Hand Over the Eggshells Nice and Easy…Building in Progress
As some of you may have read in my previous post Moving Mountains…, I have been thinking of ways to move my building in a greener direction. It was as if the little composting fairy worms were reading my blog! A few days after that post I received the usual NYC recycling update flier…with a new section….home composting…the how-tos and where to get the goods to get started. I also found out that the little patch of grass I had my eye on is completely in the free and clear and not owned by the adjacent first floor tenant. (I still need to get board approval… but I’m optimistic. Just waiting for the phone call. If I stare at the phone long enough I’m sure it will ring.) In addition, I managed to swindle two other families into my gardening adventure. So armed with a potential spot-o-grass, some too kind friends, ohhh and the support of a little city I like to call NYC, I have fine tuned my first plan of attack.
1. Arrange for a demonstration from Compost NYC. Absolutely necessary. For all my blogblabbing…I actually know absolutely nothing about composting. (They will come to your door for 10 or more people.)
2. Create a flier with information about composting benefits & instructions for the building residents.
3. Collect those pesky #5 plastic cups. The large ones would be perfect for personal collection in apartments. The little ones would be good for seedlings. At the end of the season we could mail in to Stonyfield any extras. (Pretty sneaky how I weasled another of my objectives in there without having to present myself as a complete crunchy nut.)
4. Get the garden team together. A meeting would need to take place that would decide what will be grown, who will take which weeding shifts, and, of course,who is in charge of kissing each worm goodnight. We would also need to make a detailed list of needed gardening and composting supplies. I’m pretty sure we could get decent 2nd hand containers from the garden centers on LI or even Freecycle.
I am pretty sure we will get approval to set up the compost and the garden if we plan well. My biggest concern is pest control. Will the plants attract more birds? Will the compost attract rodents? If residents or the building staff are not completely assured that these things will not be an issue than that could be the end of the road for plan #1. (If they say yes to the garden, but no to the compost…we can aways do the in-house worm bin…but that might be a tough sell. We’re a pretty froofy bunch. I am quite certain that some of my cohorts have never actually made direct eye contact with a worm…let alone had them as house guests. Pretty sure I will be doing most of the worm fondling.) Have any of you created urban composts or gardens? What grew/flopped? Were pests a problem? What makes worms happy? Matching sweaters or gangster rap? Ohhhhh….we have a lot to learn.