♪♪ What are you growing here, Tom?

Yeah, it's interesting.

So, things like this squash here... ♪♪ ♪♪ Welcome to "Gardening with Steil."

We typically associate sustainable practices with "being green," and nowhere does it make more sense to be sustainable or green than in our green gardens.

When you go green, you are effectively reducing your carbon footprint.

Being more sustainable has many benefits.

Cultivating plants for beauty and food does many of those things, but there are also gardening practices that are not very sustainable.

However, there are many green ideas that we can use to address these unsustainable issues in the garden.

Drought tolerant gardening is one way we can be greener by reducing inputs like water and creating a more resilient and easy to care for landscape.

We got a chance to see an interesting form of drought tolerant gardening at Reiman Gardens in Ames.

Sarah, we're standing in a really unique garden, the Hillside Water-Wise Garden.

Tell me what makes it so special.

It uses a different planting style than most gardens do.

You'll notice the gravel chip that's on top really makes the plants a lot more drought tolerant.

Then, the gravel is about six inches... Oh.

...of this clean quartzite chip.

And, so, what that does is, when we went through planting, the bottoms of the root ball were placed right on the soil.

But then all the gravel goes around the sides of the plant, and it really makes these plants reach really far down and put on really deep roots.

So that way, we're not doing much watering at all.

Underneath there is dark, amended soil.

The gravel that we're using, it doesn't break down.

It's not going to create fines and dust like you can get from limestone.

Why is that such an issue?

So, by having this quartzite layer that doesn't have the dust or even soil mixed in on top, by having that very specific striation, it makes it so the top level is very inhospitable to seed.

So that's another thing that makes it more economical over the long term is you're not spending a lot of time out here weeding.

So what kind of plants are in this garden?

Lots of natives, cultivars of natives, things that are commonly found in the drier climates that really do not tolerate our heavy, wet Iowa soils.

So we can experiment with different, you know, species of Amsonia or different species of Agastache, you know, Coreopsis, things -- even grasses.

Ice plant really that's not considered hardy for Iowa, but because it's the soil that doesn't retain all that wet moisture in the wintertime, Delosperma can live here.

Yeah, that's really fun.

Is this something somebody could do at home?

This is a really big garden.

It is.

So our garden is really large.

Definitely the largest gravel garden in Iowa, one of the larger in the Midwest.

It's about 6,500 square feet of planting.

And we trucked in 150 tons of gravel to do this garden.

It was six semi loads.

It was quite the undertaking, but you can do it on a smaller scale.

The striation of the gravel is really important and the plant selection is, as well.

But once you do it, it really is pretty worry free.

♪♪ I love seeing all the beautiful colors in this garden.

You're doing a great job.

Thank you for showing us around.

While gravel gardens like that one are a relatively new idea, composting has been around for ages.

Compost is decomposed plant material mixed with some soil.

Some gardeners use it as a form of fertilizer, but its most important function is to increase the organic matter content of the garden soil, improving its structure by making it more granular and porous.

Building up organic matter in the soil increases both its water holding capacity and its fertility.

Plants growing in such soil can better withstand drought conditions.

Composting reduces costs, keeps organic matter in place, and makes your garden more resilient and self-sustaining.

Composting is a relatively easy, inexpensive procedure, yielding valuable humus that can be returned to garden soil or used as mulch around landscape plantings.

The best way to dispose of yard and garden waste is by composting, either on a large scale, by municipalities, or by individuals in backyards.

Cindy Haynes got a chance to see one of these large-scale composting operations at Iowa State University's Compost Facility in Ames, and learned more about the process of creating compost.

Haynes: Steve, thanks for letting us come to the ISU Composting Facility.

How long have you been working here?

Jonas: 14 years.

So you've seen a lot of compost?

Yes, I have.

Everything we get is weighed in tons.

So it's roughly 7,000 to 9,000 tons a year of material.

to compost.

Wow, that's a lot.

What's in it?

So in this particular windrow, we have dairy bed pack.

There'll be some poultry manure, probably some horse manure.

And then, greenhouse waste from campus.

You know, all their plant refuse and stuff.

Right, right, right.

I see a lot of straw at the moment.

Thankfully, you didn't give me any manure in this particular one.

How old is this?

This windrow here is a week old and probably 200 tons.

Wow.

How long is this process?

Typically, it takes about four months, start to finish, on average.

That's pretty quick for this much material.

Wow.

This is a big pile.

This is all fresh material that's been brought in.

I use this area to stockpile.

So this is ground zero.

Yep.

So the material stays in here until I have a building opened up.

