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 and transform them into nutrient-rich “castings”. Use the castings to boost your garden soil.

Worms will be delighted with your veggie and food scraps as well as coffee grounds/coffee filters, tea leaves/bags, egg shells, shredded paper and cardboard.
They don’t like: grass clippings, salt/salty food, hot spices, meat, poultry, dairy, pineapple.

     Worm bin

You can keep your worm farm in a closet. They come with fitted tops so there’s no fear of a massive worm escape.

Read more about setting up and maintaining your worm farm in our earlier posts:
Worms – a gardeners best friend and…
Worm food

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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 dioxide. The excess carbon dioxide produces greenhouses gases. Greenhouses gases trap heat. Mother Earths temperature rises.

Basically, we’re releasing too much carbon into the atmosphere.

Rot your food – reduce your carbon output

If you send your food and plant waste off to a landfill or incinerator, you’ll add carbon and methane emissions. In fact, yard and food waste account for about 30% of waste in the US.

If you compost, you will absorb and lock up carbon.

Compost basics

Composting involves combining high carbon (brown) waste with high nitrogen (green) waste. There isn’t ONE single way, or one specific formula for composting. Here’s A way:
– Put down about an inch of soil or compost. Why? Because it has microorganisms that can get to work.
– Layer in a couple inches of “green” material, then a couple inches of “brown” material.
– Moisten with water.
– Let it rot.

Because oxygen is important to the process, it helps to turn the compost pile every week or so.

If your pile doesn’t get hot enough and decompose fast enough, you can add more “green” (nitrogen) materials.
If your pile smells bad, you can add more “brown” (carbon) materials and be sure it’s adequately aerated and moist, but not soaking wet.

Compost bins

You can pile you materials up, but a container of sort makes it easier to be neat. You can choose a DIY solution or a commercial solution. What you want to accomplish with a bin is primarily weather protection – both wind and rain. Secondarily – pest protection.

DIY compost bins

Some DIY options are:

• Plastic bag: take a typical large garbage bag, layer in your carbons and nitrogens, moisten it, poke a few holes in the side, close it up and you’re done. Check it once a week or so to ensure there’s enough moisture. You can also roll it around to mix it up and aerate it.
• Wood pallets: take 5 wood pallets. One on the ground, four for the sides. Put cardboard or plastic on the bottom. Tie the sides and bottom together.
• Wire fencing: Chicken wire is easy enough to mold. You may need to stake it into place.

Commercial bins

There are two types of commercial bins… standup bins and rotating bins.

Standup compost bin

Tumbler compost bin

Stand up bins are fairly basic. It’s easy to throw stuff in, not so easy to get your pitchfork in there and turn the compost.

Tumbler type bins allow you to turn the bin itself… no need for a pitchfork. Generally, tumblers compost faster. Not because there’s anything inherently better about them, but because you can so easily turn them. With a stand up bin, the turning just doesn’t get done frequently enough.

Next up: Indoor composting

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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 better to get the bulk of your nutrition from a well-rounded diet of whole foods – rather than bottles of synthetic vitamins – the best way to feed your soil is with compost.

Composting transforms organic matter – such as a banana peel – into soil like material that supports and nourishes plants.
Similarly, a chef can take a bag of ingredients and transform them into a tasty, nourishing meal.

In both cases, it’s not a haphazard process. In both cases, heat and moisture are needed. In both cases, active work is involved… The chef chops, peels, mixes and stirs the ingredients. Insects, worms, bacteria and fungi chomp, digest, aerate and breakdown the organic matter.

The process of composting

Composting is applied microbiology. It’s a complex ecosystem at work employing thousands of microorganism species.

Passive composting, active composting

When a plant dies microorganisms, bacteria and insects attack it and feed off it. This is normal decomposition, or “passive composting”. It’s a slow process. For instance you can rake up all your fall leaves, pile them up, come back in the spring and they won’t be fully decomposed.

However, if you provide more ideal conditions, you can turn that pile of leaves into compost in two months or less. This is “active composting”.

