Winter Update, long Overdue!

Hello my fellow vermicomposters and gardeners! It has been quite a while since I've posted any updates and I sincerely apologize for my absence. Ive been overwhelmed with planning for my twin girls who are due to be born in a few months, as well as a bit ill from this valley fever lung disease, but beyond that, I'm alright and looking forward to spring and more updates!

So lets get to it!

 What you are looking at above is a coffee can that was donated to me for the purpose of holding rabbit manure. Every few days Ill remove the rabbit manure from my rabbit cage and use a putty knife to scrape the manure into this can. Then I place an airtight lid on the can and leave it to mold. Yes that's right, I said mold. You see, this white hairy fungus begins to grow on the manure that is one of the most beneficial molds in soil breakdown.

This mold is known as mycelia or in its vegetative form (white hair like growth) its called mycelium. Over the years in various gardens both indoors and out, Ive seen people freak out over this beneficial mold, but I explain its benefit and soon they hope to get the growth on their top soil, as this particular fungus helps break down decaying matter into food for microorganisms.

This morning I found a banana peel on the table and tossed it into the manure. I carried this can into the worm bathroom, aka, worm room and filled it up with tap water, which is ironic, since the chlorine in the water probably killed a lot of the beneficial goodies living in/on/around the manure. But wetting the manure is a necessary step to ensure any urine in the feces gets diluted so as not to burn the worms.

CAUTION: When using hot manures like horse, steer, cow, etc. make sure to allow these hot manures to sit outside and breakdown for a few months before applying any to your worms. The reason for this is because those hot manures will kill your worms

I havent so much as added anything unique to the worm inn in months. The inn is so heavy, (at least 160lbs) that I fear adding another ten pounds would literally break the pvc frame. I checked on it a month ago and noticed it was in fact, slightly broken. Because I didnt use any glue to hold it together, the tubes had just slipped apart, so i readjusted and then quickly left, as the room is very musty, and with my lung disease, its difficult for me to breathe around these molds nowadays.

I decided to try to get a worm picture and after barely moving the top layer, it was clear that these worms have done VERY well the last few months. There were a lot of baby worms (which is a great sign, it means they've adapted to their environment and are thriving) but Im always happy to see these giant worms that almost look like baby snakes.

 To give a reference to this particular worm's size, I put the handrake thingy in there. See how long he is? He's moving fast!

I also wanted to discuss bugs a little. At first, I tried to freeze all of my vegetables so that they'd break down faster. The more you vermicompost, the more tricks you learn and like most hobbies, comfort breeds laziness. As time went on, I stopped freezing veges and just let them sit out back in a 5 gallon bucket and all our food scraps, dryer lint, cardboard, toilet paper rolls, you name it, if the dogs cant eat it, its added to the bucket so that it can breakdown over time.

This doesnt mean that I wont freeze them in the summer, when flies are prevalent, but in the winter, it's not as big a deal. If you can see the picture above, it is literally covered with thousands of different hopping, jumping and flying bugs that all somehow escaped from the worm inn.

To prevent bugs, I usually just cover the top of the inn with some cardboard or paper, which slows their ability to escape/breed/want to coexist in the environment I created. These fly traps can be had for a dollar at the dollar store and you typically get a few of them in the package. I recommend them, but theyre not appealing to the eye.

 From an above angle, its difficult to tell, but the worm in is about 1/3rd empty. Those worms are really eating away! I tore up some cardboard, paper bags, paper, toilet paper tubes, etc. and just tossed them on top.

 Then I poured the coffee can of manure (or poopachino hehe :) ) onto the top of the torn paper and let it soak in a bit.

Then I tore up some more paper and added some more water to the top of the paper/manure combo to help it soak up some more. The worms wont touch dried manure, so make sure to wet it well.

Just to show you whats going on with the outside bin, I opened it up, tossed some more cardboard in there with some rabbit manure and snapped a few shots from different angles.

As you can see, we've gotten a bit lazy in our tearing things up. Instead, we just toss stuff in there whole, add some water every few days and the mold and moisture breaks it down, albeit slowly, but surely!

The worms are also thriving in the outside bin, with about a good 6-8 inches of vermicompost on the bottom of the bin. We should have a nice vermicompost harvest in the next few months!

Another thing I'd like to point out in the above picture is the weeds Im allowing to accumulate in my yard. See that big one on the left? That's stinging nettle and according to my medicinal herb book, that itchy plant can be used to.......treat itchyness! If any of you are interested in a good herbal medicine book that teaches you how to make medicine out of the weeds in your yard, I highly recommend the "encyclopedia of herbal medicine" by andrew chevallier. Its less than thirty dollars on amazon and.... It may save your life one day!

Stay tuned for more updates and as always, if you need any help, guidance, direction, or if you just have a question or comment, feel free to post and Ill get back to you as soon as I can!

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!