the Twin Cities Chicken's list about bedding material for the chicken coop. Options suggested were straw, wood chips, and dry leaves.

Over here at our Midway henhouse, we are in the dried leaf camp. We use them both in the run bedding and in the henhouse. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is dried leaves are plentiful with our large shade trees. Next, manure+leaves augments our compost pile providing the necessary carbon and nitrogen. And lastly, it feels sustainable using what is here. The alternatives may require hauling them away when soiled and upon return, again transporting the fresh bedding, which we would be paying for.

On the maintenance, a few leaves will blow through the chain link on big wind days and do require a bit of tiding. I do scoop the run regularly (few times a weeks to daily) to remove visible droppings. This is a task that is difficult in long blades of straw, making leaves more manageable. I rake out the whole works once/twice a month, usually timing it to just after a wet period as leaves will get sogged out (and can begin to have odor). I find the rain soaked bedding adds useful moisture to the compost bins. I am also finding that neighbors are beginning to request this material from me for their own compost piles.


Using leaves in this manner for bedding may be a bit more demanding day-to-day than deep bedding of wood chips or straw, but of course that does not account for the time to acquire and then dispose of the bedding.

(Photo caption- chicken walking by my daughter and a friend. Not something done often!)

Ramsey County compost sites open March 30th

For those living in Ramsey County Minnesota, Tuesday is a big day. The county yard waste sites reopen (may be delayed if the predicted snow hits). While I do make use of most of my garden waste/leaves for my hen operation and own backyard compost, these county collection points are useful for woodies and items that are trickier to compost at home- such as thick tomato stems.

I tend to grow a largish pile of brush over the winter due to the branches I collect from these same yard waste sites for use as winter decoration in both my yard and at community plantings. The photo above shows a Midway business and community members adding branches like these to a planter. The branches all end up back at the yard waste site in the spring.

The urban/suburban brush collected at Ramsey County goes to St. Paul's District Energy, which supplies heating, cooling and electricity to downtown St. Paul all created from that biomass.

That's a tight closed cycle for these decorative woody branches used in the Midway.

St. Paul yard --> Yard Waste Site --> St. Paul Yard--> Yard Waste Site -->District Energy in downtown St.Paul ---> heat & energy to St. Paul business & homes

ahhh, sustainability.

Hot Humus

The compost piles are steaming! I was pleasantly surprised when I checked under the hood last week. Planting in the Twin Cities is still around the corner, but now is a perfect time to get a jump on your compost duties. If you had a full compost pile waiting through the winter in Minnesota, a thorough turning is now needed as well provides an opportunity to adjust the browns/greens ratio or moisture content.

Getting backyard compost to decompose well can be elusive, especially if kitchen scraps are your main source of organics. Kitchen scraps are considered "greens". Active composting will only happen if the "browns" are in far excess compared to the greens, such as 20:1 ratio. So planning your "brown" supply is the key. In my yard its the dried leaves stored from autumn. The chicken manure that also goes into my compost adds the bit of nitrogen that really makes the compost heat up.

Can't do the "browns" planning and stuck with only "greens"? No matter. Indoor vermicomposting can do the trick.