Active composting needs:

• An optimal Carbon:Nitrogen ratio
• oxygen (aeration)
• moisture

Carbon and nitrogen

Carbon rich materials are the “browns”. They include things like paper, cardboard, straw, plant stalks.
Nitrogen rich materials are the “greens”. They include fruit and veggie scraps, coffee grounds.

Microorganisms need nitrogen to be able to break down carbon. You can think of carbon as food and nitrogen as digestive enzymes that break down the food.

The ideal ratio is 30:1 carbon:nitrogen. So you want to be adding some fruit and veggie scraps (nitrogen) to that pile of leaves (carbon).

Too little nitrogen and composting will go slow. Too much nitrogen and you’ll generate ammonia gas.

Oxygen

Efficient decomposing is aerobic… it requires oxygen. Generally it’s the middle of the pile that requires the most attention. You can use a pitch fork turn to your compost pile or a compost “aerator” about once a week. Or you can buy a rotating compost bin and give it a little spin every couple days.

Additionally, if you chop up things before throwing them into the pile, there will be more surface area which helps to bring air in. Smaller pieces are easier for microorganisms and insects to digest as well. Quicker breakdown increases the heat.

Moisture

Like humans, microorganisms need water. 40-60% moisture content is idea… moist, but not soaking wet. Too little moisture and the process slows down. Too much, you drown out the microorganism.

Heat it up

Under optimal conditions of Carbon:Nitrogen, aeration and moisture, you’ll get a lot of decomposing activity going. This generates heat. Heat destroys weed seeds and pathogens. You get healthy compost.

You want your pile temperature to be 100-140 degrees F / 37-60 C.

If your pile is not heating up… add nitrogen. If your pile is too hot and smells bad… add carbon and aerate.

In the next post we’ll look at compost bin options – both commercial and DIY.

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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 their environment pH to be between 7 and 8).

* Green grass clippings (grass produces ammonia which can kill off the worms and also generates a lot of heat).

You also never want to feed them:

* Salt or salty foods
* Hot spices
* Meat
* Poultry
* Dairy

Wet newspaper blanket to keep worms and bedding moist

Worms will do well with vegetable and fruit scraps.
They can also eat tea bags & leaves and coffee grounds & filters in moderation as these are generally acidic.
Torn up and soaked newspaper, egg cartons and cardboard.
Cooked and crushed egg shells – these add calcium which worms love. They’re also alkaline helping to offset acidity of other materials.

An easy way to turn raw egg shells into cooked egg shells is to set them on a tray and pop them in a 300F oven. Won’t take but 10-15 minutes until they’re crispy. To crush them you can run a rolling pin over them or any number of things such as a coffee mug, bowl…

Adding ground food scraps – this is pulp from the juicer – to one half of the worm bin

You only want to add new food when the worms are nearly done their last portion. Either, spread it over the entire top 1-2 inches at a time or you can just alternate between each half of the bin.

Unfold wet newspaper.

On one side of the bin, dig down about an inch or so.

Add food then cover back up with the bedding to discourage flies.

Add the food then cover with the bedding

Not mandatory but…Worms can eat more if its cut into 1/2 inch strips or better yet – ground up in a food processor. Since worms have very small mouths and don’t have teeth – think baby food. The smaller size also allows air through making it easier for them to move through the pile.

You can also mix food scraps with higher carbon materials such as hydrated coconut coir, shredded newspaper, brown leaves, napkins, coffee filters or straw. These materials will add aeration and speed up decomposition.
Note: faster decomposition does create more heat, so be mindful of overheating.

Maintenance

Worm farms shouldn’t smell bad. In fact we have friends that keep their worm farm in a closet in their house. And yes, they are clean people.

If the farm does smell, it’s likely due to bacteria build up from uneaten food. You can stir the food around a bit with a garden fork to aerate it. You can also add a little garden lime which is alkaline and aerates.
To avoid odors, only add about a 1-2″ layer of food at a time. And don’t add new food until the prior portion is mostly eaten.

Worm farms generally don’t attract insects. If a farm is too acidic and dry or in an area with a lot of ants, it may get infested. In this case, you’ll need to clean the ants out. If it’s too dry and acidic, add more water and shredded newspaper or crushed up cooked egg shells.

