The Modern Victory Garden

There are many ways to create excellent compost to use as a soil amendment in your garden.   Vermicompost is the product or process of composting using certain species of worms (usually red worms).   Last summer we ventured into vermicomposting by putting together a worm box from a kit we purchased from a local business (BugaBay Company located on Whidbey Island).    We then installed it in an area on the backside of our house that is too shaded to grow anything in.                                     

Since then, we have been regularly emptying the contents of our large kitchen compost pail into it.   The majority of the actual garden debris still goes to the regular compost piles.    Only a small portion of the direct garden vegetation/debris has ended up in the worm box and another small portion periodically goes to our hens for treats.   Instead the worm box is being fed from the trimmings that come from the kitchen and other food waste items.   With this strategy I keep the worm box fueled, the hens happy, and the regular compost piles supplied.   Each worm box or bin functions in slightly different manners.   Some are in ground boxes like mine, others are plastic bin units designed to be kept inside the house, and there are many variations in between.   With my worm box there are two open bottomed bins that you alternate using to accumulate food and garden waste into.   One side is for accumulating while the other side is being worked on by the worms.   When the layer of food and garden wastes in the bin gets to about 4 inches deep evenly across the bin, a covering of thoroughly wetted peat moss is added and the layering process is started over again on top of it.   Once one side of the bin has been filled full, it is time to harvest/remove the finished worm casting compost from the adjacent bin to make room for a new layering process of food and garden wastes to begin.   The worms will move from one side to the other after they have consumed the available rotting material - so long as there is new/fresh material being accumulated in the adjacent bin for them to move to.                  

I harvested my first full bin of vermicompost last fall and now it is February and it needed harvesting again.   I think this is pretty impressive production considering that it is winter and worms tend to slow down considerably when it gets cold or very hot.   On Monday I dug (pardon the pun!) into this task and harvested the finished side of the bins.   The process is simple, you rake the surface to expose any worms in the top layer to light and thus encourage them to burrow down deeper into the pile.   You then wait ten minutes and then shovel off the topmost portion of the finished pile into a waiting wheelbarrow or bucket.    Any larger chunks of items that are encountered that are not quite finished, are just added back into the adjacent bin to continue being worked on by the worms.   The process is repeated until the bin is empty.            

What you end up with is a beautiful mixture of decomposed vegetable or food waste, bedding materials, and vermicast (which is worm castings, worm humus or worm manure).   The difference between regular compost and vermicompost is that the worms consume much of the rotting material and then excrete their waste (castings) which are full of microorganisms, nutrients, trace elements, hormones, enzymes, growth regulators and minerals.                               

I was really happy to find large masses of healthy worms working big clumps of rotting material down deep in the pile.   They appear to have survived our zone 8b winter quite well in the outdoor box with no protection provided to them other than the box itself (largely sunk into the ground) and deep layers of rotting materials for them to feed and burrow in.   When I started into vermicomposting I was worried we would not have enough food wastes on a regular basis to keep the box fueled without impacting my regular compost pile production.   This has turned out to be a needless worry, as we produce at least one very large pail of garden waste a week for the bin, which has been more than adequate to keep it supplied with virtually no encroachment on the regular compost pile fuel supply.         

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

HARVEST MONDAY

Each Monday, Daphne’s Dandelions hosts “Harvest Monday” where everyone submits links to their blog posts summarizing their harvest for the week.   It’s fun to see what people are producing from gardens from so many different regions, and how they are using it.    Check it out and join in too!                                    

Things are growing but very slowly (it is still winter after all), so we continue to rely primarily on frozen, stored, and canned items for our vegetables with only minimal fresh harvests to supplement the preserved and stored items.    My supplies have been holding up remarkably well this year.   However, I am getting low on peas and sweet corn, and I am completely out of frozen broccoli and spinach.    Thankfully I have several packages of frozen kale and swiss chard yet, which is a good substitute for cooked spinach.   Everything else is still well stocked and we have not had to “do without” very many items this year.   On Sunday I harvested a nice mix of various young greens (kale, swiss chard, napa cabbage, and lettuces).

The greens were made into a mixed green salad and served with oven roasted pork chops and a side of pasta shells in a creamy cheese sauce for the Sunday dinner.                                                       

Harvest totals for the week of February 13th through February 19th (rounded to the nearest pound).

