Our friends at PUSH (People United for Sustainable Housing), the wonderful group developing a green zone on the West Side, are finalists in Changemakers competition for an award for sustainable urban housing. Go here to vote – you have to register first but it’s not a big deal:

www.changemakers.com/en-us/sustainableurbanhousing

PUSH’s project is the only one in the running (ten finalists) that’s not in the developing world. Ah, Buffalo – our little bit of the developing world, so close to home!

Are you looking for an opportunity to grow your community garden, add a component to your neighborhood project, strengthen your youth program or neighborhood outreach efforts, learn strategies to address policy challenges, market your city farm project or create value added products? Then join us in Buffalo, NY:

March 11-13, 2011

for the Growing Green Spring Urban Agriculture Training!

Registration page is here.

The Massachusetts Avenue Project’s Urban Agriculture Training features many practical, philosophical, and experiential opportunities to learn from MAP’s success with urban, youth centered agriculture.

In addition to witnessing the components of a functional urban farm first hand, such as urban fish farming, composting, and value-added food production, participants will be able to engage and observe many of the successful elements in MAP’s youth training program, Growing Green. Attending the training also means being able to hear from regional experts on food system planning and development, and network with other beginning or established urban farmers, with training at the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus Innovation Center and hands on at Growing Green’s Urban Youth Farm. Only $200, this weekend workshop includes 2 breakfasts, 2 lunches, a cocktail reception, and intensive, hands-on training opportunities.

Workshops include

• Moving Local Food Policy Forward with Diane Picard, MAP’s Executive Director
• Introduction to Urban Agriculture with Jesse Meeder, MAP’s Farm Manager
• Aquaponics with Jesse Meeder
• Compost and Worms with Jesse Meeder
• Urban Chickens with Jesse Meeder
• Youth, Social Enterprises and the New Food System with Zoe Hollomon, MAP’s Markets Manager
• Messaging for Local Food with Erin Sharkey, MAP’s Creative Director
• Developing Youth-centered Programming with Erin Sharkey, MAP’s Creative Director and several youth participants from the Growing Green Program.
• With a special presentation from Samina Raja, PhD- Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University at Buffalo entitled – Building Communities as if People Eat
• Introduction to Urban Agriculture will be offered for an additional $25 on Friday March 11 from 1-5pm

Fall is here — leaves are flying and clear plastic bags full of them are piling up at the curbs.  Some of those leaves have made their way to our compost piles, thanks to some happy volunteers raking in our neighborhood, and one of our crew members, Brandon, who filled his van full of bags and brought them for us to (re)use.  Leaves are great fuel for the compost pile — they’re an excellent source of carbon (see below) to feed your compost pile, bin, or bucket.  Having a compost pile reduces the amount of garbage you generate, and using the fallen leaves you rake helps take a bit of the burden off the street sweepers and garbage collectors, providing you with some “black gold” for your garden and good Karma for reusing your waste.  Putting compost in your garden soil improves its structure and its ability to hold water, and also provides essential nutrients and beneficial micro-organisms to the soil and the plants you grow in it.  Still not convinced that you should start your own compost pile? Wait until you see how easy it is…

Here is the new compost bin we setup at our garden to help us reuse our garden waste and the leaves we have been raking up.  The container that you use for a compost setup can be just about anything, or nothing — 5 gallon buckets, straw bales, an old garbage bin with holes drilled in the sides (for air circulation), a circular frame of “chicken wire” (welded wire), or a simple, large, static pile right on the ground.  In the picture, we used a forklift pallet and some reclaimed 2×4′s and slats to build a frame, and closed up the front with a bit of welded wire mesh.  Every container may have a slightly different process to how you compost in it, but you’ll figure it out as you go.  Compost is a great learning experience because of just that — there isn’t an absolutely “right” way to do it, but you learn ways to do it better as you go.

When choosing or building a container, important things to keep in mind are the amount of space you have to work in, the amount of materials you have to work with, air circulation, and where the container will go.  If you have, for example, a small upper apartment, you might be better off going with an indoor worm bin or a Bokashi composter. Also, the 3-bucket compost system utilizes three small containers (like 5 gallon buckets) to quickly decompose small amounts of waste at a time in a small space — and it’s especially helpful in winter.