If it’s near an ant horde, either relocate the bin or use some ant evasion measures such as smearing petroleum jelly around the entry points or surrounding the worm bin with a “moat”. If the bin is on legs, you can sit each leg in a container of water.

Keeping the bin moist keeps their appetite strong. Add water when necessary, though not so much at one time to flood the bin. Also be sure that any excess water can drain out. Our worm wranch has a handy spigot. High water food scraps such as lettuce and many fruits can be as much as 80% water content. Having a lot of that in your food mix will decrease any need to add extra water. It’s also best to use non-chlorinated water.

With the proper care, you will be turning kitchen scraps into black gold that your garden will cash in to bushels of veggies for your table!

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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 they couldn’t be happier.
In return, they’ll turn those food scraps into nutrient dense soil that you can use in your garden.

Done correctly, it’s very clean and efficient… and rather easy.

When worms are in the ground, they aerate the soil – digging tunnels and allowing air to get to plant roots. They also fertilize the soil.

When you set them up in “worm farms”, they’re happy to eat half their body weight a day and double their population every few months.

Down in the farm, worms eat organic material, digest it and excrete the digested material – called “castings”. Castings are the worms version of composted manure – plant-ready soil richer in nutrients than commercially available top soil or potting soil.

– Castings are pH neutral. They won’t burn plant root systems the way fresh raw animal manures can. Compared to potting soil castings have about 5 times more nitrogen, 7 times more potash, 3 times more calcium and several times more phosphorus and potassium.

– The nutrients are water-soluble so they’re immediately available to plant roots. And castings hold 2-3 times their weight in water… keeping moisture in the soil longer.

– Worm castings have a high amount of humus which helps create channels within soil that better hold water and allow air to pass through.

– Additionally, worm composting produces a liquid – leachate – commonly called “worm tea”. You can use this as a plant fertilizer too – best to dilute it in water – about a 4:1 ratio.

Build or Buy?

You can build your own worm farm without a great deal of work.
Plastic or wood are the best materials. Of the two, plastic tends to be easier to work with and maintain.

The container itself should be wider than deep. A good size is 2′ wide, 3′ long and 1′ deep. It should also be dark, so if you’re using transparent plastic, cover the outside with some light blocking material.

You’ll need to provide for drainage… drill 1/4″ holes into the bottom about every 3 inches.

And You’ll want to elevate your farm off the ground to allow air flow. You can put a tray under the bottom to catch any liquid (leachate) that drains off.

If you’re not ready for the science project build your own, you can buy a ready made, designed for worm composting, worm farm. They generally come with removable panels and leachate tray, making them easier to maintain.

Worm farm

Here’s our worm farm.
The base collects leachate. Open the spigot in the front to drain it off.

There’s one tray going with Red Wigglers. When that tray gets full, simply pop another tray on top that one. Put new food on the top tray and the worms work their way up.

The top closes securely and has a number of vent holes which aren’t clearly visible in the picture.

Setting Up the Farm

Start with the bedding material. Use shredded and moistened newspaper – black and white pages only.
Moisture in the bedding helps the worms breathe. However, avoid too much water (sopping wet) as the worms will drown.
You can also use peat moss or coconut fiber. (soak in water first and squeeze out to pull out some of the acidity).

Sprinkle in some garden soil or aged compost – a couple handfuls.

Add Worms

Which worms are best… Red Wigglers, more properly known as “Eisenia fetida”.
Red Wigglers have voracious appetites, are prolific reproducers and do ok in high density environments. They’re more surface seeking worms – so they eat upward. Whereas earthworms tend to tunnel downward.

You can get wigglers by mail (an Internet search will pull up numerous vendors), tho you may want to check locally first to avoid the trauma of being transported for the worms. If you can buy them nearby, you can get them in their new home quickly.

Start with a pound of worms… generally about 4,000.
Dump them in with the top off.
Like vampires, worms don’t like light so they’ll quickly start burrowing down into the bedding.

Harvesting

When you can no longer detect the bedding, it’s time to harvest the castings.

Never smash it down… that will suffocate your worm friends.

The commercial worm farms come with trays that make this quick and easy. You put a new tray on top the full one. The worms will make their way up and after a few weeks you can take the full tray out and put the castings to work.