• Green Onions 0.00 lbs (not enough to make harvest tally weight)
• Lettuce & Greens 0.25 lbs

Total For Week 0.25 lbs

Total Year to Date 5.50 lbs                                             

Eggs collected this week – 13                                                      

SEEDLING PROGRESS REPORT

Several weeks ago, I moved two containers of early started Ailsa Craig onions out from the unheated greenhouse to the deck.   There they have been growing quite happily since.                                                        

I was pleasantly surprised on Saturday to find some tiny spinach plants emerging between the onion plants.    I had seeded some spinach in these containers back in mid-January and had decided they were not going to germinate - so I tucked the onion seedlings into the pots instead.   Apparently I was just being too impatient as the spinach is definitely now emerging!    This actually will be a nice combo planting with the spinach greens providing an early harvest and then being removed prior to the onions needing more room.                       

The first several rounds of seedlings have been growing well.   In fact, many items have now been moved out to the unheated greenhouse to continue growing on and start hardening off.   This frees up room under the grow lights in the house for new seedlings to be started.   I am going to be starting a large group of items for the Giving Garden on Monday which will fill the area up under the lights again.   Meanwhile, the current group of seedlings are growing and progressing well.  

I have a day off from work on Monday (Presidents Day) and hope to spend it doing the Giving Garden seed starting as well as harvesting the finished bin of worm casting compost.    Both bins are completely full and I need to remove the finished side to open up an area for new food wastes to be put.    Hopefully it will not rain (or at least not excessively) Monday so I can enjoy some time just puttering in the garden.                                          

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

Sunday was overcast but generally a dry and comfortable day – perfect weather to knock a few more of my fall “to do” items off of the list.   First up was to finish clearing out the spent crops from the back section of the garden.  Two weeks ago, I pulled out the bush beans and the snap peas from this area of the garden, but the tomatoes and cucumbers were still in place.   On Sunday I tackled the not so fun chore of clearing out the tomato patch.   The plants were starting to go down from disease and molds caused by the cooler temperatures, increasing rain amounts, and decreasing sun strength and day length.   It was time to bid them goodbye for yet another year.   Here’s what this part of the garden looked like before I started doing any of the fall clean up in the back garden area.                        

As mentioned before, the bush beans and snap peas came out two weeks ago.   This weekend, I took out the tomatoes and the cucumbers.   The red plastic mulch was removed; the soaker hoses coiled up and put away; and the tomato cages and ladders were rinsed off and also put away.   Once done, the back section of the garden was in large part laid bare.                 

But it is not entirely bare.   Back in the far corner of this garden area is a new bed I created quite a few weeks ago as a permanent home for the artichoke plants.   I had grown them in large pots all through the summer but moved them to a permanent bed to try and continue growing them as a perennial.   In the course of transplanting these very large plants (out of even larger pots) I had to manhandle them pretty badly and I was fearful they were damaged in the process and might not make it.   But take a look at the plants now!         

Lots of new young shoots coming up, so obviously I did not manage to actually kill them – just roughed them up a bit!   The plants have a protective barrier of wire panels around them to keep my flock of hens out.   Once the weather starts getting a lot colder, I plan to place a thick mulch of fall leaves over the bed to insulate the roots from really deep freezes.   Hopefully, these protective actions will help ensure that these artichoke plants survive over the winter to grow on and produce for me as a perennial crop.                       

Behind the greenhouse is a bed that has my two ultra dwarf apple trees planted from bare rootstock earlier this spring.   Underneath and between the two trees (which are growing very well), I have a patch of green onions growing that I direct seeded in mid to late summer.   They have put on quite a bit of good growth and should provide some usable green onions for fresh cooking needs after the leek patch has been all used up.                

 The other fall chore I got taken care of on Sunday was the planting of the garlic patch.   I completely emptied out the left hand bin of the worm box and got a good wheelbarrow load of gorgeous worm casting laden finished compost.                 

I spread this thickly over the 4’X8’ section of bed that the garlic was to be planted in and then mixed it in to the top few inches and raked it smooth.        

The soil in this bed is just beautiful.   In fact, I think it is rapidly becoming the best on the property, because I have used it for the pea patch every other year since it’s creation and the soil in this location had a little more sand in it than elsewhere on our property, which when combined on a regular basis with exceptionally nice compost becomes a very light and humousy loam.   I used my 6 inch planting jig to mark the prepped soil and then initially placed the garlic cloves into the designated spots.   I waited until all of them were laid out to make sure I had them properly set before going back and pushing them down into the soil and covering them.                 

