DC Urban Gardeners

Plant Swap Details are Up!

You've heard the rumors and now witness the unveiling of the 1st ever DCUG Plant Swap!

 

What: A Plant Swap - bring and receive free plants to expand your garden

Date: Saturday, May 24

Time: starting at 9am bring your plants for sorting -- swap starts promptly at 10am -- do not be late - if you arrive after 10am, sorry, you will not be able to participate due to the structure of this event  - we will conclude well before 12noon

Place: H Street Farmers Market at H & 8th -- 624 H Street NE near Union Station on Saturdays 9am-12n

Who: anyone on the DCUrbanGardeners list is welcome as are any of your friends, relatives, or neighbors

Bring:

~ a name tag - home made or from work or school -- whatever works -- so that we know your name and we can all connect our emails, names and faces.

~ plants to swap - pot them up NOW -- the longer they can get settled in their pots, the better their chance of success and survival - (no plants to share? see note below)

~ labels - fully label all your swap plants with as much info as you have - optimally that will include: common and scientific name, amount of sun needed, amount of water needed, any other special care notes, and color of the blooms - if not currently in flower

How: be prepared to BRIEFLY introduce yourself and describe your plants (or other items - see note below)

What NOT to bring: common orange daylilies* and other invasive species - use this list (http://www.mdinvasivesp.org/list_terrestrial_plants.html) to screen your plant offerings

 

What if you do not have plants to swap? Come anyway! Bring garden tools, garden books, garden ornaments, etc. to swap or if you have nothing garden-related to share - bring refreshments - cold drinks and yummy snacks will pay your admittance fee :-)

 

*hybrid daylilies are fine and welcome

 

Do not worry if you cannot make this one - we plan to have these each spring and fall (or at least annually) and in a different ward of the city each time - so hope to catch you next time!

 

This event is rain or shine!

The Incredible Women Garden Cyclists

Picture three young women getting on their bicycles and pedaling from the District of Columbia to Montreal and back to visit urban food gardens and other young people caught up in the movement to take back our agriculture.

They call themselves Women's Garden Cycles--Liz Tylander, Kat Schiffler, Lara Sheets--and we are only too lucky that they took a video camera and some sound equipment on their bicycle adventure because they have turned a farming travelogue into an extraordinary film about local food. Last night they drew upwards of 100 like-minded and youthful gardeners to the Letelier Theater in Georgetown for a rousing screening of their bicycle epic, complete with free Maryland beer, peanuts out of Mason jars and hand-crafted pizza.

Having spent several months in a bicycle seat at one point in another lifetime, I was immediately in love with the idea of this incredible adventure. I wanted to go, too. The genius of their idea was to drop in on community gardens and small farm operations along their route to take the pulse of this unfolding revolution in food production, the movement away from toxic industrial agriculture toward an embrace of sustainable, earth-friendly, community-minded farming.

Philadelphia, New Jersey, New York City, Boston, Vermont, Montreal--wherever you look there are people of every hue and ethnic background with their hands in the soil, using every possible means to bring forth a bounty of healthful fruits and vegetables to share with neighbors. There are long rows of broccoli in the country, tomatoes climbing out of plastic buckets in the city. There are tumble-down sheds turned into milking barns and urban rooftops transformed into tangles of squashes and peppers and eggplants.

Bill McKibben, author, teacher and local food advocate, makes a prominent appearance in the film. McKibben notes that certain young people, after spending a small fortune on a college education, are seeking nothing more than a few acres on which to grow vegetables and raise a few goats. Parents may not approve, but this generation is ready to forego the enticements of our consumer culture in order to grasp a transformative moment.

These are the new American farmers, and against their enthusiasm--their eagerness to recapture a sense of self-reliance, stewardship and community-- the old agriculture--with its polluting methods, unhealthy products and de-humanizing corporate culture--truly looks like a sad relic from another time.

Perhaps the best news is that the movement has taken root in the nation's capitol as well. We are seeing more farmers bringing their produce to market. New farmers markets are sprouting all the time. And efforts like the 7th Street Garden--where young, dynamic urban farmers link up with a neighborhood to raise wholesome, chemical-free vegetables--are showing us what is possible, the way forward.

Last night's crowd--full of energy, determination and muscle--looked for all the world like the vanguard of a new era.