If you built your own farm…

Because worms eat up and leave castings behind, you’ll find that most worms are near the top (top 4-6″) and the castings are on the bottom.

The easiest way to harvest the castings is to do a partial harvest. (You can do a complete harvest by picking all the worms out and putting them in new bedding… with thousands of wigglers that’s quite the task).

With a partial harvest you want to lure them to one end…
Put food only at one end. The worms (or most of them at least) will head for the food.
After about a week, remove the casting from the other end. This will give you half to two-thirds of the casting.

Then remove the rest of the material (castings, any remaining food and worms). Set them aside temporarily in a container.
Thoroughly clean out the bin and set up new bedding. Add your worms (with the rest of the material) into their freshly cleaned home.

Farm Operation

Worms do need oxygen so be sure your bin is not air tight. You can use a tight lid, just drill some holes in the lid, or the sides of the bin close to the top.

Red Wigglers like the thermometer set at 72-75 degrees Fahrenheit. They’ll tolerate a range of 50-90 degrees (10-30 Celsius)… this is inside bin temperature not outside ambient temperature.

If the bin gets too hot you can: put it in a shaded and well ventilated area, keep it a little more wet, freeze the food before adding it in, sit a few frozen water bottles in the bin.

If the bin gets too cold the worms will decrease their activity (eating and reproduction). Worms won’t survive being frozen, tho cocoons will… and they’ll hatch after they thaw out.
To warm up the bin you can add more carbon materials such as leaves and newspaper. They generate more heat when decomposing. You can also cover the bin with a blanket of sorts.

Red Wigglers reproduce rapidly. Tho no need to worry about worms spilling out of the bin. They self regulate their reproduction rate so they don’t over-populate their space. Interesting concept, eh?

Calcium helps reproduction. You can add crushed cooked egg shells to their food mix.

Happy farming!

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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 horse manure (about 1/3rd of the total soil mixture) and the sifted soil. Turned it over (and over, and over).
Put in some fall crops (kale, spinach, lettuce, kohlrabi, bok choy, daikon radishes, beets, chard.

These beds haven’t had much soil attention in three growing seasons. They needed some nutrition.

Our stack – o – horse manure

We’ve gone to a local stable and fetched many a box of manure. I think we’ve done 4 loads, 9 boxes a load.

Horse manure – from well fed horses – is high in nitrogen.
Not as high as chicken or rabbit manure.

The more composted, the better.

Generally a horse stall uses straw and/or saw dust. Straw can be pretty seedy, so it’s typical to get some weeds when you use the fresher stuff. The composting process creates a lot of heat… the heat destroys the seeds.

If you put fresh manure directly in your garden, particularly with seeds or young plants, the composting process may burn those roots as well.

Partially composted manure will be more dry, more soil like and have very little to none visible straw.

(When you see worms, you’ve got fully composted manure).

We’ve been getting partially composted. The stable dumps fresh stuff at one end of the pile… we tunnel into the other end that’s been there composting longer.

We added horse manure a number of seasons back and reaped the benefits.
We’ve been generously adding it to all the new beds and boxes as well as doing the full rehab on a few of the beds.

Check around for a stable near you. It’s great stuff.

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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 give or take. As you may guess, fertilizing the soil isn’t a “new” thing.

The core plant nutrients are Nitrogen (N), Phosphorous (P) and Potassium (K).
How much of what you need depends on the breakdown of your soil and what you’re growing in it.

Nitrogen is the most needed nutrient. It’s an essential building block used to assemble amino acids, nucleic acids and protein. Nitrogen is crucial to life.
Nitrogen needy plants are more “life less”… yellowed, smaller and less fruiting.

Before commercialization

Organic manures and guano were popular fertilizers.

There are two classes of manures: green and animal.
Green manures are crops that are grown with the specific intent of plowing them under. These are also called “cover crops”.
For instance Legumes are nitrogen rich… when they’re plowed under they add nitrogen back into the soil. Soy beans were originally only used as a cover crop.

Animal manure is the feces from certain mammals including horses, cows and chickens. All are grass/plant eating animals and produce nitrogen rich manure.