I planted most of the bed in Music, which is a hard neck variety I grew in 2011 with good success.   I really like its flavor and it produced nicely for me.   I also planted some Silver Rose, which is a soft neck variety that I have also grown with good success in the past.   The garlic is planted right next to a section of bed that I direct seeded in mid to late summer with a storage onion variety (Top Keeper).   I am experimenting again with over wintering onions to try and improve my onion yields.   By direct seeding mid summer rather than transplanting starts, I am ending up with more sturdy seedlings going into the winter and hopefully they will be more successful at surviving the winter than some of my previous attempts at this have.   I may opt to cover this bed with plastic later to keep it protected during the coldest part of the winter months.   They are looking pretty good right now though.              

The last task I did before calling it a day, was to direct seed some hull less barley that an online friend (Thank you Cherie!) provided me last fall along with the tree kale starts.   I did not manage to get them planted last fall so the seed is a year older.   This year, I found a section of garden bed that was unused (but under netting cover so the hens will stay out) and scratched in the seed to do a mini trial to see how it will do in my growing climate.    Hopefully the seed did not lose much viability by being held for a full year before planting.   It is always fun to experiment a little.                    

Managed to clear quite a few things off my fall “to do” list last weekend.   However, I still need to clean the greenhouse panels to ensure as much feeble winter sun can get in as possible.   If it is not raining too heavily this coming weekend, I may try to get that one done soon too.   Eventually, I will have a few more crops to clear out from the side garden area but they are producing harvests (or are about to) yet – so those will be waiting a while.   Otherwise, I think the garden is largely ready for winter now.              

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

Around the last part of June, we set up a worm box in an area that is too shaded (back side of the house) to grow anything in.           

Since then, we have been putting all of our kitchen compost pail contents into it along with some chicken manure we pick up from walk way areas occassionally and a small part of the garden trimmings.   The rest of the garden debris is partially split to the hens for treats and the majority of it goes to the regular compost piles still.    With this strategy I am keeping the worm box fueled, the hens happy, and the regular compost has continued accumulating nicely.   When the layer of food and garden wastes in the worm box gets to about 4 inches deep evenly across the bin, a covering of thoroughly wetted peat moss is added and the layering process is started over again on top of it.   Once the left side of the bin was substantially full, we began layering on the right side of the bin.   The worms have been busy doing their work and two months later from the set up (end of August), the left side now contains a finished castings and peat mixture, while the right side is getting fairly full with newer accumulated layers of wastes.         

It is now time to begin harvesting the finished worm casting compost from the left bin.   To do that, I raked the surface to expose any worms in the top layer to light and thus encourage them to burrow down deeper into the pile.   I waited ten minutes and then came back and scraped off the topmost portion of the finished pile into a bucket.            

Any larger chunks of items that were not quite finished that I encountered, were just added back into the bin on the right side to continue being worked by the worms.   I stopped with this one full bucket for the time being, because I had a project I needed this for and wanted to get on with it.        

I will finish harvesting the rest of the finished castings over the course of the next two weeks.   About the time that the finished pile is completely removed, the right hand bin should be pretty full up and it will be time to shift the food waste layering back to the then empty left side bin.   The process of accumulating items will then occur on that side while the worms finish working the right side pile.   

 The finished worm casting compost was collected to provide amendments for a new garden bed I constructed on Monday.   It was a holiday and I wanted to tackle this project while the weather was fine and I had time to get it done.   Specifically, the project was to build an 8-foot by 2-foot bed in a corner area of the back garden abutting the fence, which is to become the permanent artichoke bed.   It is possible to grow artichokes as a perennial in my region if they are given some minimal winter protection.   The three artichokes I grew this year were in large black pots, which was not an ideal way to over winter them as the roots close to the sides of a container are subject to freezing without the insulating effect of soil all around them.   If I was going to try and over winter these plants, they really needed to be transplanted into a permanent “in the ground” location.   The spot chosen for them was the place the containers were already situated in.                

I wrestled the container plantings out of the way, and then constructed a framed bed using extra lumber I had on hand in the shop.   I then used a shovel to dig down into the very compacted soil.   Working my way down the bed initially to just loosen and aerate the soil.         

