Broccoli On Steroids! (Random Stuff Series)

Today I noticed something strange as I was checking my gardens. At first glance, I thought my dogs might have knocked over my broccoli plant. Before I blamed the dogs though, I decided to take a closer look. To my surprise, the broccoli had fallen over on it's own (with a little help from the rain that is).

Now I'm more accustomed to seeing broccoli that is about the size you see next to my hand, in the above picture. These are the typical sizes that end up on our dinner plates.

To give you an idea of the size of these plants after adding worm "leacheate," not to be confused by worm tea, which is entirely different and not by accident, like leacheate, I took another picture of a plant that would normally shock me, by its size alone.

My hand is big enough to grip a basketball, to give you a reference. So this is a fairly large specimen you see in the picture above. Normally this would be amazing to me and I would call adding leacheate to this plant a complete success.



To get back to my original point, I came outside this morning to find my plant laying on its side. I placed a basketball next to the plant to show you how well vermicomposting and even the byproducts of waste in the vermicomposting process can be beneficial if handled and treated properly. Keep in mind, I'd never recommend using any type of leacheate in an indoor garden.

This plant is huge!!!

Look at the basketball laying next to it. Imagine being a kid and your mom putting that sucker on your plate!

I took a closeup shot to show you the difference between the other two broccoli tops, using my hand as a reference again. As you can see from both this post, as well as my green bean post, vermicomposting is some magical fertilizer!

Random Stuff Series Part 1

I'm sure you've noticed that while this blog is dedicated primarily to vermicomposting and gardening, periodically I'll post about something completely random, like fixing vacuum cleaners, or how to save money being frugal, stuff like that. I've decided to try to create "sections" or categories so that eventually, if this blog grows into a website, we can organize everything better.

Today's post is about using cardboard in place of soil. I'm not even sure if it's possible to be honest, but because I just discovered a sunflower blooming in the back of my pickup truck, I figured it was worth a post.

Forgive the mountain of trash I have in the back of my truck. The people who owned the property before I did had a nasty habit of burying their trash in the yard. I've been digging it up over the last year and when I'm not around, my kids will toss whatever they find in the back of the truck. Pretty much everybody does the same thing now, so the truck is getting pretty full. I figure when it's full enough Ill just drive over to the dump and push it all out, whatever I can't recycle or vermicompost that is!

 From this angle I wasn't able to determine exactly what the roots were attached to, if anything. I couldn't tell if the roots had penetrated the cardboard, as if it were soil, or if they were merely sitting on top, as they would in a paper towel or napkin when germinating seeds.

 I moved the plastic (a cheap slip n slide for the kiddies) and it was pretty clear then that the roots were sitting on top of the cardboard and not penetrating it. I'm a little disappointed. :(

But not at all disappointed by the roots on this little plant. Cardboard seems like an excellent medium for germination of seeds and would probably hold water much better than a paper towel, napkin, or toilet paper. For those of you wondering why my fingers appear orangish/yellow, that's the valley fever(lung disease) causing lack of blood flow to fingers and toes. :( .......But I'm okay :)

Bottom line, cardboard would work excellent to germinate seeds, but I wouldn't recommend it in place of soil. This plant was promptly transferred to my garden!

Worm Inn (Update 5)

The last time I checked on the worms inside the worm inn they weren't doing all that well. Remember that I split the colony in half and moved one half or more of the population to the outdoor bin. This left the indoor worm inn without the usual amount of workers to eat all the microbes and make some real nice vermicompost.

It seemed like one thing after another went wrong and after a few infestations, which are gradually coming back under control, as well as me disturbing the system too much, adding too much water, too much food without a proper carbon ratio, resulting in an acidic environment where everything except the worms seemed to thrive until my worm population was all but gone completely.....

And then I decided to leave it alone.....after I disturbed it once more that is. So last week I added a bunch of roots from dead plants, some leaves, egg shells, a bunch of cardboard and paper and let the system dry out the last week, because when I was digging around I could only find worms at the very bottom 4 or 5 inches of the worm inn. The other 2 feet or so of trash above them contained nothing but flies, maggots, mites, and every other kinda microscopic recycler one can imagine. I was so sad and disappointed at my failure to create an environment indoors where they were thriving.

So this last week nothing happened. I closed the bathroom window, and put a towel under the door to keep the room where the worm inn is located warm. I checked every few days to see if the contents of the bin were shrinking or if any runoff/leacheate was being collected and heard drips and saw shrinkage but didn't disturb the inn.

 Until today.....

I lifted the piece of cardboard off of the top layer and a few worms were congregated together in some roots from a plant that were tossed in a week ago. They all moved away quickly, except for one who let me snap a photo, before sliding away.

I decided to add some rabbit droppings to the root section, and since I've now adopted a new method of feeding, where I only feed on one side and allow the contents elsewhere to age and decompose, I fed only the front area where the roots were. I prepared the manure by soaking the rabbit droppings in water in the coffee can I keep them in. I usually keep a lid on the can throughout the week to encourage white mold to start the decomposition process before I add the white, furry rabbit droppings to the worm inn, where the microbes and mold will do their job.

Here's a picture I took of how this new feeding will work. I will only add food to the area where the rabbit poo is and let the rest of the surrounding trash break down.

I've started keeping the top layer covered as well. I'm finding that if I leave the top layer open, it seems to encourage flies of all sizes and shapes to breed, which creates larvae that competes directly with the worms for food and could possibly hurt the worms as well. So I'm doing my part to "help nature." :)

more updates to come

Outside Worm Bin (Update 4)

I've been extremely busy the last few weeks with my personal life (wife is pregnant~twins) and I've also been spending a lot of time on my other hobbies that are more winter appropriate, so the worms have taken a backseat lately and it is now time for an update!

I started the day by grabbing a 5 gallon bucket and heading over to the field next door to see what my neighbor might have tossed out "into the wild" lol. I was able to find a lot of oranges, corn on the cobb, lemons, pumpkins and some other blobs of goop that used to be a vegetable at some point before decomposition made them unrecognizable!

I used a shovel to toss all these mold covered, rotting, goopy vegetables into a bucket of decomposing grass clippings I had already added.

The result was a nasty, goopy mess of fermenting goodness that the worms will go crazy over. I poured it into the corner of the bin where all the rabbit urine soaked newspaper has been tossed as a sort of "experiment" to see how it effects the worms and if they'll even move into that side of the bin, due to the high concentrations of salts. I doubted it, until I started to dig a little.

To my utter shock and surprise there was a giant fat worm soaking up that urine soaked newspaper and he seemed to be lively. I picked up a stick to get a closer look.

And he waved!

The best wave a worm can do without arms that is! (or hands XD)

So I decided to check on my other little experiment, you know, the one where I started the worms off in one corner of the bin (the front, upper right), used the left half of it (both corners) for a "hot compost" area (Leaves mixed with grass) as a sort of "natural heater" that keeps the bin warm all winter. The back right corner is where the rabbit urine soaked newspaper is added.

 

 

Then I realized something, I never actually added any grass to the left half, only leaves from the various trees in my yard, so I went and got some and mixed it in.

 

I made sure to mix the leaves in since a lot of them had compacted and started to form an ooze....

Then I mixed it all up more with some cardboard and other stuff that was already in the bin, being careful not to disturb the corner with the worms, which are now moving up, towards the urine soaked newspaper, eating all the pumpkins that are sitting in the middle, rotting and fermenting nicely.

I also pulled some pumpkin seeds out of the rot that were growing into seedlings and transplanted a few into the ground.

I checked to make sure there wasn't any root rot before I placed a small winter row. They'll either grow or they wont, but they have a much better chance at success in soil, rather than trash imo. :)

Until our next up(date) :D! See you in the garden!

Freeze = Outside Worm Bin (Update 3)

The day has finally come......

Most of my gardens are dead and it's thanks to Mr. Freeze!

 

 This bucket is filled nearly to the top with Roma Tomatoes I was hoping to turn into sauce in the next few weeks, but I planted them too late and didn't give them enough attention until too late in the fall and the plants died today, so I picked a bucket of tomatoes!