Guano is feces from sea birds, seals and bats… again, nitrogen rich and high in phosphorous as well. Also has fungi and bacteria that act as a natural fungicide for plants.
The term originated in Peru.

Commercialization of farming and fertilizers

There wasn’t much in the way of commercial fertilizers before 1900.
In the 1890’s agriculture started becoming less family farm with a horse drawn plow and more mechanized and commercialized.
Along with that trend, commercial fertilizers became part of the mix.

Chemical fertilizers came along in the mid 1800’s. Ammonium Sulfate, Ammonium Nitrate, Calcium Nitrate, Sodium Nitrate.

Ammonium Sulfate was originally a by-product from coal gas manufacturing. The quality wasn’t great as a fertilizer but it was used some in the 1800’s.

Sodium Nitrate was the first popular fertilizer and used in the early 1900’s.

Ammonium Nitrate came into vogue after World War I.
Ammonium Nitrate was the principal ingredient used in explosives. Following War I, it made it’s way to the fields in significant volume… more so in Europe than the US. Following World War II with a large surplus in the US… why not “explode” crop growth .

Ammonium Nitrate is an inorganic source of nitrogen.

Big versus Small; Inorganic versus Organic

Large industrial agriculture is still a big user of chemical inorganic fertilizers. However, organic farms, home gardens and some smaller farms favor organic fertilizing.

In the US this is most typically in the form of compost and animal manures.
Being urban farmers, we go for the horse manure from a nearby stable and we’re working on our little compost factory.

Farms (organic and smaller) also are conscientious about crop rotation and may use “cover crops”.

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Composting or decomposition is nature’s way of recycling – one way or another all living things revert back to the earth to nourish the living – ‘tis the circle of life.

That circle plays itself out in the far corner of our garden to help feed the veggies and fruit trees that then feed us. What we don’t eat (trimmings) gets fed back into the compost bin – nothing is wasted. Cool…a circle that feeds a circle that feeds a…well you get the drift.

But how did I get that compost bin steaming away doing it’s composting thing? Well, after much research I discovered there are a million ways to compost! Luckily there are a few basic principles to composting. First you must mix ‘green’ material with ‘brown’ material.

Green equals high nitrogen -so fresh manure, green garden clippings, grass clippings, weeds and kitchen scraps.

Brown equals carbon – so dried leaves, wood chips, wood shavings, straw, shredded paper, coffee grounds, etc

In our compost bin, I started with a base layer of brown – I used about six inches of straw. Then I added some used rabbit bedding (from RabbitEars) mixed up with our kitchen scraps – about 6 inches. I intended to put in a bit less but I kind of got going and realized I should add the next brown layer.

If this green layer were to be just kitchen scraps I would have used less – maybe 2 or 3 inches. Generally, if the green material you’re using has a high potential to turn into smelly slime, make the layer thinner.

I sprinkled in some finished compost from the previous batch to help things get going. Then I sprayed some water onto the pile – you just want the material to be moist (like a wrung out sponge) not sopping wet.

Then I alternated brown with green ending with brown on top. This is an important step – always ending with a brown layer to keep down the fruit fly population and to keep in the heat.

Oh, half way through I remembered that I had some ‘Compost Activator’ in the shed so I sprinkled some in about half way into my layering. Later I found that compost activator is super high nitrogen which feeds the composting microorganisms and simply speeds them up – kind of like a strong cup of coffee.

We’ll be starting another bin… but slowly by only layering with our daily kitchen scraps. As one gardener said – never dump and run – always cover the scraps with a handful or two of something brown.

That’s it. Pretty simple. I let the full bin sit and magically overnight it became quite steamy. The heat (it can get up to 160F) is a key indicator that the bugs (that is the micro ones) are hard at work – sweating away – decomposing all that material you layered into the bin. The heat is also important for killing pathogens that cause plant diseases and those pesky weed seeds.

I started this bin two days ago and it has settled about four inches already. I’ll leave it be and try to turn it this weekend.