I then dug very large holes and used the worm casting compost along with some organic fertilizer to amend the bottom of the holes thoroughly.   It was really difficult to wrestle those large plants out of their containers and into the prepared planting spots.    I broke off several branches in the process but managed to get them in place and intact (for the most part!).          

I intend to lay a soaker hose down on this bed eventually since it is a permanent planting bed, but I need a shorter length hose than any I happen to have on hand, so it will have to wait until I purchase one.              

Not sure if those plants will survive the transplanting or not, but they were done with production for the year anyways and if I should lose them, I will just start some new ones next year and use this bed to plant them up in right from the start.   Hopefully though, they will survive my manhandling and get firmly rooted and settled in before winter arrives. 

Laura

Kitsapfreedomgardener

Harvest Monday

Each Monday, Daphne’s Dandelions hosts “Harvest Monday” where everyone submits links to their blog posts summarizing their harvest for the week.   It’s fun to see what people are producing from gardens from so many different regions, and how they are using it.   Check it out and join in!          

Monday August 1st was my first day back home after my trip to Pennsylvania.   My priority that day was to harvest the abundant snap peas and Sun Gold cherry tomatoes.   I also harvested some carrots but did not manage to get a picture of them. 

Monday’s harvest was incorporated into that evening’s dinner which was baked seasoned/breaded pork chops with chunks of carrot baked along with them in the same pan (butter was put in the dish and melted in the hot oven before adding the chops and the carrots) plus steamed snap peas (served simply with some butter and a sprinkle of salt) and some homemade macaroni and cheese.      

Tuesday’s harvest was just one lone tomato and I missed getting a photo of it.   This was used along with some lettuce from last week’s harvest (in the fridge) to make tacos for dinner that night.  On Wednesday I harvested some raspberries in the early morning before work.   They were eaten fresh by the two of us and were gone before the day was out.        

That evening after work I harvested some tomatoes, lettuce, and a very small pepper.                        

The cherry tomatoes and tiny pepper were just eaten raw as snacks.   The rest was used to make that night’s dinner - bacon lettuce and tomato sandwiches made with sliced up garden onions (prior harvests in storage), the large fresh leaves of lettuce, crisp bacon, and thick slices of the ripe tomatoes on honey multigrain bread spread with lots of mayo.   Yum!   

Thursday night I harvested a full-size tomato plus a handful of cherry tomatoes, a medium sized pepper, and a bunch of sugar snap peas.              

The tomatoes were just eaten raw as snacks.   The rest was used to make the evening meal, which was a stir fry of onions, peppers, sugar snap peas, and strips of lean pork.   After the vegetables and meat were cooked a spicy Thai peanut sauce was added and cooked until heated through and then it was served with cooked rice.                             

Saturday I harvested a nice variety of items including celery, beets, tomatoes, a pepper, a small zucchini, cucumbers, basil, bush beans, and some raspberries.     

Most of the celery and all of the cucumbers, zucchini, and raspberries were eaten raw as snacks.   The rest was used to make Saturday nights dinner.   The feature of the meal was slow cooked barbecue baby back ribs.   I did a dry rub of barbecue seasoning spices on the ribs and then slow cooked them in the oven for almost 4 hours at 300 degrees.   During the last hour I brushed on some sweet and tangy barbecue sauce.   The barbecue baby back ribs were served along with Italian Bean Salad (tomatoes, basil, and peppers were used along with previously harvested onions from storage), steamed green beans (served simply with a little butter and salt), and roasted beets that were peeled and then diced up (also served with a little butter and salt).   Delicious!      

Sunday was another harvest of a good variety of items including potatoes, carrots, snap peas, lettuces, and a nice head of savoy cabbage.                 

The lettuce was washed, spun dry, and then torn up into pieces and made into a very large bowl of green salad.   This will be kept in the fridge and used for lunches and other meal prep over the next several days.   Making up salads on the weekend when I have more time, helps me manage a hectic workweek.   The snap peas were just rinsed and eaten raw for snacks.   The rest went into the preparation of Sunday night dinner – grilled steaks, oven roasted crisp potatoes, and a coleslaw made from the cabbage, grated carrots, a little diced onion (previous harvest - in storage) and my favorite sweet slaw dressing (1/8 cup of maple syrup, 1/8 cup lemon juice, ¾ cup of mayo, and a dash of grated nutmeg).                             

Harvest totals for the week of August 1st through August 7th (rounded to the nearest ¼ pound).

