Patrick’s Rants

I have tomatoes growing in the window sill. These silly things don’t know it’s winter still. They started on their own and I transplanted them out the pot they “volunteered” in. Now I have six plants ranging from the experimentally rooted “sucker” at about 5″ tall to 36″. And there are 15 – 18 tomato fruits right now. In February. On the window sill. This is almost more and better than we had all last summer in the garden.

If you are easily grossed out – take a day off from reading my blog. Today is gross picture day. I don’t usually post photos, but I was asked for pictures of my worm bucket system by a co-worker so I took a few. These buckets started out life as pickle containers.

This first photo shows just a few of my buckets lined up.

Worm aging buckets: One solid bucket, ie no holes drilled as our “catch basin” and one bucket with holes drilled for draining and aeration. This bucket contains mostly finished VC – vermicasting or vermicompost – a little bit of unfinished bedding and lots of worms. I’m currently top feeding with outdated powdered vanilla pudding mix and powdered milk. The level of VC has shrunk about two inches in just a few weeks time. This might take a few months to get to the point where I can just scoop out the castings onto the plants. The remaining worms will be relocated to the more active buckets.

The worms are “swarming” over the powdered milk mix.

View of a much less processed bin.

Two of these bucket tops are cut off to make spacer rings. These are placed on top of a nearly full active bucket. A new empty active bucket is placed above the spacers. The new top bucket rests on the built up waste below. The spacers prevent the bucket from smashing the waste and bedding in the lower bucket. I add a little bit of bedding and slowly start feeding the new top bucket.

Worms continue to work the bottom bucket. Notice the slight indented ring where the top bucket rests.
And if you thought these photos were gross, don’t dare visit RedWormComposting (humorously, he abbreviates his site RWC)

The worms continue to be happy. I noticed on my top bucket of one of my stacked bucket system that a few worms had made it to the top. I had been filling the bucket way too fast with kitchen waste and it was filled to the rim. There was simply no more room to add so I stopped. Now there are some people who say you can over feed your worm bins, and if they stink, they’re overfed. I was worried that mine would start to stink out in the hallway and I would have to get rid of them. I lucked out and about a month after I stopped adding anything to the top bucket there are worms near the surface – and the height has dropped about three inches. It looks like it will be worked over after all. Now it’s time to start peeking to see when the bottom bucket is ready for “harvest” of the worm castings.

We built a new framed bed on Sunday. It was a man’s day in the garden. J and I started out the morning by loading up the oversize pallets used to transport stone counter tops onto the trailer to haul out to the “country house”. Once there we made sure to ice up the Coronas and place them in the shade and opened up a couple of cold, less than top of the line cans of brew. On days like this this cold and cheap beats warm no matter the quality.

We tossed the pallets onto the ground, and I grabbed the wrecking bar to pull the 2×4 pieces apart. Since they were built to carry counter tops, they each consisted of something like seven 12′ 2x4s, eight or ten 31″ 2x4s and the cheap planks secured to the top of the upper 12′ 2x4s. The planks are not salvageable and will become fuel for the fire pit that we have only thought about. The 2x4s became a single framed bed, 48″ wide, 12′ long and 14″ deep. Assembling the frames took only a short amount of time. Tearing the pallets down, drinking beer, and eating pizza took most of our day. Of course with the sun beating down on us we were required to consume large amounts of water as well.

Once the frame was built up, we carried a bale of straw over and dumped it into the frame. I used the garden fork to break off “flakes” of straw about an inch or so thick each which we used to line the bottom of the frame to smother the weeds that the frame was placed over. A couple of days ago we got 25 gallons of sheep manure to add a layer over the top of the straw. I’m thinking that we will want another 25 – 50 gallons of sheep manure, then we’ll layer loose straw. We’ll start another one or two of these frames over the next month or so and that might be enough for now. This will give us three raised/mounded rows and three frames – all about the same size. The frames are much more uniform than the double dug beds we prepared in the spring. And we might just be able to build a hoop house over the top of two of these new frames – we’re still a little slow on deciding to do that or not.

In the meantime, we have bid on a pickup truck and pickup bed water tanks for use on “the farm”. It’s a sealed bid that closes in about a week. If we don’t get the truck or the water tanks we still can borrow the truck we’ve been borrowing and there are other water tanks for sale around. It would be nice to have our own for use whenever we want instead of having to schedule it, but beggars can’t be choosers.

It’s been a little over a month since the square foot garden was started. I realized that I hadn’t properly checked the amount of sun the boxes get – it’s heavy afternoon shade. Since the tomatoes and peppers are full day sun it means I probably won’t get as much out of them as I should.

The plants haven’t grown too much and only a few seeds that I direct seeded are coming up. I did start with some really old seed but I was expecting a better turnout. Yesterday, to see if I could get any better results I seeded mung beans, celery and more mustard. Again all fairly old seed so I will see if I get anything from these.

I’ve lived in my apartment for around eleven years. Just a few weeks ago, due to the work and preliminary success of our “communal garden” I decided to set up a garden box outside. It’s really a bunch of plywood pieces held together with screws and 2×4 pieces from old pallets. It’s small, just 24″ front to back and slightly over 10′ long. I then acquired some used banana boxes to act as “pots”. A trip to Home Depot yesterday for several bags of soil, a bag of composted steer manure a couple of tomato cages and plants was just what we needed to get started. My wife also grabbed one of those upside down tomato planters. I don’t know how well they work yet since we only just planted it yesterday, but considering that she has another on the way from Amazon.com I’m really hoping they work.

