The Green Room

One of the David Suzuki Digs My Garden photo contest winners , Barbara Kimball from Oshawa, ON, writes:

You may be interested to know that I did a project with grade 8 students in 2007 on the flora and fauna of our Second Marsh. This was an ArtsSmarts, art-infused education project, which involved an educational tour and photography of the Marsh, and design of an environmental dinner service. The project traveled to the National Conference of ArtsSmarts in PEI. Last year’s "Clay Musical Instruments" can be seen on YouTube under Station Gallery Mud People. This year’s project will get started after Christmas and will involve planning a garden from seeds to cooking with herbs. We will do some photography and the students will create a fountain piece in clay depicting their ideal quiet place – all taking place in a very needy school.

A reader wrote:

Your compost tea is missing one KEY ingredient: oxygen.  In the anaerobic water environment it’s most likely you’ll create something that will kill your plants as that is the best way to create harmful bacteria, fungi, etc. The key to great compost tea is aeration. I use an aeration pump/filters used in fish tanks.

Lindsay responds:

The compost tea recipe we provided was definitely the anaerobic or non-aerated version. As you can imagine we have a wide audience out there, from those who have never gardened to master gardeners! Our intent was to provide the most basic and simple recipe, hence the "bucket-fermentation method" versus what some would consider the more complicated, ‘Bucket-blubbler method" or suggesting they purchase a commercial tea brewer.

From my reseach I found that the non-aerated version also has a function in the garden and compost tea can be as complex or as simple as you want to make it. Now that we’ve got people curious about compost tea, perhaps we’ll do another ‘level 2′ video, where we talk about aeration (like the a aquarium aerater), adding nitrogen via alfalfa pellets and adding sugar, like molasses.

Again, sources I found called this ‘Level 1" compost tea or the ‘bucket fermentation method". Stay tuned, as we hope to bring people along one small step at a time. I think your suggestion of highlighting the benefits of aeration when making compost tea are definitely worth exploring. In a future issue we can elaborate on Level 2, 3 and 4 types of tea which includes aerated teas.

Ken Davis of Lone Pine Publishing sends this note:

Our company published three new books this spring - Garden Bugs of Ontario , Garden Bugs of Alberta , and Garden Bugs of British Columbia .

These books, written by professional entomologists in an accessible manner and beautifully hand-illustrated throughout, talk about both beneficial and damaging insects in the garden from the perspective of using natural controls and also with a view to sharing the fabulous display of nature available at the ‘bug’ level right in your own back yard. For more information, you can check out these books on our website www.lonepinepublishing.com .

Ruth Tschannen, of the Cascadia Society for Social Working relates how they’ve turned the backyard of their centre into a productive vegetable garden using the principals of biodynamic gardening:

In the beginning of last century Rudolf Steiner introduced biodynamic preparations - a wonderful way of bringing back worn out soil. We’ve been doing this here for the last five years. Our composts are incredible within a short time. Birds and bees are abundant within our garden.

The biodynamic preparations are stirred at different times of the day. During summer it is Silica 501. In spring and fall it is Horn manure 500.

Our garden is going to be featured on the Natural Garden tour on Sept. 14th.  If people would be interested in dates for the stirring of the preparations please let me know (604)987-3407.

Anyone else have experience with this method? Here are a couple of websites to look at for more information:
http://www.perc.ca/PEN/1999-11/s-cleary.html
http://www.biodynamics.com/biodynamics.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodynamic_agriculture

Naomi sent in this question:

Our compost had rats so we had to get rid of it - how do I avoid this if we want to try composting again?

Here’s Lindsay’s response:

Rats you say? I’m assuming then that you’re in a city setting. Most municipalities have issued compost bins to avoid smart critters like crows, rats, raccoons and skunks from getting in. Check your municipal waste website and see how you can get one. They’re often about the size of a large garbage can, with small air holes, a locking lid and holes to peg it down.

Trouble shooting for rats would also mean that you want to make sure no cooked or meaty foods get into the compost. These are quite fragrant and tempting for critters like rats.

Also, you can add pet hair right to the compost. It’s supposed to give your bin that “predator” smell and keep the vermin away. I add my cat and dog hair from their brushes as well as dryer lint (it’s mostly pet hair) and haven’t had a problem with rats for three years here in Vancouver. And I do know they’re around. I’ve seen them with my own eyes scrambling my fence and trees!

Stacy L Hird of Ottawa, Ontario submitted these photos together:

Scroll down or look here for more gnome captions and puns:

http://naturechallenge.org/2008/07/vote-here-for-your-favourite-gnome-photo-caption/

Readers of David Suzuki’s Nature Challenge newsletters are gifted caption-writers and punsters! Here are three gnomic conversations for you to vote on:

From Janice Miller-Young of Calgary Alberta:

From Diane Stout of Victoria BC:

From Laurie M of Winnipeg, Manitoba:

Vote here or paste this link in your browser: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=m32auwwMY4rf21N8swPYMw_3d_3d%22%3EClick

Here are a selection of our favourite puns:

“Collecting gnome puns, eh? Wouldn’t that be gnomenclature?”

Suzanne Joyce, Regina Saskatchewan

“Gnome is where the heart is”. “

We are stardust, we are golden. And we’ve got to get our gnome back to the garden.”

Kathy Penner, Winnipeg Manitoba “

My garden and front flower bed has been gnome to be the prettiest in the neighbourhood!”

Mike Lahey, London Ontario

Punspired? Let’s hear ‘em!

