Garden Party - UPDATE

Sorry, folks.  No photos today, but I wanted to update you on the progress of our garden.

The heat and drought are taking a terrible toll on all the plants.  Everything from the grass up to the trees is stressed.  We lost a beautiful sand cherry bush to fire blight.  Of all the beet seeds I planted, only about a third of them even germinated, and of those few, only 3 have formed bulbs.  We planted some hot pepper seeds for Bubba - nothing germinated.  Princess' flowers are struggling, too.  All this is in spite of adding compost to good soil and watering.  And I mean watering every other day for a half hour with a lawn sprinkler.

If you are a first time gardener this year, and you are experiencing similar results, please stay encouraged.  We are currently experiencing the hottest, driest summer on record where we live, and apparently, the whole eastern portion of the US is the same.  Don't think you have a "black thumb" because Mother Nature is being uncooperative.

So let me give you some good news.  Now is a great time to start planning what to do with your garden in the fall.  Do some research into drought tolerant varieties of plants for next year.  Build a compost bin for the leaves that will be falling in a few months.  Get your worm bins started for indoor composting over the winter.  Keep watering and adding compost to those plants that are toughing it out.  In other words, don't give up and walk away - it's just a really bad season, and those things happen despite our best efforts.

Have a great day!

Garden Party - Worm Composting

We have new pets!

This was the hands-on activity at the end of my composting class.  Inside are dozens of red wrigglers, happily munching on a couple of banana peels and some leftover tea bags.

Worm composting is not only great for the environment by helping to limit the amount of trash we send to the dump, but the castings (aka worm poop) are PHENOMENAL fertilizer for your garden.  And, BONUS - keeping a worm bin is also a great educational activity for your kids!

So how do you make a bin?  My bin is a plastic storage container, 15" long by 12" wide by 9" deep.  You can see the holes in the lid - three rows, roughly equally spaced 1/4" holes that were drilled.  There's also one row around the top edge of the container itself.  About 5 holes per long side and 3 on the short sides.  No holes on the bottom.

There are loads of other worm bin designs online, along with other information about how to start them, etc.

Mine was started with about 1/3 of the container filled with moist shredded newspaper.  Moist like a damp, wrung out sponge.  If you squeeze it, only a drop or two of water should come out.  On top of the moist paper, my worms were added with some of their "native" soil.  More shredded moistened newspaper on top of that, then a solid layer of moistened newspaper.

We are on week 2 of this grand experiment.  I brought them home on a Saturday, and last Saturday, I added a couple of peels from bananas that had gone bad.  I've also added a few tea bags throughout this week.

If you'd like to try this experiment at home along with us, here are some really great links:

http://www.wormfarmingsecrets.com/blog/

http://www.sfenvironmentkids.org/teacher/lesson_plans/Worm%20Diner%20K-4%20July2010.pdf

http://www.sfenvironmentkids.org/teacher/lesson_plans/worm_bin.pdf

http://www.sfenvironmentkids.org/teacher/lesson_plans/worms.pdf

http://www.recycleworks.org/compost/wormcomp.html

Hope you'll join us!