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.