• Basil 0.00 lbs (not enough to round up to ¼ pound)
• Beets 0.75 lbs
• Cabbage 1.25 lbs
• Carrots 0.75 lbs
• Celery 1.00 lbs
• Cucumbers 0.00 lbs (not enough to round up to ¼ pound)
• Lettuce 1.25 lbs
• Peas (snap) 2.00 lbs
• Peppers 0.25 lbs
• Potatoes 2.00 lbs
• Raspberries 0.50 lbs
• Tomatoes 1.75 lbs
• Zucchini 0.25 lbs

Total For Week 11.75 lbs

Total Year To Date 152.75 lbs                               

Eggs collected this week – 33                           

Some Creatures In My Garden

My garden always has a few creatures in it, some are welcome and some - not so much.   The wild rabbit that was chomping down my strawberry patch earlier this year appears to have moved on (or was eaten by our local coyotes).    But almost as big as a rabbit, our maritime Pacific Northwest slugs are a force to be reckoned with in the garden.   There are a lot of them this year in the potato patch.   Despite regular slug picking patrols on my part, they still are rather plentiful.         

Luckily the potato leaves and vines are lush and thick and the plants are holding their own despite the abundance of munching slime makers.           

There is another group of creatures that live on the edge of my garden and have a voracious appetite.   They would eat the garden down to nothing if given the opportunity.   Just to show you what a difference the fence makes… look at this picture of my bean patch on the garden side of the fence.                

And then look at the bean patch leaves and vines that grew through the fence… well, look at the ragged edge of what USED to be vines and leaves!    

The creatures that did this munching are actually welcome residents on our property.   Have you guessed who they are?   Well, let me just say that I don’t begrudge them the tidbits they eat from the edge of the fence because they provide us with 4 to 6 eggs a day on a regular basis.   Yes, that was my little flock of hens that have been trimming any vegetation from the garden that dares to grow too close to (or through) the fence.   Here are three of them in the chicken coop nest boxes this morning, busy working on their contribution to our good eating.        

Another creature we purposefully work to keep on our property are the worms in our worm box.   You may recall that we set the worm box up the first part of July.   We have since been putting food wastes and kitchen trimmings into the box regularly and are now shifting over to putting wastes into the right side bin.                      

In the left side, the food wastes are all getting gobbled up by the worms and our population of worms is definitely growing.   When you dig into the bin even a little bit you will reveal many worms and lots of baby worms – well at least for a few seconds before they all quickly vanish back into the muck of the pile they are working on to avoid the exposure to light.    They are a little hard to see in a photo but if you look close you can see several of them that had not managed to wiggle out of sight before I snapped a photo.                 

I will close with a picture of a creature that is always in my garden whenever I am there.                

My cat Sid likes to sit in the shade of the corn patch or under the large leaves of the cabbage patch and keep me company while I work in the garden.   I like to think it is because he is guarding me while I work, but I think it is just his inner tiger calling him into his vegetable garden jungle.                    

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

Wednesday I blogged about the worm box we ordered, which arrived and was assembled by my husband.    It was just waiting to be put in place and initialized with some food waste/bedding layers and the first red worms.   Here’s what it looked like fully assembled in the shop on Wednesday night.                       

The 2 lbs of red worms we ordered arrived on Friday.   We went with 2 lbs because we are now only a family of 2 people and although the garden produces a lot of trimmings, we also use much of those for the regular garden compost and for the chickens.   According to the Washington State University (WSU) Extension Service, 2 pounds of worms are required for each pound of kitchen waste produced per day.    So in order to feed 2 lbs of worms, we need to layer in 7 lbs of food wastes on a weekly basis.   Between our weekly kitchen compost pail amounts plus other food scraps, and trimmings from the garden as needed, we should easily be able to produce that amount for them on a consistent basis.  

On Friday afternoon my husband dug the spot for the worm box and set it down into the ground, backfilling around it.   Next to it we placed a large black tub full of thoroughly dampened peat moss.   The peat moss is the bedding layer needed.    Having it close by makes it easy to add several inches of damp bedding material on top of each thick layer of food wastes placed in the bin.   The bedding layer helps keep the bin from getting smelly and also gives the worms some additional insulation and protection from light (which they don’t like).   We can also use wetted shredded paper as well and intend to do that in the future, but for now we went with a large bale of peat moss.   We situated the worm box behind the house in a strip of land between the house and the back sidewalk (under the eaves of the house) that gets shade virtually all day and is unsuitable for growing any plants in.   Here’s a picture of the worm box as finally positioned and set up.   As you can see, it is largely buried below ground level, which provides insulation for the worms during colder weather months.                               

