Planet Veggie Garden

One naturally believes composting is a bit messy. Yep, it generally is.However, there’s one type of composting that can be done indoors… without mess, without smell.

Vermicomposting…worm composting

Yes, you absolutely can have a worm farm in your nice, clean home.
Worms - specifically, red wigglers (Eisenia foetida) - can eat half their weight daily in food scraps [...]

You’re no doubt aware of the climate change issue.
Human contribution (or to use a fancy word - anthropogenic) to climate change is primarily from fossil fuel carbon emissions. Methane gas and nitrous oxide are lesser contributors.
Fossil fuels are made of hydrogen and carbon. When you burn the fuel, carbon combines with oxygen creating carbon [...]

One of those maxims to live by is:You can get what you want by helping others get what they want.
Applying that to the garden world:You feed the soil. The soil feeds the plants. The plants feed you.
Feed the soil
You can buy individual organic and non-organic nutrients to put in your soil. However, just as it’s [...]

Our Wiggly Worm Wranch, 1st Tray

What makes for a good worm buffet?
In general, any plant based waste with the noted exceptions:
* Pineapple (it has an enzyme that can dissolve your friendly worms…ouch!)
* Citrus and high acid veggies such as onions (worms aren’t too acid friendly. You can use small amounts of acidic scraps.Worms prefer [...]

…hard workers.
We’re all familiar with worms in the soil, most typically Earthworms.
But worms are multi-faceted squigglers. You can corral them and assign them to composting - “vermicomposting”.
Worms live to eat organic materials, excrete worm castings and reproduce rapidly. You can corral them in a dark, moist “farm”, feed them some throw away scraps and [...]

Not the Jed Clampet, Texas Tea kind of black gold.
This is partially composted horse manure black gold.
…organic black gold, rather than petroleum black gold.
We’ve completely re-habbed two beds over the past two weekends…
dug out all the dirt, sifted out roots, put down dark plastic and a layer of cardboard, added in [...]

Jumping on Sandy’s compost post, I thought I’d explore fertilizers a bit.
The end purpose of composting is to create nutritionally dense organic material to feed - or fertilize - the soil.
The definition of fertilize being: to make fertile, to enrich the soil by adding organic (or chemical) substances.
Agriculture has been around for 11,000 years [...]

That’s what my newbie gardening friend exclaimed when she asked to look in my compost bin. Yes, rolly pollies, sow bugs, slugs, worms and bugs you can’t see they are so small.
Composting or decomposition is nature’s way of recycling – one way or another all living things revert back to the earth to nourish the [...]

…post! …compost that is!
I was hoping that the only thing that burnt over the setting up of the compost bin yesterday wasn’t just my shoulders (ow). I just checked the bin and …oh, oh…is that steam? Yee Haw! That compost is a burn’in up! Yes!
I did a little jig out there to celebrate. Now to [...]

Plants don’t grow out of thin air – though it may seem like it. Clean air and plenty of sunshine are essential but a healthy soil is vital to a healthy plant. We tend to think of dirt or soil as lifeless – inanimate - but this couldn’t be furthest from the truth.
A healthy [...]