 There were a few other vegetables I added from the garden as well, as my summer garden is essentially dead and my winter garden will soon thrive in its place. I never picked the peanuts I grew this year either, only a few and they were the same size as store bought, but I probably wont get around to getting them as it was basically an experiment to see if I could do it and with my health an uncertainty, I doubt I'll have enough energy to harvest them like I planned to. Oh well, next year perhaps.....

 I dumped the bucket of veges into a corner of the outside worm bin. I'm hoping that by doing it this way I can prevent the entire bin from becoming too acidic since tomatoes were the primary green these worms have been eating since I received them.

 Here's another shot of the bin. The last thing I did was to add some more paper and cardboard on top of what you see in the picture, to help speed up the process, keep pests out, protect the worms, and help with insulation. I'll keep you all updated!

Worm Inn Update 4

My last post was about cutting my worm inn in half, so that I could add some of the worm population to my outside bin, but also because of fermentation and smells that were getting a bit extreme and making my house smell bad.

So I took a few spatulas and started digging. I removed the top 70% of material and put it into buckets to separate what would stay and what would go outside. I also took this opportunity to find out what the vermicompost looked like, if I had any yet at all. I assumed I would have some castings because it had already been about 5 weeks since the worms were introduced to the inn and I figured a working system would show results by now.

 I wasn't disappointed. The castings were the darkest, nicest looking castings I've ever seen. This is no exaggeration, the castings literally shocked me!

I made sure to dig some out and place it in the bucket to help "jump start" the top layer when I added material back to it.

So I tore up some paper and started adding paper and cardboard and leaves on top of the castings and worms.

 I added some paper bags that we had laying around and tore up some cracker boxes too.

 Then I poured the bucket with the castings and vegetables back on top and mixed it up the best I could.

 I also added some corn meal to the top and was quite generous with it, making sure to get it everywhere, as the worms love this stuff!

 I then added more leaves from outside and mixed them in.

And finally, I covered that layer with more paper and more paper bags that I shredded up and added to the top! I haven't seen many worms around the top layer yet but I figure I will in a week or two, as the paper breaks down and decays and the process continues!

Outside Worm Bin (Update 2)

So after adding food to my indoor worm inn, I started to notice the smell of fermentation and decided I'd better act if I wanted to keep my wife happy! :)

My solution was to cut the worm inn in half essentially and move the top layer, which is where all the newly added decaying food was, to my outdoor worm bin, which has been sitting for weeks, as I tried to add enough material to it in preparation for the worms.

I grabbed two buckets. The gray bucket on the left contains the top layer of newly added greens from my last post. It also contains quite a bit of worms, paper, and basically anything else that was contained in the top 5 inches of my worm inn. Everything in this bucket will be added back into the worm inn later.

The red bucket on the right contains the middle section of my worm inn. This section was primarily paper and was probably the cause for most of the bad smells coming from the inn, as the paper had clumped up together and "soured." I made sure to add a lot of worms to this bucket as well, as these will be the new generation that will be added to the outside bin.

 Thanks to Halloween, plenty of my neighbors had "donated" their pumpkins to my worms. After going through the fun (sarcasm) and tedious process of removing candle wax from rotting pumpkins by hand, I added a few pumpkins to the outside bin.

 Then I went ahead and dumped the red bucket into the right front corner of the outside worm bin. I wanted to leave a lot of it clumped together, as the weather has been cold (mid 30's at night) and I wasn't sure if the worms would survive the cold weather or not.

 I spread some of the decaying material out so that it wasn't clumped in one area, hoping that I didn't spread it too thin.

 Then I covered the decaying material, maggots, bugs, and of course worms with some decaying cardboard to help keep the pile insulated.

And then I added a few buckets of leaves and mixed it up some more with cardboard and paper. I checked on the worms the next day because it essentially froze the night I put the worms outside. To my surprise, the pile was warm the next day when I touched it, even though there was frost on the ground. I moved a few pieces of cardboard and there were a few worms moving around on top, so I breathed a sigh of relief.....for now.

