Ladybugs to the Rescue in the Little Green Thumbs garden

Indoor gardening has wonderful educational benefits for students. We have fabulous teachers that use the Little Green Thumbs indoor garden to explore topics of nutrition, science, math, language, art and much more. Many teachers experiment with various growing methods and find solutions when challenges come along.

Sometimes a pest becomes an issue in indoor gardens. Eggs of aphids, fungus gnats, thrips or other pesky critters may hitch a ride with equipment, potting mix or houseplants.

At Morinville High School, the urban agriculture class had a hard time with green peach aphids. Here is a note about the learning that happened this last semester, and a photo of the ladybugs that helped to control the pests:

“We learned a lot more about biological pest controls. We had aphid problems and bought parasitic wasps and ladybugs to battle them. It worked really well. We had both insects complete their life cycles in the class and we observed the eggs, larvae etc."

To find out what else the students learn in this class, visit https://youtu.be/DDXQOKt3B8E

Alternative Agriculture Research Survey

Starr Brained, a Fulbright Scholar, is conducting research with the University of Alberta. He is investigating alternative agriculture in Western Canada and the potential role alternative food systems can have in ensuring regional food security. The first step of this research is to identify alternative food systems in the region and gather basic organizational and management data on these sites.

If you own or manage an urban farm, permaculture project, restorative or biodynamic agriculture site, or any related food production project of any scale, please submit a response to the survey linked below. The survey should take about 15 minutes to complete.

http://goo.gl/forms/lhmZsYgjRV

In Defense of Food Documentary Screening

Our community partner's Trinity United Church will be screening In Defence of Food based on the book by Michael Pollan on February 26, 2016 at 8810 Meadowlark Road. 

Doors open at 6:00 pm and the screening starts at 6:30. Free tickets can be found on eventbrite.

In the documentary In Defence of Food, Michael Pollan tackles a question many of us have been asking: What should I eat to be healthy? The answer turns out to be much simpler than he imagined. Today the typical North American diet includes lots of meat, white flour, sugar and vegetable oils. It's cheap, convenient and tasty. But its effects on health are not so tasty, including alarming increases in obesity and type 2 diabetes.The film follows Pollan on a fascinating journey to discover the truth about food and health. His search for answers takes him from the plains of Tanzania, where one of the world’s last remaining tribes of hunter-gatherers still eats the way our ancestors did, to Loma Linda, California, where a group of Seventh-day Adventist vegetarians live longer than almost anyone else on earth, and eventually to Paris, where the French diet, rooted in culture and tradition, proves surprisingly healthy.