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.