The worms are doing well. In the second bin (the newer one), I am finally starting to see cocoons. YEAH more babies! A couple of people at work want to buy worms from Arianna for fishing. She could be an entrepreneur at 5! The problem is that they are her pets and she nearly cried when I suggested the selling of them. LOL We will have to work on that.

The garden is doing well. More sprouts are showing. It was such a late season this year. I am not sure anything will produce before the first frost (a month or less away!). I may try to greenhouse the box. Here is one idea: using flexible PVC (1" dia?) to create an arch over the box and then cover it with plastic. I have about a dozen tomatoes on the vines right now...hopefully they will ripen before then.

It has been getting into the 90's during the day and low 50's at night. It has not rained as much this year so Arianna has been watering like mad.

 
 
Gardening here has been a true test in patience! A lot has died off and I even replanted some seeds. Now many weeks later some random sprouts are coming up. Until now it has been a squash, a few beets, and my struggling tomatoes. In fact the tomato in the container has done tremendously better than the ones in the box. They are the same variety "early girls". What is more interesting is the one in the container is from Wal-mart and the box tomatoes are from a nursery! LOL So it is hard to see in the picture, but I can see some peas behind the tomatoes, maybe some carrots and some lettuce....who knows. Not sure why they germinated so late.

As for the worms we have feed them almost 40lbs of food. The cocoons must be hatching since I have seen some very small worms in the oldest bin. It has been fun to watch.

cocoons!!

Life science!
I have always noticed that bump on a worm, but never really understood it. Worms have both female and male functions, each worm can fertilize another while creating baby cocoons. As a worm gets mature the bump gets larger and this is where the fertilization occurs. The bump area forms a cocoon that moves down the worm's body and is then shed into the dirt.
This yellow "seed" is a worm cocoon! It is next to a grape stem and half of a broken egg shell. So I guess we are going to have babies :).

The worms are setting in and seem pretty happy. They have spred trough out the bin and are going to town. Our biggest concern is that we added too much food waiting for the worms to arrive and now the bin is a little on the warm side. We are holding off on adding more food until it stabilizes a little. For now I am freezing our scraps and will start to add more in a few days.

As for the garden things are status quo. The snow and cold nights did not kill things, but I think they are recovering from shock. The squash has new growth and I am not sure about the tomatoes, they are a bit yellow. My 'wal-mart' tomato in the container on the deck is doing the best! Yesterday we planted some seed: carrots, beets, lettuce, peas, beans. We will see.

They're here!

The worms came today! Arianna was jumping for joy and could not wait to hold them. Amazing little critters. They were packaged in 1lb bags. Two pounds of worms is ALOT! Those wigglers were everywhere. Each was double bagged (lunch size brown paper bags) and the worms worked their way between the two bags. I was a little worried about them since it has been so cold. They looked great. We dumped the bags into the bin and hope they like their new home. It got a little deep in the week we were waiting so I am willing them to dig deep for the food! I am so excited.

It frosted overnight but no snow, yippee. I managed to cover everything with sheets though. I hope things make it through this cold spell. It is supposed to be freezing again tonight.

The worms should come today!

The next morning!

Oh the trials and tribulations of living at 6900 in CO. We had a record snow fall for the ski season, but we seem to be a month behind weather wise for the spring and summer.

Adventure #2 "raised" bed gardening

This is supposed to be my "raised bed" garden. I built a box with 2x8's and my husband picked the spot. He said I would only have to dig about 3 inches to get it level....wrong...the full eight!

Under the plastic are tomato plants...an experiment I read that tomatoes will not produce fruit until the temps are consistently over 50 degrees F. Does that happen in the mountains of CO? Wrapping the tomato cage with plastic and covering them at night is supposed to help. on the right are zucchini and spaghetti squash and at the back I have planted some beans. I need to get my carrots and beets in tomorrow. i also have a tomato in a container on the deck. It is wrapped in plastic too. You can see how the garden is at the back of the lot. I now feel that this bed is too small, but it is an experiment and was supposed to be temporary. We hope to build a retaining wall and extend it out more. I am jealous that my neighbor has strawberry plants and raspberries. Hopefully next year! And to end with a nice picture of some lilacs from my front bush, boy do they smell good.

pictures

I finally took some pictures of the worm bin. I sure hope the worms get here in the next couple of days. I did not realize how much food scraps we produce!
Arianna is adding some more bedding of shredded newspaper because we had so many scraps tonight! At least that means we are eating lots of fruits and vegetables. I had a large nappa cabbage, lettuce, banana peels, watermelon and coffee grounds.