It’s kind of hard to see in this next photo, but the left hand bin has been filled about half full with several thick alternating layers of damp bedding and food wastes.   It is topped with a layer of the damp bedding material.   The worms were added into this prior to adding the top most layer.                    

 We will continue to layer on food wastes and bedding in this first bin until it becomes full and then we will shift to adding the materials to the second bin on the right.   Once the worms have exhausted the food supply in the first bin, they will migrate through the slats in the center divider to the new bin and begin working that side.   That is when the first side should be ready for us to begin harvesting worm castings.   Eventually the first bin is emptied out and the worm castings are used as a soil amendment and fertilizer and the process starts all over again by filling the left bin once the right bin is full.   Everything is now in place and in operation.   Hopefully the worms will find their new home to their liking and produce lots of castings for us to use in the garden.                                     

While I am in the processing of giving you an update, let me share with you that I spotted the first artichoke buds forming on my plants yesterday.   They are tiny and down deep in the central growing area of the plant so they are hard to photograph, but here is a picture of one of them.                     

Hopefully I will get more than just these first central buds, but I am thrilled to see that they are going to produce buds in this first year of growth.   Obviously I was successful in giving them an adequate period of chill to induce budding the first year.                              

Finally, I had to share that the Sun Gold tomatoes have their first few tomatoes that are ripening.                           

There is only one cluster so far that has really broken color but several more should be right behind it.   We have a stretch of decent weather forecasted for the coming week and I expect it will push all of the tomato plants along with their production and ripening of fruit.   The full size tomatoes will be a while longer yet, but having some cherry tomatoes to enjoy will make the wait much more tolerable!                            

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

It seems we always come up with projects for our garden and homestead.   In fact, I don’t think a year has gone by in my adult life where there has not been some improvement, change, or addition that was undertaken.   This year, I thought our big project would be installing the cross fencing, but in retrospect our involvement was fairly minimal as we just staked it out and then paid someone else to come in and install it.   It seems that this was not near enough to satisfy the “Project Demons” that apparently reside within my husband and myself, because lately one of our wish list projects has repeatedly come up for discussion.   Specifically, the notion of getting a worm box established has suddenly elevated in interest level for both of us.    The clincher was last Saturday while I was working some volunteer hours at the Kingston Farm and Garden Co-op Giving Garden, some of the volunteers were working to assemble a worm box (from a kit) for the Giving Garden.    I really liked the simple design of the box, the cedar lumber used to construct it, and how easily and quickly it was assembled.   Seeing this nifty worm box just threw gasoline on our worm box fire and after getting home that afternoon and having a brief discussion with the spouse… the same worm box kit was ordered and on it’s way.                       

We purchased it from a local supplier, so it arrived incredibly fast.   In fact, we ordered it Saturday and it was here on Tuesday.   Today (Wednesday) while I was away at work, my husband assembled the box in the shop.         

You can see in this last photo that the bottom is open (you can see the table top it is sitting on).   This weekend, I will help my husband carry this to its designated spot.   It is too bulky for one person to do alone.   We are waiting for the weekend to do this because the ground where this will be located must be dug out before setting it in place, and neither of us wanted to do it on a weeknight.   Once it is put in place it will end up being partially buried below the soil line, which provides an insulation effect that protects the worms.   The next step after that will be to layer in the compostable items and the bedding material (peat moss, shredded paper, etc) in the first bin and moisten it thoroughly (just like regular compost pile assembly) so that it is moist like a damp sponge throughout.   A couple thick layers are all that is needed to get started.   We can then add the red worms (we will be adding 2 lbs of worms) and then just continue that process of regularly adding layers of food wastes covered by a thick layer of damp bedding until the first bin is full.   When that happens we start layering in the second bin.   When the worms have used up all the food supply in the first bin, they will migrate to the second area where the fresh supply has been provided.   This is when we will be able to start harvesting the worm castings from the first bin to use as fertilizer and a soil amendment for the garden.     The cycle then just keeps repeating back and forth.   We have been doing lots of research on this and feel ready to become worm wranglers, but I know we will learn a lot more through actual hands on experience.    I will provide updates later on how this project progresses.                     

So I wonder… what will next year’s project be?                 

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener