Ecofamily

Yikes! My worms almost escaped! I usually feed the compost bin at my office on Thursdays or Fridays.  Last weeks goodies were especially juicy with wet coffee grounds, some melon chunks, oranges and larger chunks of sweet peppers. I thought the bedding was really dry so I snapped the lid on tight – it has airholes - and didn’t think another thing about it. 6 days later I looked and found many of my little friends gasping for air on the inside of the lid! The bedding is really soggy – so much so that I think I will take it outdoors to get some sun and dry out a tad. Sorry guys! Had I waited another day, I might have had a real mess!

It looks like it is time to harvest compost again!  The bin is really full which contributed to the moisture problem.  I think I will take the compost bin to my next Nature Explore workshop www.natureexplore.org  and let participants ( kids and adults) try their hand at vermi-composting and take some worms home to start their own bin. If you live in eastern Iowa and would like to get started with a donation from one of my vermi-compost bins, give me a shout! I’m not in the business to ship, so you will have to pick them up.  I can get them to Cedar Rapids or Iowa City.  I will even let you harvest if you want to.  It is a relaxing and messy process so you don’t want to be in a hurry. If not, I am glad to do it and get a supply of  red wigglers for you to pick up.  I just ask that you study up, get your bin ready so they have a good home to go to.  Send me an email kcoop@iastate.edu and I will send you some good reading material for your preparation!

Remember these are for INDOOR composting.  The red wigglers don’t do so well outdoors.  There are other ways to compost your waste outdoors.

I added my last batch of compost tea (the juice that seeps out of the bottom of the container) to the hybiscus tree in the house and she is flowering like CRAZY now!  I start my garden seeds in the castings and they germinate VERY quickly!  Food waste in the trash can creates methane in the landfill.  But it creates sweet smelling soil in the compost bin!  How will you turn fruit & vegetable waste into a resource this spring?

Kristi Cooper

Connection with Nature, Environment, Food, Waste Prevention bedding, compost tea, fruit, germinate, indoor, Nature Explore, seeds, vegetable waste, vermi-compost

My youngest child is turning 21 today! I think of her as a toddler playing with the baby kittens at Grandma’s farm and as a preschooler she and the neighbor kids came in for  a snack covered in clay from a backyard mud slide! Do you remember digging tunnels in snowbanks? making “hideouts” in the lilac bushes? making mud pies or grass soup?

I have been teaching many Nature Explore workshops this fall and each time I remember more about my time outdoors as a child. I think about how much I learned abou the physics of snow and mud and I think I even learned  basic cooking and chemistry skills doing all of this in my early years.  My daughter is studying to be a landscape architect.  She is also an artist.  I can’t help but think that her early experiences with nautre have shaped her perspective on life and her love of the outdoors.

 Take a trip down memory lane! What are your earliest favorite memories of time outdoors as a child?  Can you link your early outdoor experiences with your life now?

Kristi Cooper

Connection with Nature artist, chemistry, childhood, digging tunnels, hideouts, mud, Nature Explore, physics