dunkin donuts - have some worm tea

On Saturday morning, I rolled out of the quiet house in Old Southeast St. Petersburg with my hosts. We were en route to the Saturday Morning Market [1] where local vendors sell fruit, bread and pastries, coffee, vegetables, arts and crafts and serve a wide variety of food and drink. Oh, yes, there's music, too. All kinds and especially the great drumline from the local middle school.

Just inside the gate we encountered a gentleman who is with Mother's Organics [2] here in Pinellas County, Florida. He was showing an ingenious contraption for making worm tea in your backyard with kitchen waste a few red wigglers and some plastic stackable bins [3]. Everything he had was awesome including a planting sock which they procure from a Grafton, Ohio company [4].

Here are my hosts - Lynda Simmerly, Desmond Clark, Thaddeus Root and the gentleman from Mother's Organics. Guess what. Two of these folks used to live in realNEO!

As we continued to learn from this gentleman, he told us about a worm bin behind a new Dunkin Donuts in St. Petersburg.

Today my host, Thaddeus drove by and photgraphed the worm bin at the donut spot. Pictured above, Thaddeus' friend and coworker, preparator Tom points out the fab worm bin that Dunkin Donuts uses for its paper and coffee grounds.

The bin turns the coffee and paper into worm castings and worm tea which will be incorporated into the compost or humus at Mother's Organics facility. This bin houses 80lbs of hard working red worms.

The worm tea bin is still being tweaked, but our Mother's Organics guide indicated that the solar powered worm tea maker is pateneted, and soon more Dunkin Donuts and other coffee shops might be able to order up a worm tea bin for their donut shops. Cool.

Why oh why, you might wonder, does Dunkin Donuts have this worm tea bin in their surrounds? Well, they are the very first LEED Certified Dunkin Donuts [5] ever! What do they do with that grease? Biofuel [6].

The beach culture is nice, the bay culture is even nicer with balmy breezes blowing through the palms, live oaks and vast swatches of tropical plants. Worm tea, compost tea, good earth, raised beds... even well to do and middle class folks down here in St. Pete have their gardens in gear and they're eating local and exotic. In the yards, you can find oranges, mangos, bananas and prickly pears ...