Vermicomposting Bucket

Photos of the vermicomposting bucket (made by Wonderful Husband Charles) just didn't do it justice.  In fact, a photo of the inside of the bucket after an application of worm feed (aka "worm salsa") looked downright unappetizing. 

Here's an illustration of the vermicomposting system that we use.  Its parts include:

1. Loose-fitting lid that allows air circulation
2. Opaque, five-gallon bucket
3. Smaller bucket, punched all over with small holes to allow fresh air to reach the soil
4. Metal mesh cylinder running through the center of the soil; empty, to promote aeration
5. Layer of soil to prevent odors from escaping and to provide darkness and moisture for the food layer
6. Layer of "worm salsa," the worm feed that we prepare using vegetable scraps
7. Soil and castings created by our worms, red wigglers and night crawlers

WH Charles created this system using materials we had on hand (well, except for the worms themselves).  You may purchase a vermicomposting system from many sources online.  The "upward migration" style allows you to harvest castings without losing your worms.  We will release our worms when we apply the compost to our garden this spring.

Read the original post on vermicomposting here.

Try, Try Again (The Growing Challenge)

My planting medium is composed of vermiculite, perlite, and peat moss.

Our seeds from Baker Creek arrived in today's mail.  Unfortunately, they were out of bok choy, but I'll try to find those seeds at the local garden center.

The wonderful husband and I started a batch of herb seeds under a fluorescent light a couple of weeks ago.  Sadly, they succumbed to "damping off," which means that a variety of fungi in the planting medium attacked the young stems just below the soil line, and they toppled over.  We had started them early as an experiment, and have more of the same seeds to start again.  This time, I have a plan.

I've done my homework by consulting some of my favorite gardening blogs: Elements in Time, Tiny Farm Blog, and Seeded.  Based on advice gleaned from their posts, comments, and forums, here are some steps that I'll take to ensure seeding success:

1. Sterilize seed trays using Melinda's method: wash with soap and water, rinse in a solution of three parts hydrogen peroxide to one part water, rinse with water, and dry.
2. Plant seeds in a soilless medium composed of equal parts by volume of peat moss, vermiculite, and perlite.  This mixture holds moisture and is light and fluffy, to promote good aeration.  It also creates a sterilized environment for the seeds to germinate.
3. Moisten the medium with cooled, weak chamomile tea to prevent damping off of the seedlings.  Apparently, chamomile discourages the growth of fungi that cause seedlings to fall over.  Mike recommends a solution of one bag of chamomile tea brewed in one quart of boiling water.
4. Keep medium moist by bottom watering: place trays in a tub of water for about 15 minutes to allow medium to rehydrate from the bottom.
5. Place a heating mat under seed trays and hang a fluorescent light several inches above the seed trays.  The light will be kept on at least 12 hours a day after the seeds germinate, and will be raised as the seedlings grow.
6. Turn on an oscillating fan to "breeze" the seedlings for an hour or so every day.  This promotes stout growth of the seedlings, and prepares them for transplanting outdoors.
7. Sow appropriate seeds directly into the garden soil.  Beans, squash, beets, and radishes are among Melinda's suggestions for in situ planting.

I should mention that Wonderful Husband Charles thinks that some of the steps above are "hooey."  Implementation of my plan may involve "His" and "Hers" seed trays.  We'll see who eats the first lima beans and tomatoes.  Ha!

We're in no hurry to start our next batch of seeds.  Since our garden is going to be a hobby, and since we don't expect it to be our principal source of nutrition this year, we're content to wait until a little more snow melts.  When we race to the farmer's market in May, it will be as patrons, not as vendors.

The rare seeds that we ordered didn't have any instructions written on their packets.  I liked the seed planting spreadsheet at You Grow Girl.  I found the most specific information on frost dates here.  

If you ran out of toilet paper rolls to make the seed cups in my previous post, check out the instructions on Seeded for making seed cups out of newspaper.  

Savor Vermiculture (The Growing Challenge)

I'm a planner: I like to have an itinerary when I go on vacation, I can spend hours researching where to go to dinner, and I've been making the rounds on the gardening blogroll for pointers in planning our garden.  Wonderful Husband Charles is bold and likes to experiment: last spring, he started an unconventional container garden, composed of (in order of greatest to least success) small hot peppers, basil, mache, onions, and sweet corn.   I, however, become sheepish after the seed selection process is complete and it's time to mate seed and soil; what if something goes wrong?

I've come to terms with the possibility that the seeds might get started too early or too late; that the garden plot may not be ideally sited for every variety I want to grow; that the critters whose tracks I now see in the snow may ultimately eat more of our salad greens than we will.  But the timing of the planting still feels a little early to me.  Let me tell you instead about something foundational, the preparation of which can never be premature: the soil.

Along with our housemates, we deposit food scraps, eggshells, coffee grounds, and spent tea into a gallon bucket near the sink.  Once full, its contents are conveyed to one of two large, black cylinders in the back yard, usually by WH Charles on one of his infamous, barefoot compost runs.  I wonder if that practice will lose its allure when the snow melts.  

