Mama's Worm Composting

Our Beautiful Worm Composting Garden

   

Just wanted to provide a quick update, and possibly the last update, about our lovely worm composting trench garden. I visited the garden a week or two ago and took the pictures above. Notice how HUGE that leaf is in comparison to my foot (it's a mustard leaf). Those mustard plants alone make me feel so warm and fuzzy inside. :-)

Sadly, over the winter break while Saaba was away her kitchen burned down. Seriously. Since my friends who are lending their garden space are renters, this means they'll be moving sooner than later (they're still on holiday). And bye bye worm composting garden. Well, I can say that I had a great experience digging my hands in the dirt (for a change... instead of poop...) and actually growing something instead of killing it! Now I just need another friend in my neighborhood to pilfer land from! 

The worms continue to make their way throughout the garden, though they are also starting to breed right in the trench. I'm happy to say I'll have a lovely harvest of red boys when I dig out the trench in a couple of weeks, and more than enough will be leftover in this garden to continue enriching the soil all around the yard.

Stay tuned for pictures of our final harvest in coming weeks. The cauliflower, artichokes and broccoli will have to wait and be made a housewarming gift to the new tenants when the house is fixed. But I'll show off pics of mustard, kale, lettuces, beets, potatoes, chard, and a bunch of other random vegetables that I can't remember when we cut them all in one fell swoop. 

Good worming!

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My Worm Composting Garden: Weathering the Storm

My family lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, so rain around here tends to be a relatively unusual occurrence. Sure, we get a month or so of drizzle come spring, but “big” storms don’t usually come our way very often, and thunder and lightening is a rarity. Last week one of the many sunamis that have been plaguing the other side of our planet threw a large storm in our direction… right after we planted our worm composting garden.

Now, don’t forget, I usually kill almost everything I plant. All day I was calling Saaba, checking on whether our plants were surviving. Expecting them to be long dead, I was very surprised to find that not only were they surviving the storm, they were thriving! A little thing like this can really show the large disconnect between urban society and mother nature. I was awfully surprised that a little rain hadn’t positively killed everything!

The worms are also doing fine, munching away at the manure and fruit and veggie scraps. I really didn’t put tons of worms in, only a couple of pounds, so they’re quite spread out. Here’s hoping they start making babies soon and fill up our worm composting trench with castings and next spring’s worm stock!

Here’s the picture of the week.

Good worming!

 

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Worm Composting Garden Update

Before

After

I wanted to post an update on our worm composting garden. My good friend Saaba and I are creating a winter (well, coastal California winter) garden this fall with a worm composting trench running through the center of the rows. Our garden will be shaped like an upside-down U with lettuces, broccoli, kale, chard, cauliflower, and some yet-unknown flowers and other veggies. This weekend we got started with the actual digging part and cleared out the larger weeds on the end of the plot and dug the trench. This ground is hard as ROCK, so it will be interesting to see how the worms behave in the soil. We will put the composting worms in the center of the U in the trench that we dug. 

The trench will be filled with a false cardboard bottom (to keep them in place for at least a little while), bedding (paper) and manure. The idea is that the plants will be able to access the castings directly at their roots. It will also be interesting to see the difference in the plants that are planted in the center, closer to the worm composting trench, vs. those planted along the outer edges. Saaba will also be able to easily compost her food waste for as long as this project continues by simply burying it in part of the trench. 

While I was digging in this densely packed soil I also decided to sprinkle some composting worms along the top of the garden to see if they help immediately with aeration of the soil. The drainage is horrible, so the question really is is there anything for the worms to eat that's already directly in the packed soil. If not I suspect they will migrate to other parts of the garden or perhaps find their way to the worm composting trench. 

Here are two images from our first efforts, a before and after. I know it's not that exciting yet, but the second image does show the planted garden (the plants are tiny). We will be adding the composting worms this week, so I will have updates soon! 

Good worming!

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Winter Worm Composting And You

I live in California, so I don't really have to worry about things like freezing weather when it comes to wintertime; in fact here on the coast it's actually colder in the summer than in the winter most times! Winter composting in my household consists of the same steps as summer composting. But I know that coastal California is not where everyone in the world resides, and many of you are in areas that are positively frigid in the colder months of the year. So how are you supposed to process your kitchen compost during those months? If you leave your worms outside in the compost pile, won't they die?

Winter composting can be a challenge, but it is entirely possible. For those of you lucky enough to have a bit of land (or even an x-large patio) you can create a worm compost pile relatively easily that will keep your red wigglers munching and reproducing all winter long. 

My friend, Bentley, over at Red Worm Composting, lives in one of the freezing regions of the world, and he does experiments with outdoor winter composting each year which includes the use of worms. He creates a compost pile surrounded by bales of hay, and then mixes in a lot of manure to keep everything warm. His posts on the subject are fascinating, and I suggest that you read them if you are thinking about doing some winter composting this year. Check it out HERE.

Good worming!

 

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AND THIS URBAN COMPOST TUMBLER

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