"Black Gold"

For those of us who are frequently in the kitchen, creating yummy dishes with our local produce...we have many beautiful scraps that would be a shame to end up in the trash.

For those of us who are gardeners, we all are itching to get back in the dirt. One thing that I am looking forward to is using all of the rich, black composting soil that has come from all of my kitchen waste. I use so much fresh produce daily that I am stocked up! Another great way to compost is with worms. Children love helping and it's amazing to see those little creatures churn out such great compost. I personally used a "Worm Condo" and had a wooden system that was similar to this:

one20farm.com/composting-ohio.html

I prefer the wooden bin. It looks much nicer than all of that plastic. The One 20 Farm is connected to Jeremy and Kelli Gedhert, so nice to support some of our urban gardeners. They are a darling family and involved in many great initiatives in our local food movement. I love the way the worm hive looks and that multi-layer system always works well. The kids and I had fun painting ours when we had a similar one in Portland.

There are many great links online about composting or vermiculture (worm composting). Here is one that is very helpful.www.wormwoman.com/acatalog/index.html

Regular composting? www.organicgardening.com/feature/0,7518,s1-2-21-895,00.html

Growing,buying, cooking and gardening with fresh, local produce has so many benefits! Have fun.

Trish