Fortunately, maintenance of our other compost system offers no such opportunity for pneumonia-inducing activities.  The worms are housed warmly in the basement-level mechanical room.  WH Charles made their home by nestling a large, plastic pail in an opaque, five-gallon bucket.  The inner pail is pierced with many quarter-inch drill holes, and has a hollow core of metal mesh to promote air circulation.  WH Charles filled the doughnut-shaped space with alternating, quarter-inch layers of soil and a concoction we refer to as "worm salsa," vegetable scraps blended with water in the food processor.  He feeds our squirmy friends every couple of weeks, sprinkling a layer of soil on top of the food to prevent any odor from escaping.  He also keeps the lid loosely on the outer bucket, as worms prefer dark, moist environs.

Our worm community is composed of earthworms and night crawlers.  We're on the lookout for red wrigglers to add to the population, as well.  WH Charles developed our system after reading a couple of articles on vermicomposting.  If you want dig into the subject, as it were, there are many informative resources online.  I found a good overview on this website.  Happy composting!

Verdant and Victorious

My maternal grandparents grew up in a rural community in northeastern Mississippi.  My grandmother, along with her nine siblings, composed the labor force on their parents' small farm.  As a child, I loved hearing her stories about picking cotton, swimming in the cow pond, and swiping eggs from the henhouse to exchange for a Baby Ruth at the general store (run by her grandfather).  Her after-school snack, she told me many times, was a turnip or onion pulled from the garden on her way in the door.

While my choice of snack was different (butter-and-sugar sandwich, anyone?), the meals I ate at Maw-Maw's house included the foods that she'd prepared her whole life: butter beans, grown on Paw-Paw's farm in Liberty, Mississippi, and canned in their kitchen; boiled red potatoes with white sauce; ripe tomatoes from the garden; turnip greens, which my mom liked to eat with pepper vinegar; and a cast iron skillet of cornbread, which never contained wheat flour or sugar.  Paw-Paw enjoyed leftover cornbread with milk for his breakfast, while I chose Maw-Maw's biscuits with homemade peach and huckleberry preserves.  

A theme of Maw-Maw's stories was growing up poor during the Great Depression.  However, her family's hard work on their farm meant that they never went hungry like so many others did.  Growing food was something that she had always done, and was common in rural communities at that time.  During WWII, the Victory Garden movement expanded small-scale food production to urban areas, as well, in support of the war effort.

If its popularity on the blogsphere is any indication, the Victory Garden concept is experiencing a renaissance.  Its relevance extends beyond our status as a nation at war: we are also a nation facing rising food costs, unease over food security, and backlash against industrial agriculture.  Backyard gardening offers a hobby that helps us feed ourselves.  

As a garden neophyte living in Zone 5, I'm relieved to find a plentiful supply of garden blogs and even support networks online.  I've signed up for the Growing Challenge, organized by Melinda at Elements in Time.  Participants commit to growing one more fruit or vegetable crop than they did last year, and to publishing weekly posts about their gardening activity.  I'm also joining the Victory Garden Drive led by Pattie at Foodshed Planet, whose goal is to inspire two million new organic gardens this year.  Pattie also encourages experienced gardeners to mentor those of us whose thumb color is yet undetermined.  To find a companion gardener, or to "Take Five" new gardeners under your wing, check this post.

In addition to my gardening posts, I'll also provide a blogroll of gardening resources that I come across.  Reader contributions are also welcome, particularly if you garden in Zone 5!

That's Just Not Natural

Handi-Snacks on a Plane

On the six-hour flight to Las Vegas, our Southwest flight attendant made her way up the aisle, distributing mystery snack boxes.  I knew this couldn’t be very promising (seeing as the boxes gave off no scent-- dead giveaway of real food), but I can’t deny a little feeling of anticipation-- maybe there was a granola bar in there.

No.  The box contained a 100-calorie bag of cardboard wafers with “chocolatey” chips, an extruded meat stick, and Handi-Snaks.  That’s right, Handi-Snacks, processed cheese product conveniently packaged with oddly-sweet “breadsticks.”

My initial reaction to this unnatural food was repulsion, but then I realized how hypocritical that was.  Considering that our destination was, despite all appearances, in the middle of the desert, aren’t foods like Handi-Snaks more ecologically sound than the fresh foods that I wanted to eat?  After all, processed foods require no post-production inputs to maintain their (and I use this word generously) edibility.  The greens in the salad I ate that night were grown in on monocultural factory farm, sustained by water that likely didn’t fall from the sky, and refrigerated from the time it was picked until it ended up on my plate in Nevada.

Maybe you don’t want to think about food in such complicated terms.  I don’t blame you, because I certainly don’t want to make the choices to never travel, to give up fresh vegetables in the winter, to never again taste the delicacies of France, Spain, or Italy, not to mention their wines.  But I can’t deny that my food choices are important: at this point, they’re important to the small dairies, egg producers, and cheesemakers in my community, whose products I seek out consistently.  

Small changes, on the large scale of consumer behavior, are already transforming the food economy, from the recovering number of small producers to the success of regional farmers' markets, and the big players are noticing.  I think that our nation's path toward sustainable agriculture will strengthen our economy, our collective health, and our culture.