On Power Cords and Lawn Mowers

I know. If I want to be really kind to the environment I should be using a manual push mower. But I've never progressed that far in my carbon footprint scheme. I'm still using an electric mower. I consider it vastly gentler on the planet than the two-stroke gasoline monsters that power most mowers and leaf blowers. Shouldn't they just be outlawed? Besides being some of the most polluting machines ever invented, they create such a din we can barely hear the sound of the polar ice caps melting.

I nearly trashed my electric mower recently and for all the wrong reasons. We've had bad luck with electric mowers. Maybe we are too tough on them, although we really don't have much lawn to mow. What I want the mower for mostly is to collect grass clippings for compost. One mower just quit. Another--a Craftsman, I think--overheated and started to melt. Our latest is something we picked up for a bargain price at Costco. It's actually made in Hungary, and when you start it it makes a noise like a giant fan that's winding itself up to blast into outer space.

Towards the end of last season, this mower started acting up, too. It would just stop in the middle of the yard. I'd let it rest awhile, then start it up again. It would run for a few minutes, then stop again. The intervals that it worked got shorter and shorter. I figured it was my bad electric mower karma coming back to haunt me, so I stashed the mower in the garage and started using my electric line trimmer ("weed whacker") to cut the grass.

Mowing with the line trimmer left the yard looking like it had a bad hair day. But we have plans to landscape and eliminate the lawn entirely, so I wasn't about to buy a new mower (although I was looking at the latest battery models--pretty cool). Then the line trimmer started acting up, doing the same thing the mower had been doing. By now I figured they just weren't building electric lawn equipment to last. I ran to the Home Depot to buy a new one, and was soon in for a surprise.

Something told me to test the new machine when I removed it from the box. I plugged it in. No response. I jiggled all the connections on the power cord. Still no response. Suddenly it dawned on me that I'd been misdirecting blame for the problem all along. It wasn't the mower or the trimmer. It was the cord.

Our 100-foot outdoor cord had been stolen. Since then, I'd tied two 50-foot cords together as my main power source to the mower. But one of the cords was heavier than the other. When I removed the lighter cord and tried the mower with the heavy cord, it worked just fine. So did the line trimmer.

My wife thought I was the perfect fool for not testing the cord earlier. I was just happy to have my mower back. The 50-foot cord just barely reaches the farthest corner of our yard, and since we have a corner lot, I must look pretty comical running here and there, plugging the cord into different outlets and out of one window first, then another, then the front door as I mow my way around the house. (It's an old house--there are no electrical outlets outside, but thanks for wondering.)

The lesson: extension cords come in different gauges. On the packaging it should indicate how much amperage your cord is designed to handle. Compare this with the amperage of the machine you are operating. For instance, my electric mower draws 12 amps. The smaller cord I was using was designed for 10. Apparently, I had overheated and damaged the cord. That's why it stopped working with the line trimmer as well. The trimmer draws 7.5 amps.

You may have gathered by now that I am not a lawn person. (You may also be thinking I'm pretty dumb when it comes to electricity.) I have great memories of lazing around our freshly mowed lawn when I was a kid, watching clouds and smelling the good smells of the earth. The grass was warm and buzzing with small insects. But I never caught the perfect lawn bug that seems to afflict so many Americans. I would rather grow vegetables. If, however, you are intent on having a lawn, I certainly hope you follow these earth-friendly steps:

* Ditch the two-stroke, gasoline-powered machines and convert to an electric or manual mower. Some jurisdictions even offer rebates for purchasing electric mowers, and the battery-operated ones look pretty neat. Also, hang up your gas-powered leaf blower and try using a rake and a broom. Old fashioned, I know. But I have a feeling that old fashioned may be coming increasingly back into style.

* Set your mower to cut as high as possible. The green blades conduct photosynthesis, feeding the plant. When you cut the grass short, you stress the plant. Longer grass is healthier, less vulnerable to diseases and more drought tolerant.

* Let the grass clippings fall in place. They will eventually decompose, becoming food for the soil, feeding the lawn.

* Kick the artificial fertilizer and pesticide habit. More fertilizer is used on American lawns than in all of agriculture. Some of those feed mixes are 40 percent nitrogen. It runs off into the watershed and becomes pollution. Fertilizers are killing the Chesapeake Bay and create a huge dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico outside the mouth of the Mississippi River. In addition, artificial fertilizers are made from natural gas, a rapidly depleting resource we need to heat our homes (at least until we convert to solar.)

* Pesticides are toxic to the environment, your pets and your children. There is no need for them. If you have problems with weeds, spread an organic product such as corn gluten before weeds emerge in the spring. Corn gluten creates a film on the soil that prevents weeds from sprouting. You might also learn to love your dandelions a little. Try eating them, or turning them into dandelion wine.

* Feed your lawn with compost. Spread a half-inch layer over the lawn in spring and toss some more grass seeds. Your soil will love it, and it will share its love with your grass. Don't listen to people who say you can't maintain a lawn organically. You can. It may be more expensive. It may require a little more work. But you will feel so much better having a healthy, great looking lawn that isn't working at cross purposes with nature.

* For more information about maintaining lawns organically, check out SafeLawns.org. They've even published a book on the subject. If you're the least bit curious about the dangers of those pesticides and herbicides you've been using, Beyond Pesticides has detailed information on all of it. (Click on "Info Services" in the banner, then click on "Pesticides Gateway.")

* Finally, cut back on watering your lawn. Water is a precious resource. If your lawn is made of cool weather grasses, it is genetically designed to go dormant in the summer heat. You are just fighting nature if you douse it with water and fertilizer to keep it green. Likewise, if you have a hot weather lawn, its natural tendency is to turn brown in the winter. Learn to live with what your lawn is hardwired to do.

Now, back to growing those vegetables...

--Posted by Ed Bruske

Finally, A Place To Sit

The garden at my daughter's charter school here in the District of Columbia is into its third season. A year ago a nearby condominium association donated five of these big, sturdy metal benches. I had the perfect spot for them: surrounding our herb garden, where my gardening partner, Elizabeth, built this brilliant, ceramic-lined pond. I envisioned this as a most excellent way for teachers and students to enjoy the garden, sitting quietly on the benches and soaking in the pleasures of our green urban oasis.

There was just one problem with the benches. The legs--heavy steel tubes--were designed to be sunk into the ground. Well, our ground is asphalt. So the legs needed to be custom-cut to size. One of the teachers, a sculptor, brought his grinding tool and fixed one of the benches. But then he was pulled away to do other things and the benches sat in pieces in a dark stairwell for months.

Well, I finally got tired of waiting. This week I hiked down to the local tool rental shop and got my own grinder. A couple of hours later, the benches were finally in place. The fifth bench found a spot on the playground where teachers can sit while the kids are playing on the monkey bars.

Finally, we have a place to relax and enjoy our garden.

And just in time, too. The chives are blooming. And the perennial pond plants are responding to the change in seasons with new growth.

We have several clematis plants climbing the chain link fence that surrounds our garden. Some of them are quite spectacular.

The happiest plants of all in our garden are the lamb's ears. I'm not sure why, but they go wild. Our soil mix is at least half compost. The must like it. They are so rampant I've had to start thinning them. They would happily take over our containers and crowd out everything else.

The pinks come back right on schedule, even after they've been so rudely moved around during the lamb's ear thinning.

All I can say about these is, they are awfully red and hard to miss.

The roses like their beds of compost as well. We have a profusion of flower buds this year and the blossoms are exquisite.

Gardening can be so worth the effort sometimes.

Spring Cuisine at the Historical Society

Recently D.C. Urban Gardeners received a totally unexpected e-mail. It seems the Historical Society of D.C. was looking for someone to put together a series of practical garden talks. They'd first contacted the U.S. Botanical Gardens and--surprise, surprise--the Botanical Gardens had recommended us.

We were thrilled and flattered. There was just one little bitty problem. The Historical Society wanted the talks to start NOW, as in, How about next month? Our webmaster Susan Harris and I quick put our heads together to create a rough outline for the series. But as far as giving the rapidly approaching first lecture, there was only one thing to do: I volunteered to whip together some kind of Powerpoint show.

I have to admit, I'm a bit of a ham. I like speaking in public. It's fun. Occasionally I give talks about composting. The last time I put on a show in a formal setting was for the Smithsonian Associates, where I performed before a packed house on the subject of "Catering Your Own Dinner Party." (It was a huge success, and I had a blast doing it.)

As to the question of what to talk about at the Historical Society, the basic guideline was that it needed to include something practical, something the audience could take home with them and use. Two things I know something about are growing food and cooking it. So that became the program, a seasonal look at what's growing in an urban kitchen garden one mile from the White House and how to turn it into delicious spring cuisine.

Asparagus, rhubarb, strawberries, lettuces, greens, fava beans, peas--I covered pretty much all the bases, with something about how to plant and grow the crops (think root crowns and lots of organic matter for asparagus), to a little history (did you know the dried root of rhubarb was a highly prized medicinal "purgative" for centuries before people discovered you could make pies out of the stalks?), to actual cooking methods and recipes (getting the fava beans out of their tough casings is definitely worth the effort).

Many of the recipes, I'm not at all ashamed to admit, were lifted from my personal blog, The Slow Cook: asparagus frittata, rhubarb tea cakes, classic strawberry shortcake, salad of spicy greens. I even talked a little about foraging for edible plants such as chickweed, dandelions and ramps with a recipe for the dandelion wine now fermenting in my pantry. (I'm thinking dandelion mimosas for our next Urban Gardeners meeting.)

So when the big day arrived on Saturday, I was psyched. I packed up my laptop and my Powerpoint show and headed off for the Historical Society's incredible digs at the old Carnegie Library building downtown. They have a high-tech auditorium with a huge screen and seats for almost 150. I stood by the front door, soaking in an expansive view south to the newly renovated Portrait Gallery and waiting for the eager hordes to show.

I waited. And waited. Finally, we started the program about 15 minutes later than scheduled. There may have been 10 people in the audience. I felt silly standing at a podium, so I grabbed the mike and basically kicked off my shoes. It was a lovely time, although a bit more intimate than what I'd been expecting.

So it's back to that dratted publicity issue. The Historical Society had placed an ad somewhere in the Washington Post as well as the Washington City Paper, but we need to get more creative with this public relations thing. Susan's talk on sustainable gardening is coming up May 17, so there's no time to lose.

Note: Susan Harris is not only a co-founder of D.C. Urban Gardeners and our webmaster, but famously is one of the co-authors of the Garden Rant blog and writes so many other blogs it's hard to keep track. She blogs about sustainable gardening and maintains a website loaded with information about how to garden naturally and with kindness toward the environment.

If you plan to be anywhere near the District of Columbia on May 17, save the date. Susan's talk promises to be a barn burner. You can reserve a seat at RSVP@historydc.org, or by calling the Historical Society at 202 383-1850.

--Posted by Ed Bruske

Teaching Teachers to Garden

Each year one of the groups I work with, D.C. Schoolyard Greening, holds a two-day workshop aimed at helping more teachers create gardens at their schools. This is the second year that we've held our hands-on session at the Washington Youth Garden in the National Arboretum. In the picture at left, Gilda Allen, of the D.C. Department of the Environment, Watershed Protection Division, leads a session in soil testing and composting.

This year we were lucky to have Judy Tiger, former executive director of Garden Resources of Washington, opening the session with some detailed advice on working with kids outdoors. Taking a group of 20 or more children into the garden is no easy trick. You can't just open the door and turn them loose. Judy has years of experience and lots of good tips for keeping kids focused--or at least not starting a riot.

Rule number one: Never let kids play with the garden hose. (Or maybe just once on a special occasion.) And a suggestion: Don't tell kids they are spreading compost. Tell them they are sprinkling "fairy dust."

Is it just my imagination, or are our teachers getting younger, smarter and more enthusiastic about this school gardening concept? We had about two dozen enroll this year. That's a great turnout, especially considering that in years past, the teachers were paid to be there.

We divided the group in two and they switched between two workshops in the morning--Gilda's on soil and composting and another on seed starting and transplanting. Claire Cambardella of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation brought in a homemade lunch of fresh, local ingredients (and even home-baked rolls). Then we were back in the field for two more workshops, garden maintenance and creating garden lesson plans.

Somehow I got tagged to handle the maintenance end. For an organic gardener that usually means talking about weeds. But I prefer to talk about how modern gardening is turning back the clock, rejecting pesticides and artificial fertilizers and reviving a more intimate relationship with nature and natural rhythms. In our scheme, maintenance is more about building great soil. Still, we give the teachers a very cool Japanese gardening tool that looks like a cross between a chef's knife and a martial arts weapon. It's just the thing for digging out weeds at the roots.

My partner this year in the maintenance division was Marti Goldstone who has spent the last nine years building an incredible garden at the Horace Mann Elementary School in Northwest D.C. Her group started with jack hammers and backhoes, digging up asphalt and concrete to make room for garden beds.

School gardens face special challenges since they're on vacation for much of the prime growing season. Still, Marti and her science teaching partner Louise Hill have managed to keep the garden growing year after after and now have integrated food preparation into the scheme, not an easy trick either when your school has no cooking facilities. But Marti says they may have licked that problem as well--plans for a small kitchen are on the drawing board.


We were experiencing a short heat wave this weekend and that brought all kinds of visitors to the garden. Some are starting their gardening at a very early age. Maybe we are looking at the garden teachers of the future.

--Posted by Ed Bruske

Teaching Teachers to Make Salad

Since building a large container garden at my daughter's charter school two years ago I've been involved in teaching kids how to prepare fresh produce as well as working with an organization that helps other teachers start gardens at their own schools.

School gardens expose children to healthy, locally grown food and can be used to teach all sorts of skills, including science, reading, math and art. But getting school gardens off the ground and maintaining them present a number of challenges. Not least of these is the fact that most schools are on vacation during the summer, the peak growing season in most areas of the country.

That's why I emphasize salad and other greens in the school gardening scheme. Cool weather crops such as leaf lettuce, arugula, mizuna, cress and mache can be planted in March or April and harvested before the school year is over. To those you can add radishes and carrots. The carrots might not be ready till fall. Or, in our case, you can plant carrots in the fall and be harvesting them in spring. Fall is a good time to plant a second round of salad.

Yesterday was our annual teacher workshop with D.C. Schoolyard Greening, the organization I work with. I presided over the salad clinic, where I gave my best pitch for growing salads and also passed along some of the lessons I've learned working with groups of children.

* Avoid taking large groups of children into the garden by yourself. Focus and control become issues when kids are released to the outdoors. I try to have at least one other adult with me, and work with two or three kids at a time planting seeds or harvesting. There need to be specific rules of behavior in the garden.

* Kids love harvesting and preparing vegetables. Planting seeds takes no more than a few minutes. But you can occupy children for hours turning lettuce into salad. They will fight for a chance to wash the lettuce and crank it dry in the salad spinner. I prefer to plant leaf lettuces rather than heading lettuces. Leaf lettuces grow fast, and they produce more leaves when you cut them.

* Teach kids basic kitchen safety. An important lesson is placing a kitchen towel under the cutting board to keep it from moving. An unstable cutting surface leads to injuries.

* Young children in my classes use plastic knives, which are good enough to cut things like carrots and radishes. But vegetables should lie flat for cutting. Chasing a radish around the cutting board is dangerous. Instead, cut it in half lengthwise to create a flat surface. It can then be sliced without moving. I usually slice carrots into sticks before giving them to children to cut into dice.

* Kids love working with simple tools. They will occupy themselves for hours with a vegetable peeler or a box grater. To peel a carrot, I teach them to work on one half of the carrot first, then flip the carrot around to peel the other half. This makes the work go faster and reduces the risk of fingertips getting cut.

* Making vinaigrette is a good way to teach fractions as well as the concept of an emulsion. A classic vinaigrette consists of three parts oil to one part vinegar. Here's a simple recipe for a honey-mustard vinaigrette:

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon honey
generous pinch coarse salt
pinch ground pepper
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

In a bowl, whisk together mustard, honey, salt, pepper and vinegar. Add a drop or two of olive oil and whisk vigorously until the olive oil is completely incorporated. Add remaining olive oil and whisk until vinaigrette is smooth and homogeneous. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed. If it seems too sharp, whisk in more olive oil.

Pass the bowl around so the kids can take turns using the whisk. They will not tire of it. Pretty soon you will have kids loving the salad they made themselves.

--Posted by Ed Bruske

Glover Community Garden in the Post - all season long

Adrian Higgins' article in today's Washington Post brings some really exciting news.  In it he introduces us to the Glover Park Community Garden in N.W. Washington, D.C., and to a few of its gardeners.  And the best part is that Higgins will be checking in with them via video every month throughout the season, so we'll be "Following a Growing Drama, with Many Plots".  The main characters are the wiseguy chairman of the garden, some young but experienced gardeners, and a total newbie.  This is our kind of reality show - and how cool is that?

Higgins and the Post deserve a big rave for this terrific idea.  Watch the first installment.

Posted by Susan Harris

More on D.C. Compost

In fact, there is a municipal compost pile in the District of Columbia. It's about twice the size of the bulk pile at American Plant Food in Bethesda. But never has there been a compost heap more difficult to find or better hidden from public view.

This pile is located behind (on the north side) of the Public Works vehicle lot and trash collection facility at New Jersey Avenue and K Street SE. This is in close proximity to the new baseball park, surrounded by scruffy commercial and utility operations of one kind or another, just off the Southeast-Southwest Expressway, South Capitol Street and the railroad tracks. In stunning contrast, there are also brand new condominium high-rises opening just across the street.

Coming from Northwest D.C., I took the I-395 tunnel under the mall to the expressway going east and exited on 6th Street SE. I turned left when I should have turned right. I think if you turn right on 6th Street and follow it to K, you can make another right and go four blocks to the Public Works lot.

What you will find there is a fantastic assortment of dump trucks, snow plows, street cleaners and salt spreaders, as well as many dozens of private vehicles. There is hardly a human being to be found. The place to enter is off 2nd Street at K. You will be facing two very imposing ramps, one going up and to the left into the trash dumping area (a smoke stack towers overhead), the other going down into a dark and somewhat scary parking area. Take the down ramp, through the garage to the other side of the building.

When you emerge back into the light, you have to make a 180-degree turn to the right, around a line of parked vehicles and back along the north side of the building. You will see piles of sand, shredded wood and compost in the background. The compost is all the way in the rear.

Unfortunately, a front-end loader was blocking the drive into the compost area. I had to take my 1997 Toyota Corolla somewhat "off road" to get back there. But I did find the compost. It's compost alright, although littered with bits of plastic, bottle caps and other trash. The city apparently does not make much effort to screen the compost.

I found the piles after locating two employees who were testing a street washing machine. They invited me to "take all you want," although the city's website says there's a limit of 3 30-pound bags per customer. Does that apply to the mulch and the sand as well? There are no signs posted.

To get home, I followed K Street back to 3rd Street SE, where there's a ramp onto the expressway west-bound.

Compost, shredded wood mulch and sand are located on the north side of the building

There is lots of plastic debris in the compost

But this is genuine compost. Where it comes from and how often it is replenished is still to be learned.

Perfectly usable mulch of shredded wood

Also sand for your gardening needs.

I filled most of a small trash can with compost.0

D.C. Doesn't Compost

If you are one of the many gardeners in the District of Columbia wondering where you can get hold of municipal compost, you needn't wonder any more. It doesn't exist. The District of Columbia does not compost.

You know all the leaves the city picks up in the fall? Well, it seems to depend what year it is where they end up. In the past, they usually went to a landfill. In recent years, the city has been experimenting with compost options, sending some of the leaves to Oak Hill, MD, site of the District's juvenile detention facility. Some of the leaves apparently have recently been going to Pogo Organics outside Olney, MD, but officials were unable to say whether leaves taxpayers are paying to dispose of are turning up in that compost Pogo is selling in the handy 5-gallon buckets at Whole Foods.

In the works we are told is a possible composting enterprise in conjunction with the University of the District of Columbia at a facility in Belltsville, MD. But as of today, you cannot obtain compost from the District.

All this comes via William Howland, the city's Public Works director, who was invited to speak on the subject of recycling last night at a meeting of the Chevy Chase Citizens Association.  Barbara Baldwin, a founding member of D.C. Urban Gardeners, arranges these Chevy Chase garden events. They are always spot on.

According to Howland, all of the District's trash goes to a landfill outside Fredericksberg, VA.  Recycled items, meanwhile, are sent to a processing center in Columbia, MD. Only recently, Howland said, has it become cheaper for the city to dispose of recycled goods than general trash. The city now pays $60 per ton to dispose of trash, compared to $16 a ton for recyclables. Most of the difference, he said, is due to the rising value of aluminum cans.

Yet there doesn't seem to be any urgency on the city's part to start composting. Most jurisdictions are desperate to compost the organic portion of their trash, such as kitchen scraps, because it can constitute up to 30 percent of the waste stream. Some jurisdictions even give away compost bins to encourage citizens to turn their garbage into soil amendment. Howland was unable to say how much of the city's trash consists of compostable organic matter. Nor is there any plan to compost it.

Howland looked genuinely stricken when it was pointed out that you can order compost delivered to your garden in the District from the City of College Park, MD, where they do take composting seriously.

Really, isn't it time the nation's capitol gets with the program?

--Posted by Ed Bruske