Tips for Green Living

Green It Yourself (GIY) is a continuing blog series about upcycling everyday things to make the perfect gifts and more. Do you have some Green It Yourself ideas? We want to hear from you!

Looking for another way to get more from your fresh produce? We are going to show you how to grow vegetables from the leftover bits and pieces. Reduce, reuse and recycle and get the most out of your produce. This week we will be re-rooting celery to plant in your garden come spring. This method is extremely simple and does not require much hands-on attention. It is also a great project if you have children in the house.

You will need:

1 bunch of celery

Cutting board

Knife

Wide-mouth glass

Instructions:

• Take a bunch of celery and cut the bottom root off.
• Place the root in a wide-mouth glass; fill about half way up the root with water.
• Place the glass near a window that gets some natural light, new leaves and stalks will begin to sprout out the top of the cut root.
• Once the celery plant is flourishing, plant it in your garden after the last frost. Let's hope that Mother Nature is kind to us this spring.
• Plant the whole thing in the soil. The leaves should be above the soil.
• In several weeks, the celery will look like it did when you originally bought it at the store. Cut off a couple of stalks at a time or pull the whole thing out and use it. Then start the process all over again!

Stay tuned for more GIY projects and re-rooting from kitchen scraps. Make the most of your waste!

Green It Yourself (GIY) is a continuing blog series about upcycling everyday things to make the perfect gifts and more. Do you have some Green It Yourself ideas? We want to hear from you!

Looking for another way to get more from your fresh produce? We are going to show you how to grow vegetables from the leftover bits and pieces. Reduce, reuse and recycle and get the most out of your produce. This week we will be re-rooting a potato to plant in your garden come spring. I was at the Lexington Co-Op and there was a great deal on fingerling potatoes, so naturally I had to have them. I stored them in my cold, dark pantry and forgot about the poor little potatoes. Here you will learn how to bring new life to your potatoes.

You will need:

1 potato (fingerling, russet or sweet potatoes will all work!)
Toothpicks (All I could locate was a chopstick and it is working great so far)
A glass of water

In November of 2012, the Western New York Environmental Alliance (WNYEA) presented its 2013 Action Agenda. The agenda contains 10 planks from 7 of the Alliance’s Working Groups, all dealing with environmental issues impacting the Western New York Region. To learn more about the Action Agenda items of the WNYEA and their progress, get involved in the Alliance through the Working/Process Group Meetings, signing up for a listserv, or visiting the WNYEA section on GrowWNY. Or continue reading to learn about the latest Growing Working Group meeting.

On March 6, 2013 the Growing Working Group held their regularly scheduled meeting. The key focuses of this meeting were:

• The Quarterly meeting that the group is hosting for the WNYEA; this included discussing the event logistics and the presentation flow and topics.
• Reviewing a draft letter from the Growing Group in support of the Food Policy Council for Buffalo and Erie County. The group went through this letter, line by line, to make sure that it expressed all the concerns of the group.

The group discussed how they will use the upcoming WNYEA Quarterly Meeting to educate the rest of the WNYEA about their 2013 Action Agenda item. To get ready for the Quarterly Meeting, the group reviewed a list of questions and confirmed three panelists for a presentation on food policy and food policy councils: