Education & Outreach
Our Events
Roastin' And Compostin'
Do you drink coffee? Don't just throw away your used coffee grounds!
Used coffee grounds are a great natural fertilizer for your flower beds, gardens, and indoor plants (if you already compost you can add it to that too!). Coffee grounds are filled with nutrients essential for your garden, including Nitrogen, Potassium, Phosphorus, and micronutrients. Besides this, it improves drainage, aeration, and water rentention of soil. Finally, coffee grounds can be used to lower the soils natural pH levels and will repel unwanted pests, like slugs and snails.
Thank you to Bean Dash (Grafton, ND) and Bully Brew (Park River, ND) for donating their used coffee grounds to us to promote this idea!
Soil Health Tour
This year we had our annual Soil Health Tour on July 12th, where we toured local fields to highlight conservation practices. Some of the topics that we covered in the field were biotill, strip-till, cover crop and no-till. We saw these practices in a variety of fields in eastern Walsh County, including sugarbeet and corn fields.
We were lucky enough to have incredible speakers, including Naeem Kalwar (Cavalier County Extension), Alex Wittenburg (North Dakota State Agronomist), Dan Vagle (American Crystal Sugar Representative), Brad Brummond, and Joe Winchell (Iowa Soybean Association).
In addition, we had Emilee Lachenmeier from the North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality (NDDEQ) speak to us about our Homme Dam watershed, on the importance of water quality and what they are doing down in Bismarck.
Arbor Walks
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This year we did two Arbor Day celebrations, our "Arbor Walks"!
In Park River we walked the eastern bike path and learned about the tree species lining the path. We also had tables that had activities for when you're done, this included rock-painting, word searches, a door prize, and some fun tree trivia!
In Grafton we met in Leistikow Park to discuss pollinator gardens and trees in the park. Master gardener Heather Szklarski gave us a tour of her pollinator garden and showed us how to create our own gardens. Craig Brumbaugh of North Dakota Forestry was there as well, he talked about trees in the park and gave some fun facts about them!
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