 Hi, during these trying times of the pandemic, the City of Columbia Parks and Recreation Department realizes that choices can be limited in enhancing one's physical, social, and mental well-being. The Parks and Recreation staff have been involved in developing a number of videos in which citizens can participate in and enjoy in the privacy of their own home. These videos consist of arts and crafts, gardening, physical activity, and sports instruction, with many more to come as we work through this pandemic. The videos will be available to you on a number of our social media outlets. We hope you enjoy and thank you very much. Hello, my name is Jacqueline Williams. I work for Parks and Recreation, and I am the overseer of all of the community gardens. And today we will be talking about composting at home, we will be talking about container gardening, and regrowing some vegetables from kitchen scraps that you already have at home. So today let's start with composting, which is one of my favorite things to do. I consider myself a compulsive composter, actually. So compost is basically food for your plant, and so there are a lot of benefits to composting. It helps your soil retain water. It also saves you money, because you do not have to go to the store and buy compost. You can make it right at home, it's very easy. It helps the environment. All these things that we're putting in our composter could be going to the landfill, but because we compost, you know, that's good for the environment. So there are several reasons to compost. So there are four main ingredients for composting, and that would be your greens, your browns, you have air, and you have water. So let's talk about the greens that you were put in. Just because it says it's a green, that doesn't necessarily mean the color of what you're putting in here, because grass clippings, you can see that. Grass clippings are considered a green, but they often turn brown, but it's still considered a green because the only thing that is lost is the water when you put it in. So for your greens, you want to do about half and half. Half greens, half carbons. The greens are easier to collect. So in your compost bin or in your container, your trash can, I'm just going to use this, you put in your greens, that's grass clippings. This is a spent flower that I'm going to put in here. Of course you would take it out of the bag. So just for sake of time, I won't take them out, but of course remember, take them out of the bag. I'm going to put in a banana peel, my coffee grounds, tomatoes, any type of vegetables that you, when you're cooking and you have a little piece left over or it's spoiled in the refrigerator before you had a time, a chance to use it, put that in your compost bin, bread, tea bags, I have some more vegetables in here, I have some cucumbers and celery. I have a lemon and an orange peel. So again, these are the greens that you will put in. The greens give your garden the nitrogen that it needs, but you also need some carbons and that's actually more important than your greens and it's more challenging to collect. So we have straw, pine cones, dead leaves, and again, take these out of the bag before you put them in your compost bin, corks, because what is a cork made out of? It's made out of a tree. So my rule of thumb when I compost is anything that comes from the ground, you put it back in the ground. So if it didn't grow, then you're not going to put it in there. So a cork comes from a tree, pencil shavings, paper. You want to stay away from shiny paper with ink, but in all of the other papers, find paper bags. We all have this toilet paper rolls and we have a bag. Now I'll tell you, your compost will decompose quicker if it's in small pieces. So for a bag, cardboard, I rip it into small pieces. If it is, just rip it up small. And what this is, this is food for all of those organisms in your soil. It speeds them. So some of the things that you will not put in there, you will not put plastic in there. Stay away from oil, stay away from fats, stay away from meats. Meats will decompose, but you want to make sure that you're not attracting animals to your compost. So stay away from those things. It is amazing to me, over about five weeks, a span of five weeks, all of these things in this bag will break down and turn into what I call black gold. And this right here is what you get at the end, and it's plant food. So if you do this, you won't have to buy all of those expensive fertilizers. It's all natural from things that you have in the kitchen. So happy composting. We are going to be talking about container gardening. So I always encourage everyone to garden, and a lot of times you may not have the space to garden. You may have a living in an apartment, or you may have a lot of trees, and so you need to grow some plants in containers. So first you would need to decide what type of plants you want to grow, whether they're going to be flowers or vegetables, and then you pick your container out. And as you see, I have a wide variety of containers that you can use. You do not have to just use your typical container, and let's see. So the rule for containers, as long as it drains, you see these holes? As long as it drains, you can use it to plant something in, a flower. So if you look at this basket, I have planted in this basket. I have planted in this crate. I just lay newspaper at the bottom to keep the dirt inside, and I plant right in the crate. Let me show you some other creative containers to use. Here's another basket. I have a lot of baskets in, sometimes instead of throwing them out, I just plant right in here. It's biodegradable, so this is a good thing. A shower caddy. You see those holes at the bottom? As long as it drains, you can plant it in this. Hey, that's something you could plant in herb garden right in here and carry it around, carry it into the kitchen and carry it from the porch, so it's portable. This looks like a soda can. I didn't make this one, but you can do that. A sifter. Why can I use a sifter? It drains. It has holes in the bottom. This is another little container that I had. You can put, just put some dirt in. You have the holes here, so this works. Be creative as you would like. I took a picture frame and put some air flowers, plants in here. Just set them down in here. This is really, this is a, this is a globe. This was a lamp, a globe for a lamp. It has a hole in here. It's very pretty, so you can put some soil right in here. You can tie a string and hang it up and it will drain perfectly. This is a perfect container to plant in. Choose this truck here, a saucer. Now you would not, this does not have holes in the bottom, so you would probably put a succulent plant in here, so just remember, because succulents don't need a lot of water. You can even use a cup, so there's no reason not to plant and there are no holes in here, so you just take something and put a hole in the bottom and it will drain and you can use this. Now the difference with when you plant in a container and when you plant outside in the garden, the soil is going to be different. You're going to need potting soil. Do not use garden soil when you plant in a pot. So when you go to the store and look for potting soil and it's lighter, see that it's not really hard like that soil that's outside in the yard, so look for potting soil. You can even just plant in a regular plant here. So there are a lot of places to get inexpensive pots and one place that I get pots and they're really inexpensive, Dollar Tree, because how much are they? That's right, a dollar. And Dollar General, and lots of times they will not have holes in the bottom, so I take my little drill, I turn the pot upside down and I take this drill, drill a couple of holes in the bottom and it becomes a pot, a container that drains and then you can use that. So again, please, I encourage you to try to garden, try some container gardening and be creative as possible. Lastly, we will be talking about how to regrow vegetables from your kitchen scraps. So this is one of my favorite things to do. All right, so I always say, why are we going to the grocery store when you can grow your vegetables from your vegetables that you have at home? One of the things that I especially like to do, this is a green onion that you buy from the store. We use them a lot. So what I do is, see those roots, I put this in the window in some water and I wait for the roots to get about one inch long and after that and they just grow and you can plant it. But meanwhile, and it's a little sad right here, need some water, but meanwhile, what I do is with this, we cut them, I don't have my scissors, you keep cutting them, the more you cut these green onions, the more they will come back. So you don't need to buy green onions anymore, buy one and that's it, because you just keep cutting it, keep coming back. Some other tricks that you can do, I tell you I love this, see these cucumbers? This actually works. These cucumbers, if you look there are seeds, put them in a pot, I need to move the pot over here, should I do that? Let me move this pot over here so you can see this. You put them in the pot, you cover it with a little soil and this is a pot, so use potting soil and guess what, you will have cucumbers. You can also take your okra, when the seeds dry out, you can grow okra. This one I did try to, this is fascinating to me, the tomato, you see those seeds? So how many times have you bought a tomato, it rots before you can eat it? This is what I do, you can stick the whole tomato down here, but if you want to do, have a couple of plants, you slice it, you see all those seeds? All you do, you get some soil in a pot, put it down in there, cover it a little bit with some soil and you will have tomato plants. So you can do that with most anything, I have a cherry seed that I eat the cherry from, put it in there, make sure you keep it watered and you will have a cherry. Some other things that you can do that are fun to do, this onion, it does it itself in your pantry, do you see how the plant is already growing? But if it's not, you just put it in a bowl of water, you see the little bit of water at the bottom, just so the roots are touching the water, with some toothpicks so it's not drowning in the water and in no time, a couple of weeks you will have some plant, the plant will grow at the top and then you will plant this with the root, you will set it right down in your soil, so I'll move this, you do that very same thing with, you can do that with a potato, I'm sure you've looked in the pantry and you've seen the eye of the potato, it's growing right in your pantry, so it's very easy as you know, so once it gets the eye and it starts growing, you can put it right in your soil, same as with the onion, garlic, I root this, it's not quite finished, I want those roots to get about an inch long, so I will keep this in a little bit of water and then you just set it right on top of your soil and cover it up and you will have garlic down here, these are fun as well, celery, cut the bottom off the celery, I use the same pot for all of these, lettuce, the roots will come from the bottom, carrots, now carrots are a little different, the root is the actual vegetable, so if you put the root down, you can see, I'm not sure if you can see that, you'll see the leaves are growing from the top, so you cut them off, you put them in a little bit of water, I'll have any water here, I'll use this, just a little bit of water and in no time, you actually have celery sprouting up from this piece of celery, you don't have to buy celery, you will have lettuce growing up from the lettuce, now the carrot is a little different, it will never grow that root again, but it will grow greens and carrot greens are edible, so I actually put some in my lasagna last week, it was a mistake, but it was really good, my husband thought it was a parsley, but it worked, it was good and another tip, make sure when you plant these items, make sure that you label them so that you know what they are and that goes for the containers too, I have ginger, which I love, if you see some shoots on here, on the ginger, put it in your soil, keep it moist, keep all of these things moist, not over watering, but moist, make sure you have good drainage in your pot and you can also, you will be growing garlic and I want to show you just one more thing here, I have a little section of this pot here, I'm going to go back to where we were composting, I do my compost, I do something different, you can compost right in a container, I do something called trench composting, so remember when I told you to put your greens and such in your composter, I don't have, I don't use a composter, I put these items right in my container and that's also going to help these plants in here to grow, so I just dig a little hole, I have raised beds at home, so I dig a hole, I put them in, you see that, I put my tomato in, let me put some cucumber in there, and then remember I told you, you put your browns and these are all greens and you chop it up, and remember I told you when you chop it up small, it will break up faster, okay, then you just cover it up, you just cover it up and forget it, in about five weeks those things will not be, those vegetables will be your black gold, so one other container that I use, a lemon, put some holes in the lemon, I fill it with dirt, put my seeds, these are lettuce seeds, they're very small and I'm just going to sprinkle these lettuce seeds over the lemon and this is biodegradable, so it's going to feed these seeds, keep it moist and once it starts growing you can plant this entire thing right in the entire lemon in your garden and it's going to grow, so one last thing about the seeds, sometimes it's difficult to see those seeds, so this is what I do, I take a piece of toilet paper here, I'll put it up here so you can see, I get my spray bottle, of course you wouldn't do it on your tablecloth, I spray it, just so it's moist, then I take my seeds and I take some little tweezers here, you can do this in your garden bed and in your garden, and this way you are, you're controlling how it grows, sometimes people will just throw them all out, but if you're like me and you want a neat row, you just put all your seeds right here, I should have picked a seed that you can see, you can't really see these, but I have a row of seeds here, then I'm going to take another piece of tissue, cover it up, I'm going to spray it again so it's moist, and then you can pick this whole thing up and of course the tissue is biodegradable, you put it in your garden, of course I would have a bigger container, you cover it up, in a couple of weeks keep it moist, you will have lettuce, so I hope I have encouraged you and helped you to use what you have at home, your kitchen scraps to continue growing vegetables at home.