Growing Power Visit

Leanna, who is a consultant from Growing Power, visited with us yesterday to evaluate the progress that we've made on our school composting and garden project. All-in-all, she was quite positive about the systems that we have up and running. We took her on a quick tour of our system, from collecting organic material in our kitchen, to the new green house where we'll do some vermicomposting, and to our garden/compost location out near the transportation barn.

I'm summarizing our conversation notes below so we can refer to them as needed in the future:

-We discussed worm bin locations. The green house looks good, but they do need to be kept cool in the summer. Who will water the worms on a daily basis in the summer??
-Compost heap-Leanna said we were off to a great start with this. The larger compost pile was actually cooking quite nicely when she opened it up. She suggested adding wood chips and pure coffee grounds to the heap once in a while to control any odor (although when we were out by the heap the odor was non-existent).
-Garden plots-Leanna liked what we established on earth day. She make a great suggestion of layering the garden and garden walkways with cardboard. A layer of wood chips could then be placed over the cardboard on the walkway to create a very nice look. We liked Leanna's idea of layering rows of dirt on the cardboard for the plantings.
-Fencing-Leanna said we might be able to purchase some used wire fencing from Growing Power. Kip and I will evaluate this during our Growing Power visit on May 19 and May 20.
-Plantings-Leanna and Karen like the idea of planting tomatoes, beans, peas, and carrots in year one. Leanna mentioned we could also plant some spinach later in the summer that would come to harvest in the fall.