We got so many responses to our request for gardening tips, I started a new thread. Janice Miller-Young of Calgary, Alberta writes:

I garden organically (don’t even use synthetic fertilizers) not only because I have a dog and three small children, but because I believe it is best for the environment (in more ways than one). I have a fairly large city lot where I have been gradually removing grass and installing low-maintenance, drought-tolerant plantings (except for the veggie patch). I have done all the work myself (I have a small budget and a non-gardening husband) and I think it is very important to show that you don’t need to spend the big bucks for a landscaper - if you learn a few things you can do it yourself!! And as you know, once installed, a sustainable garden can be low-maintenance and enjoyable if you know some tricks.

Because I have three small children, I also want my garden to be kid-friendly. I not only want them to be safe from chemicals in my garden, but I want them to be free to run around, play, touch things, eat things, and learn about nature. I have even specifically designed parts of the yard to encourage running in the garden!! I think my garden is quite unique because of this and I would really like you to see it!

I am also trying to do my part to share this gardening philosophy and educate my community. This spring I started a blog to give timely tips and advice for Calgarians (and other zone 3 gardeners) to have beautiful and sustainable gardens.

Here are a few links from my blog to show you my garden and my gardening philosophy:

I want to be a gnome buddy
my latest garden project
advice for getting rid of lawn
my front yard - last year’s garden project

If you want to check on the older one, go here: http://naturechallenge.org/2008/06/your-favourite-green-gardening-tips/

Natasha Waxman of Waterloo, Ontario plants some fun and goodwill in her neighbourhood:

The first intimation I had that I was onto something was when I started digging up my small, struggling front lawn, and my neighbour Marie wandered over from across the street with a shovel. It looked like fun, she said. Others joined in throughout the day, and by afternoon we had scraped it bald. I dumped a few meters of good composted earth onto the patch; my neighbour Carolyn jostled her one year-old twins in her arms while she advised me on where to put the tomato stakes and the basil and the chard to make the most of the small space. I got quite a few puzzled looks as people walked by, especially at the big twisty tomato stakes.

Within eight weeks, it was as though somebody had pointed a wand at that sad little patch–and said, GROW! People would wander by and and marvel at the changes from week to week, at the sheer crazy bounty of it. The tomato plants grew as tall as me. Kids would hop from stone to stone on the little paths I’d made through the plants. People would often ask shyly if was I worried that people would steal the tomatoes and I’d say "No! That’s what they’re there for!" and I’d huck them until they started picking. It’s funny how enjoyable picking is– elderly ladies seem to like it as much as the toddlers. Sometimes people would eat them warm and sweet from the vine, which was incredibly gratifying, and sometimes I had to break up cherry tomato throwing matches. The squirrels ate ALL the pumpkins in one day, "like they were filet mingon," as my neighbour Mary said. People stopped by with advice, or to tell me about the gardens or farms they’d grown up with. I continually tried to get people to take home some chard (does anyone really love chard?). Nine-year-old Linnea would bring her friends by to delicately pick the tiny wild strawberries (which incidentally are becoming something of an invasive menace, but I digress), like little girls in a story.

We’ve just finished eating the tomato sauce I canned last year, and there’s still some pesto. This year’s tomatoes have been in for several weeks now, stretching their roots. I’ve struck out into eggplants, broccoli and spinach, and nixed the chard (though it was so prolific!…). People have been coming by as I work to ask how things are going, reminisce about last year’s garden, and wonder if this year can possibly be as good.

My feeling? It already is.

Thanks, Natasha. It sounds wonderful. And I love chard! /Gail

Shawn W of Brooklin, Ontario writes:

I don’t claim to be the world’s greatest gardener although we have a nice spread in a rapidly growing suburb and my lawn and garden looks as good or better than most, with the exception that since we moved in over six years ago, absolutely no chemicals or pesticides have been used to get it to that state.

The big key has been using our own compost. We have one big composter in the back that we use daily for kitchen scraps, etc. What I have learned over the years is that the composter needs as many “browns” as you can feed it to keep cooking. Browns for us are often mulched leaves, shredded paper, straw, etc.

Our Zero Waste approach to gardening is to collect all of our gardens cuttings – branches, deadfall, leaves, dried out prairie grasses, etc and store it in an upright laundry hamper at the side of our house. It gets very dry and “brown”. The next time I cut the grass with our electric mower I run over the browns, bag it up as mulch and throw it on the composter. The only yard waste that goes into the yard waste recycling program are any weeds (and we have very few because our lawns and gardens are so healthy and drug free!!) In the spring, I can feel the heat coming off the compost that I turn once a week. I also bought two pounds of worms for my composter five years ago and their ancestors are still going strong eating away 12 months out of the year.

And don’t worry about composting in the winter. If you keep adding browns all year, the compost will keep cooking enough to not freeze up even after the past winter – one of the coldest in recent years.

We use the compost to start new plants (low water, low maintenance, native) and top dress existing ones. We also top dress our lawn with a trailer load of mushroom compost annually from a local yard to fortify the clay that our builder thought would suffice as a lawn. Triple mix is pretty much useless for this job in my opinion and peat moss is not a green alternative either!

So my advice to people is to stop throwing away their kitchen scraps and yard clippings. Turn them into beautiful black compost and get your lawn and gardens off drugs!!

Here’s Shawn’s lawn - gorgeous and drug-free since 2002!

Shawn’s entered his photo in David Suzuki Digs My Garden. Want to join him? It’s simple - go to http://www.davidsuzuki.org/NatureChallenge/GardenContest/ and sign up!