This garden season, Giving Tree Gardens is proud to announce a working patnership with premeier Minneapolis permaculture hardscape designer
Andrew French
and his new company,
Make Giving Tree Gardens or Shadow Dance Stoneworks your first call for
Earth Friendly Landscaping!
"A three year old child is a being who gets almost as much fun out of a fifty-six dollar set of swings as it does out of finding a small red worm."
I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.
Worm or beetle - drought or tempest - on a farmer's land may fall, Each is loaded full o' ruin, but a mortgage beats 'em all.
Come see the Giving Tree Gardens Facebook Page! While you're visiting be sure to check out our new Facebook page for Healthy Yards, Healthy Lives.
While snow mounds on the ground and outdoor compost piles freeze till they’re froze, the worms wiggle, squiggle, and jiggle their squirmy wormy bodies all around the warm worm bin, loving leafy leftovers and tumbling crumbly compost trails from their tangled tails. Worms are fun, and gross, and good for the Earth! What could be more exciting for a classroom of kiddos?
Jonathan Beutler is one community member who knows how to harness and share the transformative power of the red wiggler worm, and share he does. Volunteering with various urban farming efforts and now bringing his excitement and knowledge into the classroom, Jonathan is rapidly gaining a reputation as the Minneapolis
“worm whisperer”.
Recently Jonathan offered to work with teachers and volunteers from Anishinabe Academy’s new 7th Generation Garden Design Circle, facilitating worm bin classes that left in place all the knowledge and equipment that the hosting classrooms will need to keep on growing soil from scraps all year long.
With the understanding that good gardens grow from good dirt, these “wormshops” are the first hands-on activity that the 7th Generation gardeners have organized together. If this circle of students, community service agency employees, teachers, staff, garden experts, and local business owners have their way, much of the sod grass lawn surrounding the school will be cleared, composted and turned into growing space that will nurture opportunities for year round garden fun!
The seeds for this new initiative sprouted in the imaginations of Linda Lucero and Mary Gaytan. Mary, the parent of an elementary schooler and owner of a local gardening business, needed allies in her valiant efforts to bring garden opportunities to her childrens' school, and an ally she found in Linda Lucero. As Anishinabe’s enthusiastic and thoughtful Community Development Coordinator and a trained and practiced restorative justice circle keeper, Linda easily recognized the inherently restorative nature of gardening for the human community. With this in mind, Mary and Linda pulled together a team of go-getters who are willing to roll up their sleves and get their hands dirty building community. This well-rounded team is still expanding to include students, parents, Ojibwe and Dakota language teachers, staff from agencies including the Indian Health Board, Golden Eagles Youth Program, and Beacons Minneapolis after school program. After working together last spring in the Seward Co-op’s new rain garden, Mary asked Russ Henry to team up along side her garden business to nurture and inform this exciting collaborative. With all these great partners, the potential for learning is amazing. From hands on growing, cooking, marketing, and partnership building experience to native language and culture oriented, Earth-friendly, youth-empowering gardening curriculum to the beginning of food and waste systems that will truly nourish the kids, families, staff, and community of the school, the potential for growth is phenomenal.
Until these healthy ideas fully blossom, we’ll be sowing the seeds of garden knowledge in the classroom, starting where every good garden begins, in the soil! Thanks to all the kids and community partners and thanks to the every day miracle of worm compost, life in the city is a little healthier and a little happier!
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The Seed Vol. 35 February 25, 2010 A Giving Tree Gardens Newsletter
Photos by Russ Henry and Ellyot Stacy ©2010 ,Text by Russ Henry
©2010 by Giving Tree Gardens, all rights reserved.
Worms Go To School!
Worms eat our food scraps and leave compost in the soil. Compost feeds the plants and the plants feed us. This winter the pre-schoolers at Anishinabe Academy in South Minneapolis are learning how this simple and respectful cycle works by growing worms fed with the kids own food scraps right in their classroom. While children at Anishinabe are learning in class about worms, soil, seeds, plants, food, and health, a team of energized, organized grown-ups from the school and community are learning how to grow opportunities for the kids to get their hands dirty in the garden.