Compost is the product of nature’s decomposition process.  You can make it scientific or simple.  Bacteria, mold, and fungi break down waste with a little help from their friends — the worms.  As they break down the materials, it consumes oxygen, carbon and nitrogen, creating heat and releasing water.  Having a good balance of oxygen, moisture, carbon-rich and nitrogen-rich materials creates an ideal atmosphere for the beneficial bacteria and other decomposers hard at work making your compost.  Learning how to get that balance is part of the experience.  It’s not completely necessary (anything will break down over time), but it helps reduce odors, speeds up the process and makes a better product.

When you begin your pile, and while you build it, try to balance the kinds of ingredients you put into it by adding a layer of one when you add the other.  If you put a layer of kitchen scraps in your bin (primarily “greens”), put a layer of leaves or shredded paper or wood chips (“browns”) to even it out.  You can get very technical, but you don’t have to — it’s your compost pile.  Compost 101 has a good article to reference for carbon-rich and nitrogen-rich materials.  They have a very rigid, technical approach to balancing the carbon to nitrogen ratio (25:1 C:N) — which is a bit over-complicated for the beginner — but is helpful to think about.  They also have some great tips to consider as well.

There are two types of ingredients for your compost: browns and greens (or carbon-rich and nitrogen-rich).  Browns include: paper, ashes, cardboard, cornstalks, leaves, and wood chips.  Greens include: grass clippings, garden waste, coffee grounds, vegetable scraps, and weeds.  See the link above or google for a more complete list. AVOID Adding: meat scraps or bones, sawdust from treated woods, grease or fatty foods, domesticated animal feces, clippings from chemically treated lawns, etc.  Think about what you add to your pile before you add it.

Aeration and moisture are the only other elements that you may have to provide, depending on how you establish your compost system and how you maintain it.  If you purchase a bin composter, or build one from a old garbage can, you may need to turn it every now and then to give it some air.  If you build a large static pile, you may only turn it over once or twice.  If you add too much nitrogen-rich materials, you might end up with a wet, stinky mess — and too much carbon leaves your pile dry and cold.  My suggestion is to keep it simple: start small and add a little bit of brown every time you add a little green, and experiment with different kinds of compost techniques to learn how the materials work.  As your experience grows, so will your pile (and vise versa).

Please don’t get me wrong, we love the Garden Walk–I love anything that gets people out into the sidewalks and talking to one another about color and veggies and sunshine. And I realize that with 355 gardens on the Walk–it makes it difficult to map a larger area; however, there are many gardens east of Main Street that I think are worth visiting–namely those in our neighborhood:

• Our Rain Garden at the corner of Northampton & Michigan is very new! It was installed by National Grid employees as a corporate service project this past Earth Day 2010. The garden was designed by Matthew Dore of Buffalo Horticulture. Matt regraded the vacant double lot to guide rain water into the middle (like a shower drain) where a pergola was built surrounded by blueberry bushes. The lot also features a privacy fence using reclaimed flooring. The perennial flower beds have a backdrop of foundation stone.  Planters built from reclaimed hemlock floor joists double as seating along the sidewalk.
  Keep traveling down Northampton and
• You’ll discover a Bee Sanctuary which was once a vacant lot, but is now a warm blanket of yellow, amber, and bronze with summer wild flowers. (In the spring the lot was dotted with blues, pinks and purples). The wild flowers are native to the North East and are helping to fortify a sagging urban bee population.
• Our Children’s Vinery is truly unique!  It has an apple tree and six arbors supporting a variety of pole beans, melon, squash, tomatoes, eggplant and chard.  We have Mobile Victory Gardens donated by artist, Stella Maars which are growing herbs and pumpkins.  We’re just adding a teepee of morning glories.  We have experimental containers for growing potatoes and a strawberry patch which has delighted people of all ages!
• The Patchwork Garden is also a sight–50 different beds which neighbors, volunteers and groups have adopted!  Folks plant whatever they want in this community garden and they enjoy having a place to grow their own food and relax.  We host events like movie nights, cooking demos, art, performances and free gardening workshops in the garden.
• Just around the corner there is another style of community garden, The Cold Spring Community Garden on Southampton and Masten, managed by Dan Ash and Jessica Lang.  Their garden is a site where five houses once stood, but now there is an 8foot wall of tomatoes, several rows of vegetables and raspberry vines.  There are also fruit trees which will mature into a mixed bowl of cherries, plums, peaches, pears and apples!  Volunteers and neighbors work in the garden and are able to eat what they harvest.

