Seedlings and worms

I tried starting broccoli seeds this year - inside and outside in the cold frame. I also planted lettuce and spinach in the cold frame.  The broccoli from inside the house has sprouted although it's pretty leggy.  The one goal I had for today was to replant the broccoli in a bigger pot but alas, I did not get to it.  The plants in the cold frame have also sprouted.  I'm going to try and plant tomatoes, peppers, cukes, squash and flowers in mid-March too.  We'll see how it goes.

My worms have arrived!  I was going on and on about the worms and Sean exclaimed he was going to have to learn as much about worms as I did about professional cycling - and since I think I'm fairly knowledgeable about cycling these days, he has a lot of catching up to do.

A friend at work is a biology professor and in a passing conversation with him, he mentioned he tried vermicomposting and that it didn't work.   I asked him about it and learned he had a Can o Worms system he was willing to give away.  The contraption is now sitting in my basement and the worms came this week. I consulted my book "Worms Eat my Garbage" by Mary Appelhof for how to set up the wormbed.    I shredded some newspapers and moistened them and put the whole mess on the bottom tray of the system.  Then dumped the worms and dirt onto the newspapers.  In an hour, I checked on the worms and they had all moved to inside the paper.  Over the next couple of days I have been putting kitchen waste into the tray above the worms. The idea is the worms will migrate up to the tray above, leaving worm castings below.

Worms!

Cold frame seeds

Broccoli seeds

Compost

You never know when you might run into a blog reader.  Yesterday my son had a soccer game and as I was settling into my chair, a mom I knew came over to chat with me. Her son used to go to school with Brian but has switched schools and his soccer game was in the time slot before Brian's.  Sue reads my blog and was very kind in telling me how much she enjoys it and in her next breath asked me about compost.  So I said I would write a post about the different compost methods.

I use the lazy method which is primarily layer all the stuff, layer some more, turn a little and a year later, take out and spread.

This is my composter (it's called a pyramid composter).  I bought it years ago at Gardener's Supply (my favorite gardening shop).  You lift up the lid and throw your stuff in.  I put in there my kitchen scraps, leaves, torn up junk mail and primarily all the prunings from the yard.  I just throw them in, push them down, throw in more stuff and once the weather gets warmer I poke holes in the pile  Around August, I will empty out the bins and then spread the compost around my plants in the yard.  Pretty easy, not much work.

This is the drum composter that is in my community garden.  The way this type works is you fill it with your stuff and then at some point you stop putting anything in it.  You then spend a couple of weeks turning it and supposedly compost will be made.  The problem is you are still accumulating kitchen scraps while you're waiting for your compost to be made.  I think the optimal method would be to have one of these plus a pyramid composter.  So you can continue to pile your kitchen scraps into the pyramid composter while making your compost in the drum contraption.  We use this in our community garden along with bin composting.

This is the bin system in our community garden.  A group of gardeners collected pallets from the local nursery and then built 6 bins.  The first two you put the raw material (garden detris), then once that breaks down, move to the next two bins and then when it's mostly broken down, move to the last two bins.  By moving everything once in while, it gets turned.  Right now there is quite a bit of compost ready but it needs to be sifted.  A couple of gardeners have sifters so I think the plan is on the garden work day in Nov, it will be done.

Lastly, I've been talking for years about getting a worm composter - something like this

Then I can feed it my kitchen scraps and have worms in my house!  I'm hoping to finally get a system this winter - it's just a matter of figuring out where to put it in my basement.

Worms eat my garbage

I want worms to eat my garbage.  Ok, they already do, out back, in the compost bins.  I want them in the house.  Worms eat my garbage is the title of a book by Mary Appelhof and it details how to set up a worm composting system.  The idea is to build a simple container, line with some sort of bedding, such as newspapers and then start to add kitchen scraps.  I've been talking about setting this up for a couple of years and now is the time to do it.  My friends think it's a crazy idea especially when I start to talk about introducing worms to my work's staff lounge.  What is it about worms (in this case, small red wriggler worms) that make people go "eew"?

A worm bin can be made for pennies, not including the cost of worms, but this system is pretty swank

Worm Chalet

I need an enthusiastic partner to help me with this worm endeavor as my honey, S, thinks I've gone off the deep end.