Remove indoor pollution - get a plant!

Houseplants are great natural air fresheners. Many people want to use less chemicals around their home but still want the indoor air to smell fresh. Spray airfresheners can contain naphthalene, formaldehyde, sodium bisulphate, butane, propane, HCFC's to name but a few. Who wants all those chemicals hanging around your indoor air space. Many studies have shown that the air we breath indoors is far more polluted than that outside.

NASA scientists carried out a two year study which showed that the best pollution absorbing device in your home was the simple pot plant! Plants have an amazing ability to remove some toxic chemicals. Here's a list of fairly common pot plants that are great at purifying indoor air:

• Spider plant
• Peace Lily
• Bamboo
• Weeping fig
• Golden pothos
• English Ivy
• Dracaena (red edged, warneck and cornstalk varieties)
• Chinese evergreen

Happy planting!

How to build a worm farm

Worm farms can be used to reduce food waste by feeding the food scraps you would usually throw out to earthworms. Each worm can eat its own weight in food each day, and while this may not sound like much, a few thousand earthworms will be able to handle all the waste food scraps of a family of four. As well as being environmentally friendly, a worm farm is a great project to start with your kids. Tiger worms are best to use. Worm farms are a great choice for composting as they can compost much faster than any other method.
The worm waste can be used in the garden as fertiliser.

Here's how to get started:

• You can buy ready made worm farms at hardware stores or make your own. You can use many things as a container for your worm farm, here is a method using old car tyres. You will need:
  
• Three old tyres
• Corrugated metal a bit larger than the tyres
• SAck or permeable cloth
• Old bin lid that fits neatly over the tyres
• Lots of old newspapers
• Bucket or contain
• What to do:
• Put the corrugated metal is on a slope so any 'worm juice' runs off into the container you put underneath. You can create an artificial slope using old telephone directories or bricks. Cover the metal base with heavy plastic bags or sheeting to prevent it corroding
  
• Scrunch up the newspapers and soak them in water
  
• put one tyre on top of the metal and fill with scrunched up wet paper - put sacking on top of this to form a nest for the worms
• Fill the nest with compost, straw, worms, and manure. (the smell will go away once the farm is up and running)
• cover with a thick layer of wet newspaper
• Put the other two tyres on top and stuff with wet newspaper also.
• add food scraps on top and close the lid
• Make sure your worm farm is kept warm and dry away from the sun. Storing it in a garage is a great place. It needs to be dark for the worms to come up to feed so make sure the top is well covered.
• Food worms like:
• vegetable scraps
• fibre - tissues, teabags, ripped up egg cartons etc
  
• cooked food - dinner time left overs
  
• dust from the vacuum cleaner
  
• sawdust
• cheese
  
• And food they don't like:
  
• citrus fruit
• white bread
• meat
• bones
• onions
• Use the water that drains off as fertiliser for the garden but dilute it with 10 parts water first.
• Feed the worms little and often to keep rotting food smells to a minimum
• Keep the farm moist but not too wet or your worms will drown
• Start your worm farm off gently - with less food and gradually increase what you feed them as their population grows also.

Happy worm farming!!


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