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Gardening Thread

We made our worm compost bins this weekend, got the worms and started working. We spent ~$25 total. $10 for the two bins, and $15 for 4 containers of redworms. I checked last night, and some of the buggers were crawling up near the top, but none have tried to escape the air holes yet. We'll see how it goes.
 
Hoops, how is your worm composting going? I'm thinking we didnt add enough dirt to ours. A few of the worms seem happy as can be, others cant wait to escape. I'll probably add some more dirt this afternoon. I think I saw before you were running your scraps through a food processor before you put them in the bins?
 
tsywake said:
Hoops, how is your worm composting going? I'm thinking we didnt add enough dirt to ours. A few of the worms seem happy as can be, others cant wait to escape. I'll probably add some more dirt this afternoon. I think I saw before you were running your scraps through a food processor before you put them in the bins?
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it's getting there. it's been a couple of weeks, and they said it would take a couple of weeks for the worms to get adjusted to their new home, so not to overfeed them during that period. so right now, i've got a big bowl full of ground up food scraps waiting to be added to the bin. hopefully soon they'll really get going on what's already in there.

we also had one worm try to escape. we had read that they would do that if their environment was too wet or too dry, but i honestly don't think ours was either. we added more dirt at that point (we were like you. don't think we added enough at the beginning). since then, no more escape attempts. and yeah, growing up, we always ran our food through the food processor, so i'm doing that again, and i expect it to help. they can eat through the food way faster, which means the whole composting thing is much faster.
 
I'm so jealous of you guys who have already started gardening. Our new place doesn't have an area where we can garden, but we should hear back today on whether or not we'll be able to rent a garden box in the community garden near our house.
 
I've read conflicting things regarding planting under a magnolia tree (magnolia grandiflora limbed up). Some websites say that nothing including grass is really going to grow down there, but I'm finding other sites suggesting ferns or bulbs. My new house has a big bare patch of dirt under the large magnolia tree in the front yard and I'd love to improve the look of it by having something green under there for ground cover at least.

Any suggestions?
 
Just got word back that I will be able to rent a bed from the community garden. Can't wait to start!
 
DeacHoops said:
it's getting there. it's been a couple of weeks, and they said it would take a couple of weeks for the worms to get adjusted to their new home, so not to overfeed them during that period. so right now, i've got a big bowl full of ground up food scraps waiting to be added to the bin. hopefully soon they'll really get going on what's already in there.

we also had one worm try to escape. we had read that they would do that if their environment was too wet or too dry, but i honestly don't think ours was either. we added more dirt at that point (we were like you. don't think we added enough at the beginning). since then, no more escape attempts. and yeah, growing up, we always ran our food through the food processor, so i'm doing that again, and i expect it to help. they can eat through the food way faster, which means the whole composting thing is much faster.
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I added some more dirt and some leaves this afternoon. As I was stirring it all up, I came across a large clump of worms that were quite large. Apparently they're bossing around the 99th ounce weaklings and hogging all the foods, so the smaller ones are trying to escape.
 
That homemade worm composter looks pretty awesome. What's the turn-time on a bin? I can get a trash can full of yardwaste/greenstuffs ready in about 120 days...can the worms beat that?

P.S. Brief segue: I have a series of compost bins. I have twin bins near the chicken coops to field manure/shavings from their house (plus yardwaste)...but I think I need to give that at least one season to cure. I've got some short-term bins that consist of essentially four plastic trashcans, (two full, two empty), and I turn those every Saturday. At an estimated 120-150 days, early spring fill is just enough time to get them ready for a fall planting (and vice versa). Adding a worm composter might give me better soil for starting plants from seed, since I have to figure the castings do about as good a job as you can in creating finer soils.
 
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I don't know precise time frames, but the worm composting should be quicker, unless you have worms in your compost piles. Rather than relying on the vegetation to decompose naturally, the worms eat it, plus wat they don't eat naturally decomposes. Theoretically, worms should be the quickest way.
 
worm composting is much faster than regular composting. and they multiply like crazy too, so you wind up with a TON of worms who can all eat something like 50% of their body weight every single day. not sure on actual turn time for a bin though.
 