Then Arianna and dad moisten the bedding because we learned that worms need a moist home to be happy and to breathe.

Because the nights still are cold the worms are in the garage.

Today we went to the library to get books on Worms. I got The Worm Book great stuff. It verifies what I have learned so far. Fun interesting facts. I do still want Worms Eat My Garbage, but I have to have a library transfer for that one. Of course we had to get Ariana books too. We read the first one tonight and it was fiction and very funny, Diary of a Worm. Tomorrow night we will read Wiggling Worms as Work. This is a "Let's Read and Find Out" Book. I like those books. Arianna has learned a lot about fish from a similar book. Very informative, but easy to understand.

Today we added some food scraps (coffee grounds, banana peels, egg shells, etc) by digging a hole in the corner. Our worms should be here by the end of next week. Arianna is SO excited. It may be a challenge to explain she can't play with them all the time....they are a different type of pet from her cat and the worms we dig around here and put back. They better get here soon or we will have some stinky garbage in our bin....not necessarily bad for the worms, just our noses!

I think tomorrow we will get a scale to see how much we are recycling. It also lets us know how many worms we will truly need.

Well, Wormwoman is back ordered with her worms so I now ordered from Decker Farms for about $50. A local greenhouse in a bigger city would probably be cheaper, shipping is a doosy.

We got our containers (2 large opaque bins) for about $10 a piece. In one bin we drilled 4 holes in the bottom about 20 holes around the sides and 15 more in the lid with 1/8inch bit. In the second bin we placed a couple of 2x4 scraps to support the first bin. The second bin is going to catch any worm tea and escapees.

Then we shredded up a bunch of cardboard and news paper. We put about 6-8 inches of shreddings into the bin with holes, moistened it, then layered food waste (banana peel, coffee grounds, egg shells, etc). This was topped with more shredding and a couple of handfulls of dirt. Now we are just waiting for the worms. As we wait we will layer more food scraps and shredding.

Arianna was so excited she had to dig some worm here and put them in the new house. All the info we have read says that red worms, not basic earthworms, are the best for composting so that is why we bought instead of hunted. The worms Arianna caught were in decaying leaves so they probably were red worms. We just wanted to be sure that the majority were the correct type.

I will try to post some pictures later.

Adventure #1 Vermicomposting

Here starts our journey in composting with worms. I have been interested in this for a couple of years and we are finally getting up the motivation to get it together. I just ordered 2 lbs of red wigglers from the wormwoman after ordering I realized she was the writer of "Worms Eat My Garbage," one of the vermicompositng bibles. I looked for it at the local library and am much surprised that it is not there. I may have to buy it.

It is a bummer I have to send away for worms, but we live so rurally that I have not been able to find a supply. I would think they are bountiful here as there is a lot of fishing. So anyway, the worms are on their way. Later today we are going to go to WalMart to buy our bins and prepare the worms home. Arianna is SO excited. She absolutely adores worms and can't wait to have worms as pets. In a recent "Click" magazine there was a story about a girl who was allergic to most pets and ended up with a pet worm. There is another story that explains worm more scientifically. Arianna has me read these over and over and begs for a worm as a pet.

Besides reading many web sites I watched this video:



And then Arianna watched this one more geared towards her:



Now I need to find one about maintaining it.

I think our biggest challenge will be the winter and keeping the worms alive. My husband is not to keen on bringing them indoors and our garage can still be quite cold. I did notice one web site that sold a warmer...but the idea is to do this without adding in a lot...naturally. I know people even keep worm bins under their sink and they don't smell any worse than plants...that earthy smell. Maybe by the end of summer he will be convinced.