Thousands of volunteer hours have gone into building these gardens and the whole reason is so people can come and enjoy them. We hope you’ll visit them soon.  Over the next 2years we hope that Northampton will showcase greenspace development and neighborhood stabilization.  It will be like a red carpet–only greener!  If you have questions or would like to get involved, please stop by our table at the Garden Walk/Talk this weekend!

Learn how to build that rain barrel that you’ve always wanted!

Stop by Buffalo ReUse on July 7th @ 4pm for a free workshop demonstrating how to prepare and assemble a rain barrel from a 55 gallon (food grade) barrel.  If you’d like, for $25 you can build your own rain barrel after the demonstration to take home with you.  And if you don’t want to build one but still want a barrel to harvest rain from your roof, you can buy one that’s ready to go at the ReSource on 298 Northampton for $25 as well.

What: Build-a-Barrel Wkshp

When: July 7th @ 4pm

Where: 158 Eaton St, Buffalo

Why: Because it’s fun!

The process of creating a rain barrel from a plastic drum is easy, doesn’t take much time, and needs only a few supplies.  At the workshop you will see the materials that go into assembling a barrel, and the process we use to put ours together.  We will have already-assembled rain barrels available for sale, and we will have the materials ready if you want to put your own together (so you know for next time, or if you want to show a friend).  Hope to see you there!

Summer is almost (technically) here, but from a quick glance while passing by a garden, it is clear that summer in Buffalo is pretty much in full swing.  We are operating several gardens on Northampton near our store, and have built / created a few others around our neighborhood as well–including a rain garden on the corner of Michigan and Northampton.  Our gardens here at Buffalo ReUse are coming together nicely, and I wanted to take some time to show them off to the world over the course of a few blog posts, so keep your eyes peeled.

Patchwork Garden – our community garden, a piecemeal collective of 4′x8′ raised beds that we put up for adoption at the beginning of the growing season.  Neighbors and community members have adopted more than 40 of our 50 available beds.  At the Patchwork lot we also planted Three Sisters Gardens (a Native American tradition where the three sisters–corn, beans, squash–live and grow together harmoniously), onion mounds, potatoes, and a deep, tiered bed for carrots.  Here’s a sampling of what we have growing in the Patchwork so far this year:

Cabbage, Onions, Marigolds, and Choi

Raised beds planted by neighbors

Broccoli buds, collards, lettuce

Three Sisters

Children’s Vinery – just next door to the Patchwork Garden, this is where the “Tanglers, Danglers, and Creepers” live.  This garden’s primary focus is children, and getting them excited about and involved with the wonders of growing things.  We have peas climbing trellises made of reused materials and tree limbs, topsy-turvy tomatoes, colorful Swiss Chard, interesting squashes and cucumbers, potatoes and raspberries growing in old garbage bins, an earth oven, and a sweet, sweet strawberry patch.  We have already harvested almost twenty pounds of Strawberries this year, and more are coming! Join us on June 26th at 8pm, when we are hosting our Strawberry Moon Celebration–we will harvest our remaining berries, hold a workshop for making Strawberry jam, and project movies on the screen in the Patchwork Garden all while enjoying the early summer breeze and the company of neighbors and friends.  Here are some shots of the Children’s Vinery:

Rainbow Chard and Mr. Big Pea

Peas growing up

Our Strawberry Patch

Keep your eyes peeled for more garden biographies, and more pictures of our progress as the season goes on.  There is plenty more to come!!!

Are you growing your own tomatoes this year? Whether you are an experienced tomato grower or a blossoming gardener, come check out our first Tomato Care workshop of the season.  Come with questions, or come share your wisdom.

Join us at our Patchwork Garden @ 320 Northampton (near the corner of Jefferson) Saturday, June 12th at 10:00am, where we will demonstrate different methods for growing tomatoes, and discuss seeds, soil, feeding, companion plants, staking, pests, and plant disease.  This is a free workshop.  We hope to see you Saturday!

Planting, feeding, and staking tomatoes — a workshop to demonstrate different methods for growing tomatoes and important things to consider and address throughout the season. We’ll discuss starting seeds, amending soil for tomatoes, other plants that are good companions for tomatoes, planting, staking techniques, fertilizers, feeding, and …blight.

This Saturday we will be working in the community gardens AND reaping the benefits!

LET US CELEBRATE LETTUCE and all the other foods that grow in the soil!

Join us for a Garden Workday with a salad potluck buffet–bring your work gloves, a sunhat and a bowl of salad! Lettuce Optional.

At noon, we’ll wash our hands, sit down to a buffet and bury our face in a bowl.

You can also just come for lunch as long as you bring a bowl to share.
(potato salad, macaroni salad, 3bean salad, beet salad, chard salad, egg salad, taco salad, corn salad, tomato salad, waldorf–the possibilities are endless.)

THERE IS ALSO GOING TO BE A SEEDLING SWAP TOO–for the warm weather crops like tomatoes and peppers and others.

Ladies and gentlemen, the future of compost is here. The Greenspaces team at Buffalo ReUse is currently experimenting with several different methods of brewing compost tea, and will be sharing our results with you as the season goes on. The murky water that is produced from brewing this tea has the power to fertilize and improve the health of your garden’s plants, while actively deterring pests and introducing beneficial microorganisms to your soil. With a little bit of compost and a few things you would find in your shed or your garden, you can easily set up your own tank to brew your own compost tea–and watch the difference it makes for your plants.

There are several approaches that one can take to prepare compost tea:

–The most simple, straightforward form of compost tea preparation is called “Passive Brewing.” This method is somewhat archaic, and dates back centuries, but needs only a few things: A vessel to hold the water (i.e. a rain barrel), water (preferably rainwater as it does not have additives that municipal water treatment plants will add), a “tea bag” to steep the compost in the water, something to suspend it in the water, and some compost.

–Fill your “tea bag” with garden compost, suspend it so it doesn’t sit at the bottom of the barrel, and lift it or stir it once a day for aeration. Do this for 7 – 10 days. When your tea is ready, decant by pouring through cheesecloth or pantyhose (if you prefer), or just pull out your tea bags and dunk your watering can right in. And the compost can go right back in your pile when your tea is all done.

–We used and old burlap sack for one barrel and mesh bags from onion sets for another. The bags hold and steep the compost, making it easier to remove the solid matter after the brewing is complete. We used an old tree stake to suspend the tea bags in the water, and use them to lift the bags out when we aerate the barrels each day.

–If you use tap water or from a garden hose, make sure to let the water sit in your barrel for at least a day, to let the chlorine and other additives evaporate as much they can. As your tea brews, microorganisms and bacteria grow, and will die if chlorine is present

We are also experimenting with a newer, more intensive approach to brewing tea is called “Active Brewing.” This involves the same materials as a passive barrel, but with some added technology: electricity, an air pump, and food for the growing microorganisms. What sets an active compost tea apart from passive is the addition of oxygen and food to the mix, making a more ideal environment for those microbes to thrive. Using an air pump, you can increase oxygen in the water, and by providing a food source like molasses, kelp, or humic acid, you can greatly increase the number of beneficial organisms growing inside your barrel. And an active brew can be done over the course of 2 or 3 days, way quicker than a passive brew.

Try it out, and let us know how it works for you! There is a good amount of reliable information on the web regarding compost tea, and it can’t hurt to experiment! Good luck, and happy gardening!!!

This Wednesday (4/28) and Friday (4/30) we will be transplanting many of the seedlings that we’ve started in our basement and hardened off in coldframes in our backyard. We germinated seeds and distributed seedlings to support several community gardens, made them available to fellow gardeners at our Seedling Swap last Saturday, and still have some left to put into our own gardens and share with our Patchwork Neighbors who have adopted a bed.

Come out to our gardens at 326 Northampton on Wednesday from 2pm – 5pm to help us with transplanting our seedlings and other garden chores (and we’ll be there Friday too–but call ahead because we also have to go pick up trees). If you have adopted a bed and want to transplant a few into your garden, you can do that too! We are running out of adoptable beds; hurry if you want one–contact us at greenspaces {at} buffaloreuse(.)org or come out on Wednesday.

And whether you’ve adopted a bed or not, we can always use your help with garden chores during weekly Workday hours:

-Wednesdays from 2pm – 5pm

-Fridays from 9am – Noon