At some point I'm going to have to face the fact that I have horrid sunlight in my yard and will only be able to muster golf-ball sized tomatoes, and low-light vegetables like spinach and basil. Anyone had any luck with low-light containers?
 
tsywake said:
Hoops, how is your worm composting going? I'm thinking we didnt add enough dirt to ours. A few of the worms seem happy as can be, others cant wait to escape. I'll probably add some more dirt this afternoon. I think I saw before you were running your scraps through a food processor before you put them in the bins?
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Did this a few years back with some worm house I watched a documentary on and it was really neat. The compost was as black and nice as it could be. I think in the video they called it black gold.
 
And the wormer, she is built. Went with homegrown Earthworms on the theory that, you know, that they are asexual creates who live in freaking dirt and I'm not going to pay to distinguish betwixt them. Loaded up with compost, grit, newsprint and shade. Earthworms, do what you do.
 
we got our beds built and filled with dirt this weekend. at some point this week, we'll drop in the actual seeds and seedlings that i bought (at that place that racer mentioned. thanks for the recommendation, racer. the guy was super nice, super helpful, and the place is cool, even though it's a pretty long drive from my area of town).
 
DeacHoops said:
we got our beds built and filled with dirt this weekend. at some point this week, we'll drop in the actual seeds and seedlings that i bought (at that place that racer mentioned. thanks for the recommendation, racer. the guy was super nice, super helpful, and the place is cool, even though it's a pretty long drive from my area of town).
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Awesome. T is the man. I was just up there this weekend too. He's a great source for most anything gardening wise and he's one of the only suppliers in the area of non-GMO, non-soy chicken feed if you ever need any of that. :thumbsup: What did you use to fill your beds? Just topsoil or some sort of mix?

We moved into a new place on the Westside that we're leasing for now and planning to buy later this year. Because of that, and because I'm about to build a chicken coop for 4-6 layers and we're still deciding how to lay everything out in the yard (need to see where the sun hits once the trees get leaves), I didn't do any raised beds this year. Just tilled up a small spot next to the house for this spring and added some manure and mushroom compost to the existing topsoil. On saturday we put a bunch of potatoes (we're late getting these started...hope it's a mild spring), some crookneck squash, zuchinni, red/green bells, jalapenos, eggplant, cucumbers, a bunch of herbs and a few different tomato varieties in the ground. Growing a strawberry bush and watermelon vine out of a couple big planters for the kids. That will be it for this year, but we're going to go big next year assuming we close on this house and will be here for a while. Between the eggs and a big garden next year, I'm hoping to cut our grocery budget way down so it's easier to stomach the high $$ of buying good local protein.
 
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we did a mix of topsoil, vermiculite, mushroom compost, and peat moss. the square foot gardening sites all recommend the 3 things that aren't topsoil, but the guy at home depot convinced dhtoy that he HAD to have topsoil. so we added that too.
 
RacerDeac said:
I'm about to order a worm composting kit (stackable trays) for our table scraps. I'll see how that goes, interesting to look back through this thread and see others doing the same.
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IMO, as handy as you are with tools, I'd forgo buying the expensive worm composting kit, and make one like deachoops and I did above. Counting the worms, I spent ~$25, which is significantly less than the kits. After getting my mixture right, the worms are now going to town. I added some of the spent grains from my weekend homebrew, and some of the worms had grown to >6" long.
 
jhmd2000 said:
I'm talking about those fancy-pants jobbies with the tiers and the kettle-style drains for "Worm tea." They're like $200.00. I giggle everytime I see one of those on a garden store. Seriously, they make those things for people to buy to put worms and dirt in. Outside.

Seriously, $200 for a bucket for worms and dirt. Worms and dirt not included.
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Planning to start worm composting here soon. I'll see how that goes, interesting to look back through this thread and see others doing the same. I'm leaning towards spending the money on a stackable setup or building my own. They are more like $70-100 on Amazon rather than the $200 you're quoting. Just throwing them in a bucket/trashcan and then having to sort a pile of worm castings and worms sounds like more work than it's worth for something I'll use for the next 10+ years. Hell, I'll make up the difference in price in what I save on fertilizer pretty quickly anyway.
 
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