• Extend the growing season;
• Utilize passive solar design to maximize heat from the sun;
• Incorporate passive cooling techniques for summer cooling;
• Maximize energy efficiency and the use of economical, biodegradable building materials
• Create new businesses in natural construction and local material harvesting;
• Grow and strengthen our communities;
• Facilitate community art projects!

This is a big part of the future of local food here.

If you plan on attending, please consider signing-up for one or more of the following sessions (suggested donation $15 or $45 for all four). Sign-up emails go to bradmasi@earthlink.net

Saturday July 25, 9-1pm
Saturday, July 25, 1-5pm
Sunday, July 26, 9-1pm
Sunday, July 26, 1-5pm

Individuals are welcome to visit the garden to observe at any point. Learn more about Vel\’s Purple Oasis Gardens and permaculture in urban agricultural projects.

Check out the page on the New Agrarian Center\’s website for more info (http://tinyurl.com/gt-nac)

There’s a great guide at Mother Earth News by Kiko Denzer , who wrote a detailed book on the subject, Build Your Own Earth Oven, available here.

Excited by the potential, worm bin owners sometime plunge in without getting enough information. Eventually a commercial fruit like a banana peel gets thrown in. In short order, fruit flies (actually most of the time fungus gnats) start to reproduce in high numbers. This is usually where the less enthusiastic home-dwellers lobby to kick the worm bin to the curb.

There are some easy tricks to eliminating these fruit fly and fungus gnat pests:

• Freeze all vegetable and fruit compost before it goes into the bin. The eggs cannot live through a hard freeze.
• Keep the bin fairly dry and keep at least twice as much shredded cardboard as kitchen waste. Moisture should be like a wrung out sponge, i.e. just moist enough to detect by touch.
• Keep a thick layer of cardboard or leaves on top of any fruit or vegetable compost in the bin
• Try to buy 100% local fruit and veggies, unmixed with industrial agricultural products. Fruit flies and fungus gnats can’t survive a good Northeast Ohio winter.
• Most importantly, add Steinernema feltiae (commonly called Sf) beneficial nematodes.

What are Sf you ask? These are a natural part of good soil ecology in southern States where fruit flies and fungus gnats live year-round. They infect the fruit fly and fungus gnat larvae that live in the soil, controlling their populations before they become a pests. Since basement or closet bins don’t see a freeze like our soils outside, introducing Sf adds a natural biological control mechanism to your bin.

Sf is often cost prohibitive, as it’s mainly used in organic farm fields, and the amount needed for a worm bin rarely jusifies the shipping cost. So Green Triangle is going to lead a co-operative purchase of these little worm bin gems. At the end of June we’re going to be ordering enough Sf for 20 regular worm bins at a cost of $5 per order.  If you would like to purchase an order from us, please contact hank@greentri.org with “Sf” in the title.

Lawn alternatives or accents can also be designed to create a habitat of native plants for local birds, woodland mammals, and beneficial insects. These native ecological systems protect us from pests and often remove toxins from the places we live.

Doug Tallamy recently explained details of how beneficial insects and native plants work together on NPR’s Science Friday.

Green Triangle offers unique backyard design services (pdf, 1.09MB) to make this process easy, fun, and get your yard working for you. Discounts are available for community gardens and private gardens in the urban core.

To find out the local buzz and help out our local hive-heads,

Greater Cleveland Beekeepers Association

contact: Jeff Collins (GCBA President) 440.283.8488

One of the toughest local environments to build a garden is deep shade. But when grass stops growing, there are still many options for flowers, edibles, and hedges.

Here’s a small list to inspire you.

Hedge berries:

• clove currant or black currant (require about 3-4 hours of light)

“Ornamental” bushes and taller plants:

• Canadian yew
• holly
• some hydrangeas
• hosta

Vines

• hog peanut
• wild yam (require about 3-4 hours of light)

Forest floor edibles

• bunchberry
• wintergreen
• Alpine strawberries
• wild ginger
• ramps
• Queen Anne’s lace
• Indian cucumber root
• wild garlic
• Soloman’s seal
• miner’s lettuce
• anise root
• may apples (Warming: this one should be eaten only after consulting with an expert that can show the appropriate time to harvest. Unripened fruit from the may apple is poisonous, as are all the other parts of this plant.

Mushrooms There’s too many to list. Some of our favorites include:

• oysters (great at removing toxins and breaking down oil)
• miatake (aka chicken-of-the-woods, indescribably good taste)

Edible ferns (young fronds, plant in really wet areas)

• ostrich fern
• christmas fern
• lady fern

Forest floor flowers

• lily of the valley
• rue anemone
• bleeding heart
• cardinal flower
• trillium
• white wood aster
• violets
• rosybells
• zig-zag goldenrod
• creeping phlox
• dwarf-crested iris
• foamflower

For help finding these plants, or to schedule a complete deep shade design, please feel free to contact us.

Companion planting is an effective means to increase yields in limited space and better mimic natural ecologies. Consider the following suggestions for plant buddies:

Brassicae and Allium Guild - broccoli, cabbage, collards, cauliflower, kale, mizuna, mustard greens, radishes, beets, garlic, onions, dill, rosemary, nasturtium, geraniums, chamomile

Legumes, Tap Roots, and Leaf Crop Guild - peas, beans, caragana, carrots, celery, parsnips, lettuce, spinach, NOT mustard greens, marigolds (such as Mexican tarragon)

Nightshade and Asparagus Guild - tomatoes, peppers, asparagus, parsley, basil, comfrey, oregano

Three Sisters Guild - center-corn and beans; middle-amaranth, potatoes, squash, melons; outer boarder-sunflowers, bee-balm or other bee-attractors

Consider a border of perennial flowers around vegetable beds, so that the bed will have something in bloom all season. This will attract predatory insects that will eat common garden pests. Small or composite flowers are generally better than large ornamentals. Coreopsis (a full sun flower with a long bloom season) is great place to start.

Green Triangle has begun the process of a full site implementation with Vel Scott, with a tremendous number of interesting site features in the works.

Come celebrate the birth of this new market and community garden in University Circle!

Refreshments, good times, fun folk, and interesting conversations.

Start Time: 3:00 PM
End Time: 6:00 PM

Join the Naturehood in planting hundreds of natives to create a park and native plant refuge on a former vacant city lot.

9:00 am - everything’s planted.
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