Turning is just scooping out the contents of the bin into another. The advantage is that I will loosen up the settling material, prevent compaction and aerate the material so it will finish decomposing faster – those microbes like their oxygen too. I can always leave it as is and wait about 6 – 8 months – it will finish all by itself – naturally. But I can speed things up by turning it regularly – once a week if I am especially ambitious. How speedy? Not sure but I will keep track so I can fine-tune my method and mix of green and brown.

With all this compost – not only will our garden grow – so will my biceps

How do you compost?

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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 find that aloe for my shoulders…

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A healthy soil is teeming with a multitude of critters: microbes, fungi, nematodes, insects and worms. Since plants don’t have digestive tracts to breakdown the ‘food’ in the soil, all these critters work together to breakdown the humus or organic material and the mineral component of the soil for easy uptake by the plant’s intricate root system. It’s been said, When trying to grow the ultimate garden – two thirds of success lie in the ground.

Healthy soil is a must and something I learned early on in my gardening life. Although the last few years I’ve amended the soil most seasons, because of the lack of time and other commitments I haven’t been caring for the soil like I could have. This year for instance, I skipped my usual bag or two of steer and chicken manure in each bed – this I had learned from my grandmothers. This season, my conscience got to me – I didn’t know the source of the manures – likely from a large scale factory farm so I couldn’t or rather wouldn’t use those as my amendment any longer.

During Spring planting, we were short on our own plant matter compost so I used some in each planting hole along with some horse manure we had left from a run to the stables a few years ago. The result, this season’s garden looks like a vegetable garden from Lilliput – Not enough nutrients!

Look at these two tomato plants…the first was planted with a few scoops of compost in unamended soil. The second was planted one week later in an oak barrel with fresh American Soil’s Local Hero with a few shovel fulls of our plant material compost. There is a yard stick next to each plant – Plant #2 is four times larger than puny plant #1! Robin’s tomato plants are large and healthy as well – she carefully amended her soil as she does every year. Maybe she’ll give us her secret recipe .

I’ve come to realize that most of the soil in our beds are pretty lifeless – not much worms whereas a few years ago the soil had lots of red wigglers. Now that we are upping the ante and committing more time and energy into our garden, I have become obsessed with bringing our soil back to life. What I’ve learned and will now follow – the golden rules to healthy soil.

Golden rule number one – ammend regularly. Each bed must be amended after each crop no matter what you’ve grown. You can amend with plant matter compost or animal compost.

Golden rule number two – never walk on prepared soil. All those critters in the soil – they need oxygen. So nice fluffly soil is a must.

Golden rule number three – cover your soil with mulch even if you don’t plan to plant it right away. This keeps the weeds from taking over (sapping those nutrients you worked so hard to put in) and keeps the soil moist – you don’t want to dry out your bed as this will damage the soil structure.

Compost. Back in college, I had a plot in a community garden. As luck would have it, the gardens were situated next to a horse stable. We had mountains of composted horse manure a wheel barrow away. I grew some amazing veggies that year. Patti – our digital dumpster diver extraordinaire – found two stables nearby that are begging folks to come scoop up the horse manure.

Bingo! As much composted horse manure we can possibly use minutes away from our garden! So far we’ve gotten about 500 pounds of really nice ready to use compost. I guess that we’ll end up with another 1000 pounds before all our raised beds have been rehabilitated.

In our own yard. we have a Wiggly Worm Wranch which we got from StopWaste.Org and three compost bins – one was here when we moved in years ago and two were recently gifted to us from our kind neighbors. The worms are happy and doing well. Worm castings and worm tea are excellent soil ammendments. I’m also learning the fine art of composting. In the past, I’ve ended up with bins of smelly slim as the compost rotted because I had too much green material and not enough brown. Now my plan is to layer the kitchen scraps with straw and will toss in some uncomposted horse manure for extra measure. My goal is to get the compost pile to be hot – this tells me that the composting bacteria are doing their thing. I’ll be turning the compost regularly to fluff up the material putting in more oxygen thereby speeding up the process. Plus, it’s a great work out!

Mulch. Hands down our favorite is straw and we’re lucky enough to be 10 minutes from the race track where we can purchase the bales of straw.

All set. Now all I need is a strong back to work the soil back to health. What a great workout this gardening is turning out to be…and I was just considering finding a trainer…

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