I filled the bottom of my boxes with top soil, added a few inches of steer manure and a small amount of worm castings that I gathered in the woods (mine aren’t producing much castings yet). Into the mix went tomatoes and bell peppers. This morning I direct seeded onions, mustard, lettuce, carrots, spinach and dill. I still have a couple more boxes to fill and plant, but for now I get to sit back for a few minutes before trying to get a few more pickle buckets and collecting some mulch from the free pile at the public works yard to top off the planters.

The garden seems to be coming along. The first potatoes have really started to fill in. I recently planted the rest of the potato row, but those new potatoes haven’t started coming in yet. This last weekend we started planting most of the rest of the started plants and we direct seeded several different kinds of beans and squash.

I was telling my mom about the worm bucket system that I set up and she decided that’s what she wanted for mother’s day – a worm farm. And mom was serious. So I had to look into gathering more empty buckets. I had one and my “design” calls for four. So I stopped in Burger King last Friday, bought an obligatory coffee and asked about buckets. The kid behind the counter brought me one. I asked him about the ones I had seen by the dumpster and he told me that I could take those too. I scored five.

On Saturday I started making mom’s worm farm. After thinking about it for a while I decided to make the farm five buckets instead of four. My thinking was to make two into the spacers. That would mean that the stack would be: solid bucket on the bottom, empty main bucket, main bucket, spacers. Two of the rim sections of these buckets adds about six inches of height. Once the empty main is rotated to the top there is nearly a full bucket worth of castings in the main bucket. I liked this idea so much that I added another spacer to mine. I added 3″ of newspaper bedding and scooped out a couple of handfuls of worms to drop into the new system. It’s not much to start with, but they are supposed to be prolific breeders.

We went to mom’s on Sunday for late brunch. My aunt, cousin and my cousin’s daughter were visiting with my mom. I haven’t seen my cousin in something like 15 years so it was good to see her again. Mom was waiting for her worms. I showed her the setup, told her how to feed them and when to rotate the main buckets. Her main compost bin is too narrow, doesn’t heat up enough and dries out too fast (I see a new compost bin construction project coming) and she is probably going to end up using the worm buckets as her primary kitchen waste processor. And she couldn’t have been happier with a store bought gift.

The worms are slowly getting established – they are not quite at the eat their own weight per day stage. At least it doesn’t look like that yet. We are still collecting the kitchen scraps to go into the compost pile at the garden. Little is going into the worm buckets as of yet. I looked and it’s only been a couple of weeks so maybe I’m just impatient, but I’m ready to start harvesting the castings. I mentioned the worm buckets to my mom who seems to think they are a good idea and wants her own setup. It sounds like I’m back to work.

Yesterday I managed to get another bucket out of Burger King. I recently found out that I’m competing with the manager of the store for the buckets. She’s using them, according to her, to make 5 gallon planters. That’s not a bad idea especially if you have to move plants inside.

When I got home, bucket in hand, my wife looked at me and said, “no more buckets!” as I placed the newly acquired bucket onto the counter. It wasn’t until I had to go back outside that I noticed we had even more buckets than I remembered from yesterday morning; the worms had arrived. It’s been around two weeks since the buckets were taken to the office to get “set up”. Now they are here and we can start to use them for composting part of our kitchen food waste.

This morning, I went to work modifying the two bucket set up. First, I transfered the worms to my four bucket system. The two bucket system uses one “solid” bucket as the base and an upper bucket with holes drilled in it and a lid with ventilation holes as well. My bucket system uses larger holes in the bottom – 1/2″ versus 1/8″ – over which I lay newspaper that is dampened. Both systems use newspaper as bedding material so there is not much change there. Then over the top I placed one inch strips of newspaper. All of this is moistened by spraying it with a water bottle – everything I’ve read tells me that it has to be the consistency of a damp sponge so it’s pretty wet. I then started scooping the lettuce and other greens that were placed on the top as food into a plastic bin that I set to the side with a hand cultivator. Once the majority of the foodstuff was placed to the side I tipped the starting bucket and gently pulled the remaining compost and the wriggling worms over the top of the bedding in my new system. I then added the food back to the buckets.

As I sat looking at the bucket system I was trying to figure out how to save a little space with it. Then it hit me, stack the “unused” segments below the used bucket. So I have the solid bucket on the bottom, next is a bucket with all the vent holes, then a “spacer” which is the top 6″ or so of another bucket with the bottom cut out and finally the bucket with the worms and a lid. When the castings get to be “too much” for the top bucket, the spacer is placed on top, then the next main bucket with bedding is placed into the top of that. Assuming that the top bucket sits just on the top of the castings and bedding. Start feeding in the new top bucket and worms should naturally make their way to the top. Leave it that way for three weeks and all the cocoons should hatch with the next generations of worms leaving nothing but worm castings on the bottom – which becomes plant food. Then we use the worm castings for fertilizer and start all over.