Gardening · Eco-Chick

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Green Living in Minnesota

Guest-Blogger Tami Molitor sent this report from Minnesota’s Living Green Expo. I think it’s fantastic to hear about all the green stuff happening in places other than the East and West Coasts, and there’s plenty of it. All Americans need to be involved in building a sustainable world, because pretty much all of us have been involved in getting us to this ecologically precarious and dangerous place that we are now. -Ed.

By Guest-Blogger Tami Molitor

My husband and I headed to the Minnesota state fairgrounds in St. Paul the first weekend of May to attend the Living Green Expo. Our first greeting was that of electric cars and a variety of bikes to promote travel without gasoline. Organic Valley family of farms (from Wisconsin)was giving samples of milk and coupons. College “kids” from Macalester were sharing a slideshow from their travels to ice-covered parts of the world to learn more about global warming with world reknowned Minnesotan explorers.

Organic Bob gardening and a variety of organic and natural lawncare, landscapers and gardening cmpanies were exibiting along with green roof promoters, natural skincare companies and small home-based soap makers.

We missed the eco-fashoin show….check the site for more on that. The Waldorf School promoted their Earth-friendly curriculum and trendy South Minneapolis was also well represented with Linden Hills area natural foods coop and home store.

The City of Minneapolis officials participated in presentation of ” An Inconvenient Truth”
via slide show. Clean energy was well represented with local and national energy companies and wind energy groups.

A kid’s area included creative arts, a compassionate kids presentation, recycling games,
visits form the raptor center and healthy toys and snacks. Lots more to see, do and learn for kids and family.

This event is getting bigger every year. We only had time for a three-hour stay, and I feel like we barely sratched the surface. Our goal is to review the handouts and start adding more green living options to our lifestyle. It is great to live in an area that offers this type of event. Be sure to check out the main Living Green expo site for all the details!

bikes, cape, car, cars, electric, electric car, electric cars, Energy, farm, farms, Food, garden, Gardening, gas, giving, Global Warming, Green Living, health, Home, kids, local, Milk, Organic, Recycling, skin, skincare, soap, style, sustainable, travel

Communal Tool Sharing

2 Comments

by Ann Benoit · 11/08/06

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Ever embarked on a home project, but didn’t have the tools needed or the money/space to buy and store them? Like most renters, buying a huge stash of tools isn’t feasible for me anytime soon. That’s why there are resources like the Berkeley tool library. One of the first libraries to lend hardware to local residents (with a library card), Berkeley Tool Lending Library was started in 1979 with a $30,000 federal community block grant. Since then, the budget has grown more than three-fold, and borrowers number in the thousands. Gardening tools (including lawn mowers), carpentry tools, electrical tools, plumbing tools, power tools, and ladders are among the many categories of tools that Berkeley residents can borrow.

Although tool libraries aren’t yet as common as book lending libraries, there are currently additional tool lending libraries in Oakland, Grosse Pointe, Kansas City, Missoula, Buffalo, Rochester, Columbus, Portland, Burlington, and Seattle. Tool libraries are a great way for communities to share resources!

book, budget, car, community, corn, electric, garden, Gardening, Home, local, resources, soul, spa, tools

Guestblogger: GardenRant

7 Comments

by Starre Vartan · 10/12/06

I’ve been enjoying the well-written and funny-as-hell GardenRant blog of late, and Susan Harris, who runs the site jointly with two other women, is guest-posting about why she wanted to start a blog that focuses on ecologically intelligent gardening. Check it out!

Why Gardening Matters

by Susan Harris of GardenRant
When uppity women come together to create a website, the first thing they do is tell the world who they are. So EcoChicks have their Raison D’Etre and the women of GardenRant have a Manifesto, which declares that We Are:
In love with real, rambling, chaotic, dirty, bug-ridden gardens.
Appalled by chemical warfare in the garden.
Gardening our asses off.
And so on. But first on the list is “Convinced that gardening MATTERS” and we’re on a Rant to tell everyone why. Conveniently, examples abound from the our own rants and raves and comments by our community of opinionated gardeners and friends. Consider a few.

It’s about using our land to grow food. Here and here.
It’s about switching from turfgrass to a diversity of wildlife-attracting, water-absorbing, soul-enriching plants. Here and here.
It’s about changing our cities. Here, here and here.
It’s about what Home Depot and Scotts Miracle-Gro are doing to independent nurseries. Here, and here.
It’s about plant immigration – are you for it or against it? Here, and here.
It’s about guerrilla gardening breaking out everywhere. Here and here.
It’s about getting MUCH smarter about how we use our water. Here, and here.
It’s about quacks on PBS hawking their toxic homemade concoctions. Here.
As GardenRanter Amy Stewart once wrote: This isn’t needlepoint, people!

cities, community, farm, Food, garden, Gardening, gardens, Home, homemade, opinion, Plants, soul, trees, water, Wildlife, women

Ask Chicky: Vermicomposting

3 Comments

by Starre Vartan · 11/22/05

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Dear Chicky,
I went to a dinner party last week and the host had a tiny composter in her apartment’s kitchen; she said there were bugs inside that eat the food she deposits. It sounds gross, but I feel bad tossing all my leftovers in the garbage—how do these things work? Why don’t they smell?
—Curious about compost

Dear Curious Composter,
All compost systems rely on the same principle: stuff rots and then turns into dirt. If you do it right. The good news is it’s not that hard to replicate what nature does on a grand scale in your very own kitchen. Properly composted food is never smelly and can cut down on your trips to the garbage bin (and the inevitable filling of our landfills). In fact, if you get into it, you can compost up to 1/3 of your household waste.

What your friend most likely had was a worm composter, also called a vermicomposter. This kind of composting is great for an apartment because it doesn’t take up much space, is totally hygienic and the final product is humus. Not the middle-eastern bean spread, but the ultimate fertilizer for your organic container gardening.

The busy earthworms, called red worms or manure worms, (yes, they wiggle, but no, you don’t have to touch them) will keep your composter functioning and odor-free. These special guys eat up to their weight in food every day, and their excrement is the aforementioned humus. Their casts (a nicer name for poop) contain all sorts of good stuff like nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium, meaning that the humus they produce will make your garden grow. And on top of all that, once your scraps are devoured by the worms, all the nasty pathenogenic bacteria (the kind that can make you sick) are totally neutralized.

But there are some caveats; you can’t just dump all your leftovers in a vermicomposter, but fruit and vegetable scraps, eggshells, old bread, coffee grounds, shredded computer paper (no colored ink) and newspaper, and houseplant trimmings are all OK. Go light on the vegetable oils, dairy and meat; all these things take more time for the worms to digest, so don’t throw a big hunk of steak in your composter, no matter how free-range and organic it might be. Some people say small amounts of meat or bone will break down just fine, but it might take some experimenting. It isn’t complicated, by you will need to read up on the subject. You will need to keep the whole operation moist, and you can make your own or buy a composter ready-to-go at a host of websites and garden centers. The worms are also available online or from your neighborhood plant store. Try wormdigest.org, cityfarmer.com and cityknowlege.com.

Wormily yours,
Chicky