Worm Inn Update 3

It's been a while since I updated my blog, but I just wanted to provide a few updates while I can. The worm inn has been doing great, so all I did in this post was add some more food as you can see from the pictures.

 Before adding newer food to the inn

 You can see that a lot of the waste is finally starting to break down quite well.

 Here's a closeup!

 And another shot showing how everything is breaking down and mixing together well.

I read somewhere that dryer lint can be added to a compost system as well, so I started adding lint to the pile. We have a small trash can in our laundry room that we normally toss our lint into, so I already had quite a bit built up and I just added it to the top.

 I also added bread to the pile. This is the first time I've added bread and wanted to see how the worms reacted to it and if it would break down fast, as I've read it does.

 Thought it was also funny that the bread was so moldy, it started to kind of look like watermelon!

 I added some more rabbit manure and then mixed in more green vegetables.

 And it looked like this when I was I was done, though I probably should add some paper and mix it in to help keep the air flowing!

Until next time!

Benefits of leachate

Since my last post was about the benefits of leachate, I wanted to post another example of how well leachate has worked in my gardens.

These are some green beans that have been growing in our garden over summer. The green bean on the right is the typical size that we usually get by watering and adding fish emulsion fertilizer every few weeks. The green bean on the left is the result of only two feedings of leachate in the last few weeks. The size difference is incredible!

And just to give you an idea of how large this green bean is, I put a bottle of Bulls-Eye barbecue sauce next to it to give a proportional comparison. Leachate really does work wonders!

What I do with leachate

A lot of people are confused about the difference between leachate and worm tea. Worm tea is made from taking worm castings, placing various amounts into a teabag of some sort (usually made with pantyhose) or just by placing the worm castings also known as earthworm castings (ewc) directly into water until dissolved and mixed adequately.

Leachate on the other hand, is what leaches out of the bottom of a worm bin and is often captured in a bucket. It is comprised of many substances, including various bacteria and fungi, as well as worm urine, vegetable juices, and whatever else might have leached out after water was added to the top. It can become anaerobic (stink) and I've even read online that some people have complained of their plants getting diseased after adding this leachate to their gardens. I have not had that problem, in fact, just the opposite. So I decided to show you how to add this magnificent "waste byproduct" to your garden and hopefully, you can achieve the same results that I have.

I begin by carrying the bucket outside to a patio area and filling it up with water. I always feel like I should be using distilled water to keep as many microbes alive, since my tap water contains chlorine and is probably killing many of the beneficial organisms that help break down plant food in the soil.

I fill the bucket completely, and it's usually a lot lighter in color than what you see in the above picture, but I let it sit and ferment for too long this week and the microbes were abundant, as you can see by the foam.

I poured half of this batch onto my neighbors tomatoes because he has been donating a lot of his vegetables to my worms and I wanted to show my gratitude. I only used half because I have a lot of gardens I am also feeding this leachate to and a little bit goes a long ways. In fact, after I added leachate to my neighbors garden, I filled the bucket up with water again.

 After feeding a few plants, I saved some in the bucket to show you what color the leachate usually is after I dilute it. It should be a tea color.

These are Roma Tomatoes that my wife uses to make various tomato sauces for dinner. They might not look that big, but my hands are pretty huge and these tomatoes were only growing to half this size before I started adding leachate. These aren't even the biggest ones either, but were the first I spotted and still shocked me, as this plant hadn't produced any fruit this year until I started adding leachate a few weeks ago. The plants seem to love leachate, but it's important to dilute it first and spread it far and wide in your gardens! :)

And yet another benefit is that it seems to bring dead plants back to life see Zombie Celery.

I also added it to a dying washington navel orange tree that seemed to be a complete loss, with the hopes of bringing it back after the success I had with the donated Celery. A few days ago we noticed that the orange tree seemed to be coming back.

Not only did the root base come alive (below the graft), but it started to grow new shoots. I'm not sure what kind of tree the root base is, but I assume some sort of dwarf citrus.

The thing that got me excited was that I noticed the stem of this upper part, which is definitely a washington navel orange graft and it's alive! Are there Zombie Oranges in my future? I'll keep you updated!