Earth Day ~ Compost Your Scraps! Workshops
Earth Day is Sunday, April 22nd, but our motto is celebrate Earth Day everyday! At the Rillito Park Farmers Market we’ll be featuring our green thumb vendors for those looking to get their garden growing.
PLUS, we’ll have two FREE Compost Your Scraps! workshops hosted by Linda Leigh of Vermillion Wormery:
- 9am & 10:30am (15 minute workshops)
Compost Your Scraps! Workshop
Composting should be a part of everyone’s daily routine. This show-and-tell presentation will teach you why and how to be a successful composter, indoors, outdoors, and all year long, with the help of red wiggler worms.
- The biology and diversity of worms, their place in the garden soil food web, and how to harness the labors of composting worms to turn your organic garbage into one of the best soil amendments known for your garden and potted plants
- Hands-on demonstration of indoor worm bins, including specific designs and set-up, and a photo display of how to compost your scraps outside using worms.
- What’s on the menu? What, when, and how to feed your worms
- How to harvest and use the worm castings
- Composting worms…in the garden?
- How to mitigate the challenges that our desert climate presents to worms
A variety of active household scale worm bins will be available to poke around in. You can even feed the worms!
ABOUT LINDA LEIGH
From the tundra of Alaska, elegant and spare, to the jungles of Venezuela where life tangles and tumbles over life, Linda Leigh has canvassed the spectrum of earth’s biosphere. 1989 Leigh began pioneering work in materially closed ecosystems as the test subject for the ‘Human in Closed Ecological System’ experiment, living for 21 days in the small, materially closed Biosphere 2 Test Module. Prior to her 2 year Biosphere 2 residency, she directed the design of its terrestrial wilderness ecosystems, coordinating the work of engineers and architects with ecologists and other scientists. She directed the collection and propagation of over 2,000 candidate plant species for the rainforest, savannah, and desert. As a Biospherian, she managed the health, research, and documentation of those ecosystems.
Leigh is a vermicomposter and Master Gardener. Currently living in Oracle, AZ, she works with others towards Zero Organic Waste, raising worms to eat our green ‘waste’ and returning the worm castings as a soil amendment to gardens and farms. Partnering with restaurants, farmers, and neighbors in the Oracle area, she is growing her business, Vermillion Wormery, and helping others develop their own systems for vermicomposting, on all scales. She is currently leading the effort to start the Oracle Community Learning Garden, scheduled to plant its first seed in May 2018.
A trained scientist, Leigh holds a BS in Botany and Field Ecology from The Evergreen State College in Washington State and a PhD in Systems Ecology and Energy Analysis from the University of Florida.