And then I make windrows with those, and then the process starts all over again.

I like it.

So you combine all this stuff together, and then how do you manage it?

I'll add water with my turner as I'm mixing these piles.

That helps the microbes, because they want to have like a carbon/nitrogen ratio of like 25 to 1, 30 to 1 is optimal, and then about 50% moisture, and then about 50% porosity, which is air spaces.

I don't add anything to the piles.

The microbes all exist naturally.

You just have to give them the right environment, and then they just take off and do their thing.

And then, if we were to do this at kind of the homeowner perspective.

For homeowners, mostly probably sticking with fruits and vegetable-type stuff, using your leaves, like in the fall from trees, or, you know, grass clippings and stuff for your carbon source, you can do that.

If you turned it twice a week or something like that.

You just don't want it to be too wet.

And it can't be too dry.

And it can't be too dry, then it doesn't work.

So how old is this windrow?

This windrow is about 12 weeks old, so it's not quite finished yet, but it's getting close.

You can see that the compost is breaking down.

It's a lot finer.

You can't see the straw and stuff like you had in the other pile.

It feels warm, too, which is sort of interesting.

It is.

Usually the windrows are around 140 to 160 degrees, and they'll stay there for about two months to three months, and then they start tailing off as the microbes are doing their job.

So this is the finished product?

Yes.

This is what it looks like after about 16 weeks or so.

Okay.

It looks beautiful.

It's cool.

It's not as warm as the other one.

I can't identify anything in it.

And there's no smell.

It's just -- It's wonderful stuff.

And then, what do you do with it?

So, when the windrows are finished, then I'll haul them outside and I stockpile them until the fall, typically.

And then, the compost when it's screened, then I'll typically mix it with topsoil and send it back to campus as amended soil.

Nice.

And then, they use that in landscaping, new construction, that kind of stuff, so...

Right.

So the homeowner could do the same thing?

Right.

They can use it in their landscaping, their garden, if they have it, whatever, yes.

Yep.

Vegetable garden.

It's like a great soil amendment.

It's kind of a fertilizer, as well.

Correct.

So you're sitting on a lot of valuable stuff.

Yeah.

So you are truly the king of the mountain.

Yeah.

The composting mountain.

Compost.

[ Both chuckling ] While I'll never have enough yard waste to create a compost pile that big, creating one at home is a great option.

Start by simply piling organic matter and making sure the pile has adequate amounts of green plant materials, brown plant materials, water, and air.

The better I manage the mix of those four things, the faster I get compost.

Not all of us have a yard space or even lots of organic matter needed to create a home compost pile.

But we can still compost kitchen scraps and other organic materials using worm composting or vermicomposting.

Cindy Haynes joins me to share how to set up a vermicomposting system for your indoor space.

Thanks for being here.

What is vermicomposting?

Vermicomposting is composting with worms, so you make worms do all the work.

And you can do it indoors so it doesn't have to be outside either.

It's a great way to kind of compost those kitchen scraps during the winter when you can't take them outside.

It's also relatively smell free.

It's quick, it's easy.

It's faster than composting outside.

So you get this great product even faster.

What do I need to get started?

So you need to accumulate a few materials first.

Obviously, you need some sort of container.

And I've done this in a couple of different ways before.

I've started really small and recycled with a container like this.

I also have a Rubbermaid container, kind of a bigger bin system with holes in the top of the lid.

And now I'm moving to this kind of multi-layer bin system so I can move the worms kind of up and down.

And that's made specifically for vermicomposting.

And it is made specifically for vermicomposting.

It makes it easier to kind of harvest the castings from the worms, as well.

Okay, okay.

So when you get serious, you get there, but you can recycle to get started.

Right.

So start here to see if you're going to be a good worm parent.

And then you can kind of move to here later on.

So, with this, it's just a plastic container that I can punch a few holes in it.

You're not going to put any kind of drainage holes in the bottom.

And then, you're going to layer some of these other materials.

You're going to put kind of gravel, pea gravel in the bottom to collect any excess moisture.

And then, you're going to layer some sort of soil coir, potting soil, whatever.

And then some shredded paper, another layer of soil.

And then, I'll put another layer of paper on top.

And then, you're going to kind of water it all in.

Your worms are going to kind of live in the kind of soil layer, and they're going to kind of bed in the shredded paper layer.

And they'll eat some of that shredded paper, too.

That's kind of part of what they'll do.

Where do I get the worms?

What kind of worms are they?

So the worms you can pick up at a bait shop.

That's a great way to start.

You want to use red wigglers.

Red wigglers are better composters.

They're more efficient than nightcrawlers.

So save the nightcrawlers for fishing, red wigglers for composting.

You can also order them online and get them in the mail.

So I get a bag of 2,000 worms in the mail, and then I just dump them into my bin.

How do we keep the worms happy so they make us compost?

Right.

So we've got to keep them fed and watered.

They do the mixing.

So your outdoor compost pile, you need to mix to kind of keep it going.

The worms do most of the mixing.

So what you just do is you just put your kitchen scraps in your container, usually once or twice a week, depending on the size of your container.

So this one, I would say a handful of kitchen scraps once or twice a week.

Chop it up as small as you can, because then they will kind of eat it and poop it out a little faster.

And you'll have kind of the castings even quicker.

Is it possible to put too much in?

It is.

And, so, if you put too much or things that are too large, then it starts to compost before the worms can actually eat it.

And then sometimes that's when you'll get the smells.

So a whole potato in there is going to rot before the worms can actually eat it all.

But potato peels.

Potato peels are fantastic.

Carrot peelings are fantastic.

Apple peelings.

Even some kind of leaves that you have around you can add in.

So anything organic.

I tell my students these worms are vegan, so it's just plant products.

So fruits and vegetable scraps.

Is there anything you can't feed them?

Like, any plants that they don't love?

There are certain plants like orange or lemons or lime.

The rind on those -- Watermelon rinds, the same way.

Anything kind of tough I would chop up even smaller.

Once they kind of utilize all this composting material, they create, castings, right?

It's something called castings.

It's their manure.

Mm-hmm.

So how do we harvest that to use?

So, in a bin like this, or in a bigger bin, what I typically do is open the bin and put a light on top so the worms will kind of filter all the way down to the bottom so I can harvest whatever's on top.

How do you know it's ready?

It doesn't look like anything.

It looks like soil.

Okay.

Okay?

So... And it doesn't look like whatever you put into it.

In this system, this bin system, I can move the worms from one layer to the next.

So they can be in this layer.

I can add all the kitchen scraps and then move them to the layer below by adding the food to the next layer.

Oh, and then they just move down?

And they just move down because, if you can see this, there are holes in each of these layers.

Okay.

so they can move from one layer to the next once it's full.

And then, I can harvest the castings from this layer while they're in the next one.

So you can add this to potting soils for houseplants.

I usually add it in the fall to my raised beds, my vegetable garden.

So it becomes that fall fertilizer, that manure that you might put on, and then it will continue to compost before I plant my tomatoes and peppers next year.

That's really cool.

I love that we can do this all winter.

I love that it uses our kitchen scraps.

Thank you for showing me more about this.

I'm looking forward to setting one of these up at home.

I'm going to send one home with you.

Perfect.

♪♪ Composting is just one example of a green practice we can do in our gardens, and it has been a popular topic over the last several years.

Another popular green topic is gardening for pollinators.

Promoting native insects by designing gardens that include things like food sources, host plants, and protection for overwintering has been top of mind for many gardeners for many years.

We learned about a successful pollinator-friendly program that encourages the planting of both native pocket gardens as small as 100 square feet to prairie meadows as large as two acres in Dubuque County.

I got a chance to talk with volunteers and organizers about the Mowing to Monarchs program on neighborhoods across the city and county.

This is a beautiful little -- Haugen: Pocket prairie.

Yes, it's part of mowing to monarch efforts to restore little pieces of prairie through properties in Iowa.

So how many years has this one been here?

This one is a three-year old garden.

It's such a cool program.

How does this program work?

It's a grant-funded program funded through the county.

Landowners can apply to participate.

And then you receive all of these plants, even more than are pictured here.

The program provides a coach for each participant that will create a unique plan with you and provide you help and answer questions along the way.

There's a lot of fun plants in here.

How did these get selected?

They worked with prairie experts throughout the region to identify plants that they thought would do really well in an urban environment.

Part of what I really wanted to do was to bring this into my front yard so other people could see native prairie in a little bit more structured way that still looks really good.

We were hoping that this program would be contagious, and it is, because our neighbor applied for the program, and he said, "Let's do the whole front yard."

Let's go take a look.

All right.

♪♪ All this looks so nice.

Yeah.

And this is less than a year old, right?

We spent last fall actually brainstorming and deciding, you know, what we wanted it to look like.

Prepared the site, and it looks great.

Yeah.

Some really neat plants here.

You can see really well the anise hyssop over here.

And the goldenrod looks so nice.

The goldenrod is a favorite.

The butterfly milkweed is a favorite for the butterflies and a lot of our native bees.

We tend to get a lot, and it's great because they have pockets now.

They can go from my yard to this yard.

We have several more of these gardens down the street.

If people want to participate in the program, but they are not able to get the grant, we actually have a buy-in program.

It's not a huge amount of money, you can buy in.

It's a three-year commitment if you want to be in with us.

And, so, your coach is going to work with you through that three years.

And this is the backyard.

Dubuque does allow backyard chickens.

And, so, I have some chickens that keep us entertained.

Probably watching the native bees find these spaces has been one of my favorite parts.

You can see that the anise hyssop and brown-eyed Susans have just really taken off here.

Yeah.

You clearly have a passion for this.

What really drew you to want to do these pocket prairies, work with the Mowing to Monarchs program?

I think, for me, the idea of living in Iowa, where we have one of the most endangered ecosystems that is not talked about, right, and that's the prairie.

And, so, being able to bring a little bit of the prairie back, a little bit of the habitat back, as we started to do it, and I saw the changes in my yard, the changes in my family, and the changes in my neighbors and how quickly it spread through our community, how passionate people were, that's what's kept me with it.

Well, it's wonderful.

And I think the chickens agree.

The chickens love it.

[ Laughs ] We've had a chance to see great examples of greener gardening practices, including drought tolerant gardening, composting, and pollinator friendly gardening.

In addition to these ideas, another option to be a bit greener is to transition to electric-powered mowers and other power equipment.

The small gas engines that run our lawn mowers, weed trimmers, and leaf blowers are some of the most inefficient engines out there.

By switching to electric, you can ditch filling up on gas, oil changes, and struggling to pull start your mower.

Clayton: Just push in and dial it down.

And then, again, taking it back up.

Steil: And if you're going to go electric, why not make it high tech, too?

Clayton: This is an autonomous mower.

It's going to allow you to have your yard mowed without you actually being out there to mow it.

Steil: We got a chance to learn more about robotic electric lawn mowers and how they are positioned to change the way that we maintain our home lawns.

I am really excited to learn more about this mower.

Tell me, what do we have to do to get set up?

The first and most important thing is going to be a boundary wire that's going to go around the perimeter of the property.

That's going to tell the mower where it can and can't go.

Next is we're going to need a power supply to the dock and a relatively flat area for the dock for it to park to recharge.

It definitely operates a little bit differently than the typical mind-set that people have for a mower.

It's going to be random, so it's going to go off one direction, hit an obstacle or a boundary, and then it's going to go off in another direction in hopes that it's going to cover everything in a relatively short amount of time.

Yeah, and it works all the time, right?

Yeah.

It's -- It's definitely not a once-a-week-type situation.

It's going to be constantly going out and mowing, but it's going to do a great job and your yard is going to look finely manicured.

That first week, it might look like a bad haircut.

It got a few spots here, a few spots there, but it should be a constant height after that point.

This is extremely easy.

Make sure you have a good sharp blade and that the battery is charged, and occasionally check for a software update through your dealership.

It's electric, so there's no gas engine.

A lot of people prefer that for a lot of reasons, but the biggest ones are reduced maintenance and no emission.

What is the price difference in this compared to a regular mower?

This unit here will do up to one and a quarter acres, so an equivalent mower would be a little bit more expensive with a gas engine.

Then you also have your cost of maintenance, your cost of upkeep, and everything like that.

What happens when it runs into obstructions like a playground set or even something smaller, like acorns or like a walnut or something like that?

So, larger items like the playground or developed trees, it will just gently bump into and change its course of mowing.

Smaller items, most of that it should be able to drive right over and not cause any issues to the machine.

[ Dog barking ] What about people or pets?

There's no safety concerns.

It's going to stop that blade, and then it's going to have a little audible alarm.

[ Alarm blares ] The biggest benefit that people are going to notice is that they get more time on their weekends.

They don't have to get up.

They don't have to mow before it gets hot out.

That means more time with the family.

Right, right.

So it kind of like what my Roomba vacuum does, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Some people jokingly refer to it as, you know, the Roomba for your yard.

So when this is done, where does it go?

It will actually follow the perimeter wire back to the dock.

And as it pulls into the dock, it kind of does this cool little, we call it the wave.

So it wiggles back and forth a few times to make sure it's exactly lined up and pulls right in to to recharge for the next mowing.

Steil: I hope you'll go out and try some of these ideas and even find a few new ways to create a greener garden and planet.

Thank you for joining me on "Gardening with Steil."

♪♪