I’m not sure if worms can smile, but I smile when I think about kids learning how to empower their health, respect their environment, and sustain their culture. The 7th Generation Garden Design Circle has taken root at Anishinabe in order to nurture these wonderful ideas and grow them into a verdant garden of opportunities for the children, families, and staff of the school. Through the development of curriculum based on native culture, nutrition, Earth-friendly gardening practices, restorative justice, and compost heaps of fun, the 7th Generation gardeners are growing awareness, community, and happy kids!
This volume of The Seed is dedicated to the Ojibwe and Dakota High-5 language classes at Anishinabe Academy. Thanks to the super smart kids and teachers in these classes, worms are doing their wiggly work to slime through the grime and turn garbage into garden gold! May the seeds they plant grow into a community of opportunity!
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The Seed
JUST GOT INTERACTIVE !!!
Check Out the new
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Though the worms were greated with sceptisism by some, curiosity and excitement eventually won over even the most grossed out little ones. Allies come in all different shapes and sizes, so please don’t judge a worm by it’s squirm!
Worm Whisperer
Thinking of Going Green? Start by Growing Green!
These organizations can help residents, neighborhoods, and organizations in Minneapolis and St. Paul learn to eat and grow sustainably!
Sister's Camelot provides free organic food to folks in need throughout the Twin Cities!
Midtown Farmers Market: Shop for locally grown organic foods, and meet your farmers and neighbors!
Youth Farm and Market Project: Kids learn to grow, cook, and sell food. Sharing skills that will sustain for a lifetime!
has been working to improve their neighborhood's environmental impact, now they're building an organic urban farm!
Giving Tree Gardens is happy to now offer organic and eco-friendly landscape consultation for businesses, non-profits, and government organizaitons!
Worms Go To School!
Thanks to Jonathan Beutler for sharing his knowledge and worms with the rest of us! When teachers, students, and volunteers team up in the garden, community health grows stronger!
Worms are easy!
Here’s a few do’s and don’ts:
Do:
- DO use 2 opaque bins stacked inside each other with lots of air holes drilled in the inside bin and the lid.
- DO use COIR (available locally) or shredded leaves for worm bin medium, wet your medium with lukewarm water till it’s damp, not soaked.
- DO use a little sand (worms don’t have teeth and use the grit to help them digest)
- DO Feed The Worms! Red Wigglers like to eat a variety of foods including but not limited to: leafy greens, potatoes, banana peels, coffee grounds, egg shells, leaves and trimmings, tea bags, cereal, and grains.
- DO tuck the worm food under the soil, the worms like to live in the dark and this also helps keep any smells down
Don't:
- Don’t drown your worms, they like a moist but not soaked medium,
- Don't use newspaper, it breaks down to a gross heavy clay.
- Don’t have a stinky bin, keep out dairy or meat scraps!
- Don’t put a lot of citrus in the bin, this may make the bin too acidic for the worms
To find worms for sale, click here! Or if you're a little more patient then let us know that you need help finding worms. We're happy to ask around to the many folks we know growing worms at home!
Click here for help locating free wigglers.
When your worm bin gets full, remove the compost for use in your garden. Simply screen out the worms or just as easy, scoop all worm filled compost over to one side of the bin. On the other side mix up some new medium with sand and food scraps, most of your worms will find their way over to the new medium within a couple of days. After you’ve got the compost mostly worm free, go feed the plants!
Worms are fun, gardening is fun, and the kids at Anishinabe Academy are so much fun!
What a perfect match!
An acre of thank yous have been planted in my heart for all the folks working so hard to build a healthy community at Anishinabe!
Thanks a compost heap to:
Linda Lucero, Jason Kaasovic, Sarah Butler, Amber Ogi Ruel, Laura Pederson, Cassandra Meyer, Allison Kirby, Mary Gaytan, Jake Virden, Kjerstin Hagen, Lindsey Fenner, Shannon Trevino, Jane Blegan, Karen Lamere, and
Jonathan Beutler!
Garden Vocabulary: WORM
Dakota: Wabduska (wah-bah-doo-shkah)
Ojibwe: Moose (moo-say)
Would you like to hold your own worm class?
To reach the Worm Whisperer Johnathan Buetler
Call (715) 499-0176
Would you like to hold your own worm class?
To reach the Worm Whisperer Johnathan Buetler
Call (715) 499-0176
