Earth Day - Today Is the 40th

Our veggie garden is 20 by 20 - on the left are the peas on a trellis, then leeks, wax bush beans, Dinosour kale, Cos and Romaine lettuce, broccoli and Brussels sprouts, broad beans on the far right and potato cages in the back.

Earth Day is celebrating its 40Th birthday today. Denis Hayes, national coordinator for the first Earth Day in 1970 is the international chair of Earth Day 2010. Hayes is chairman of the board of trustees of the American Solar Energy Society and president of the Bullitt Foundation.

Twenty million Americans participated in that original Earth Day celebration. Within three years Congress passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act.

Today, most schools and many towns acknowledge Earth Day through activities meant to remind us that caring for the earth’s resources is important.

Small conservation activities include recycling paper, glass, cooking oil, plastic containers and plastic bags. Groups can participate in tree planting projects or pick up aluminum cans along our streets and recycle them.

Easy everyday efforts make a difference. Turn off the water while you brush your teeth and turn off lights as you leave a room. With a little more thought you can combine errands to save fuel.

Another idea is to buy locally produced food whenever possible. It takes less fuel to transport food from regional producers to your table.

Locally grown chickens are available at Central Meat Market and local eggs, beef, pork, and lamb are sold at the Muskogee Farmer's Market. Fruits, herbs and vegetables are sold at several area farmers’ markets, plus Reasors, Arnolds and at seasonal stands that pop up in the summer.

Muskogee Wellness Committee has sponsored two gardening events to support and educate local residents in the art and science of growing a little of their own food in a home garden or in containers.

To promote gardening on a slightly larger scale, the Wellness Committee put on a community gardening event last year.

Community gardening can be summarized as healthier people growing healthier food in healthier neighborhoods.

Families who garden together have an exercise based activity that produces fresh fruits and vegetables to build their health, and increase their food security.

Community gardens strengthen community bonds, and create a positive, recreational space for neighbors to get together. Neighborhoods become safer and community gardens increase the value of homes in the immediate area.

Children learn about science, math and the environment from family and friends when they are engaged with others in a garden. They learn job skills and increase their community connections. Similar programs report that participating students improve their school attendance.

In Muskogee, on Tuesday, April 27 from 5:30 to 6:30 there will be a community garden meeting at the Parks and Recreation Dept. especially for people who live in the area of Spaulding Park.

The section of Spaulding Park where the old greenhouses stood is going to be developed into community garden plots for the use of the residents of the area. Paths and raised bed growing plots will be laid out before the planting begins.

The April 27 meeting will be held to discuss how the Spaulding Park Community Garden will operate, discuss the ground rules, and to find out how many might be interested in participating.

The plots will not be reserved only for those in the immediate area, but gardeners who live within a short distance are more likely to remain enthusiastic about weeding, watering and harvesting over the summer.

Doug Walton, Community Foods Coordinator with the Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture, and manager of Muskogee Farmer’s Market, will help facilitate the discussion. Walton has a wealth of information about community gardens around the state.

If you live in the Spaulding Park area and have an interest in the community garden effort, please call the Parks Department, 684-6302, and let them know you would like to attend the meeting.

Spaulding Park Community Garden Planning Meeting
Tuesday April 27, 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.
Parks and Recreation Dept., 837 East Okmulgee
Please call 684-6302 to let them know you are coming so there will be chairs and snacks for all.

Worm Giveaway at Earth Day

The Junior Master Gardeners and their sponsor were the big workers at the worm giveaway.

We gave away 115 vermicompost kits and ran out by 10:30 in the morning.


Channel 22 was there to interview the master gardeners about the project. They explained how to take care of the worms when adoptive parents took them home.

The Junior Master Gardeners made kits, putting in food and worms.

Everyone had a great time and more than a hundred new vermicomposters got started with saving the earth.

If you came later than 10:30 after we ran out of worms, live locally and want a kit, email me at mollyday1@gmail.com. Maybe we can arrange a way for you to get one.

How to Set Up a Home Vermicompost System

Earth Day 2008 - Here's how to use your kitchen waste in a vermicompost bin.

Growing a garden has too many benefits to list. Even if you do not have time to dig in the yard, you can help the earth by feeding your food scraps to a bin of Organic material makes up two-thirds of the waste in any city. The food in that waste can be recycled through the use of worm composting.
Compost worm information and starter kits will be given away this Saturday when Muskogee Farmer’s Market celebrates Earth Day.
The primary benefits of worm composting include the production of “black gold” worm castings to add to potted plants or back the earth and a way to use up kitchen scraps without sending them to the landfill.

Build a compost worm bin for your home or apartment —
1) Buy a plastic or wooden box 10 to 18 inches deep and drill air holes around the sides about half way up and drainage holes in the bottom. Compost worms, red wigglers or Eisenia fetida, cannot function in light so do not use a clear or see-through container.
2) Compost worms need air to breathe through their skin so make sure the container is not closed with a tight lid. If the container came with a lid you can drill holes in it to use as a top or put it under the compost bin to catch any water that drips out.
3) Worms move by wiggling their muscles and they need loose bedding to crawl around so put moist torn newspaper and shredded leaves in the bin for bedding. They will eat the bedding so make sure it is free of insect spray. Other bedding choices include damp shredded office paper, straw, or moist shredded cardboard.
4) Put food in the container a few days before you add the worms because they have no teeth and have a hard time eating fresh fruits and vegetables. If you cut the food into small pieces it will be ready for them sooner.
5) Bury the food a few inches below the surface and change the feeding spot each time.
6) Food to add includes funny smelling leftovers from the refrigerator (no meat), bread - even if it is moldy or dry, spaghetti, fruit and vegetable trimmings - no matter what condition they are in, eggshells, oatmeal, leftover cooked cereal, cornmeal, teabags, coffee grounds with the filters, etc.
7) Do not feed them meat, fat or dairy.
8) Redworms do not live in soil; they live in leaf piles, manure and dead plants. Gather worms from under a pile of leaves not from under the soil level.
9) Add more bedding when the first bedding seems to have disappeared. Sprinkle a little water on the worm home to keep it as moist as a wrung out sponge but not wet.
10) If the bed is kept at around 70 to 80 degrees the worms will eat everything quickly. In fact, they eat their weight in food every two days. At 45 degrees they hibernate and eat nothing. At 30 degrees they freeze.

11) Lots of other critters could come to live in the worm bin including bacteria, fungi, springtails, sow bugs, fruit flies, and mites.

12) If you plan to keep the compost kit in the house and many people do, put a kitchen towel over the top to keep light off of the worms and to keep fruit flies away. Lots of compost worm bins are kept under the kitchen sink where it stays dark and warm and where food scraps can be easily added.
13) Be sure the bin is draining so it never smells bad. If it starts to smell, add dry shredded newspaper and check the drainage holes.
14) After three to five months dump the vermicompost bin onto a surface where you can provide a strong light. Make several small piles. The worms will wiggle down to the bottom leaving the compost on the top. Remove the compost, wait for the worms to go further down and remove compost again. Put the remaining worms and vermicompost back into the bin with clean bedding and food.
15) Use the compost you harvested. Add it to water to make compost tea, sprinkle it on top of houseplant soil or mix it with potting soil, vermiculite or perlite. Feed your plants with it.
For decades, back yard gardeners have piled yard waste to let it decompose and then put the resulting mulch into their vegetable and flower beds.

As cities around the United States look for ways to reduce the amount of garbage going into landfills, they set up recycling centers, yard waste shredding operations and public compost areas. In a state-wide program to dramatically reduce trash, CA distributed worm composting containers and compost worm vouchers to everyone on trash routes (www.zerowaste.ca.gov).

The red wrigglers for Earth Day at Muskogee Farmer’s Market came from Uncle Jim's Worm Farm in Pennsylvania, www.unclejimswormfarm.com, and Rising Mist Organics in Kansas, www.wackyworldsof.com.

Go green this Earth Day and start feeding your leftovers and scraps to a bin of compost worms to keep that garbage out of the landfills.

Late Winter Gardening and Vermicomposting: The Worm Hotel Is About to Have Guests

Lowe's has their late winter vegetable starts in. Packs of 9 plants are about $3.50. I want to plant Brussel sprouts and broccoli using starts so I asked Sue Gray at the OSU Extension in Tulsa for some guidance. Here is her response.

"Go ahead and plant your brassica starts, but DO protect those tops….especially whenever it's going below 32 degrees F……the storebought transplants are probably not hardened off….so you may want to spend a little quality time on them or go ahead and cover with some kind of protection from wind, extreme light AND cold."
So, my new babies are inside under lights for now since we are supposed to get several more freezing nights this week. I'll transplant them out of these cells because there are two plants in some of them.

THE WORM HOTEL
Composting with worms, vermicomposting - Hubby built a four-story hotel for the compost worms we ordered from Uncle Jim's Worm Farm. I called Uncle Jim and the Red Wrigglers (Eisenia foetida) are supposed to be shipped this week.
We saw a similar four-story structure on the Internet and followed other instructions from the book, "Worms Eat My Garbage."
Basically, compost worms eat fruits and veggies plus shredded, damp newsprint. Many composters keep them in a can or plastic bin under the kitchen sink since that is a handy, warm, dark place for feeding and keeping track of them.

They do not try to escape all the time like caterpillars, but rather, keep to dark places under several inches of the damp, torn newspaper or shredded office paper.
You can tell by the design that they need air and plenty of bedding.

Also, note that the bottom tray is lifted with wood blocks under it and a drip tray on the floor. "Worms Eat My Garbage" said all these features are important for this type of setup.

I'll take a few more photos of the excited worms when they see their new digs. They should be dancing - I'll keep the blog updated.

Hopefully, I can involve the Junior Master Gardener Program at Whittier Elementary School in the project of raising another generation and making compost worm kits to give away on Earth Day at Muskogee Farmer's Market.

The City Farmer website has all the information you need to do a Red Wriggler composter.

A few points emphasized on the site:

Damp bedding is what the worms live in and can include cardboard, shredded leaves, straw, sawdust and aged manure - the more variety in bedding the better the resulting garden compost.

They also need a bit of sand or soil as grit for digestion.

Since worms are like us and are made up mostly of water, the bedding has to be moist to support their life. (They can't go get a glass of iced tea when feeling dry.)

Earth Day in Muskogee

Today Muskogee Farmer's Market celebrated Earth Day. Not only were there the wonderful flowers and vegetables and bakery goodies, several organizations gave away Earth Day related items including free trees.
At our booth Jan Farris, Cindi Cope and I gave away butterfly caterpillars in plastic cups for people to take home to raise into butterflies. As many adults as children took home the little kits. Jon Stoodley's photos tell the story of how nature inspires awe in us all.

Earth Day 2007

If you can't think of something significant or small you can do to acknowledge Earth Day, go to any of the sites below. Each one of them has ideas - from changing light bulbs to planting trees.

Almost every country in the world is bringing attention to the need to celebrate Mother Earth. Select a project, small or large, individual or on your block and join the party.

Divine Caroline - 50 Green Tips for Earth Day - divinecaroline.com
Earth Day In Your Neighborhood - Guide for Kids From 2 to 122 - www.allspecies.org
Earthday Network - Ecological Footprint Quiz - www.earthday.net
EnviroLink - online environmental community - http://earthday.envirolink.org/
Environmental Protection Agency Celebrates Earth Day - http://www.epa.gov/earthday/
International Earth Day (Christian site) - www.earthsite.org
Kaboose Earth Day Celebration (for kids) - http://www.kidsdomain.com
Live Earth 7.7.07 Concert for a Climate in Crisis - http://liveearth.msn.com/
Nature Conservancy Earth Day Events - support.nature.org
Teacher Resources - www.earthday.wilderness.org
U. S. Government Earth Day site - http://www.earthday.gov/
World Wildlife Foundation Earth Day - http://www.worldwildlife.org/earthday/

My Butterfies Rock

These are adult painted Lady butterflies dining on orange slices. Double click on the photo to make it larger and look at the plant leaf on the left where the just hatched caterpillars are eating the hollyhock leaf. Then look at the tiny black dots on the paper towel and the plate - that's how small the caterpillars are the day after they hatch out of their blue eggs.

Muskogee is celebrating Earth Day for the first time this year on April 21st. The celebration will be part of the opening of the Muskogee Farmer's Market in its new location at the Civic Center on Okmulgee St.

My small part of Earth Day is that I am raising butterflies to make kits for a giveaway. Five weeks ago I received 30-painted lady butterfly caterpillars from an education/science company. They grew over two weeks into a size that we recognize as a caterpillar. Then they stopped eating, made chrysalis and emerged as butterflies.

The adults mated and laid eggs on the plants in their box and now the cycle is repeating as the adults are dying and the babies are growing. Most adult butterflies live only two weeks.