jenny.shadegarden

  Sometime in the middle of the night it started to rain. It has been at least a couple of weeks since I drained the rain barrels of the last drops since the precipitation event recorded Jun 27. The rainfall recorded is 8.7 mm as of 8 am. I checked the rain barrels and the two barrels on the west side of the house catching rainfall off the main roof are full. That is 160 gallons of rainwater overnight based on 8.7 mm recorded rainfall. The single tank catching rainfall from the porch roof is about 3/4 full. The single tank catching rainfall off the shed and porch awning feels at least 3/4 full.  I am hand watering with a 2 gallon bucket. Each 2 gallon bucket waters approximately 4 plants / containers. I haven't counted up the number of plants / containers I am watering at present. I will do that inventory next. It is a wonderful feeling to wake up in the night and hear the gutters singing with rainwater collecting in the rain barrels.

  South end of east boulevard garden received a watering with worm castings. Yesterday I extracted another 10 to 15 gallons of worm castings from my 10 bins. I'm estimating based on pulling 10 handfuls from each bin to make room for new food and bedding mix. I still had at least this much worm castings left from my last two extractions so I decided to use them up by watering every plant in the garden with a mix of water and worm castings. I would fill a 2 gallon bucket 1/2 full with worm castings and then top up the bucket with water. Using a small saucepan, I would stir up the water mixture and pull a four cup measure from the bucket and pour it at the base of the plant. Using this method, I used up all the worm castings and watered all the garden bags, the food plant beds, the raspberry canes, the in ground flower plantings along the house, and the transplants in the indigenous boulevard bed. This south end of the east boulevard has never done well. When it was grass, the grass w...

  10 worm bins in production The worms are doing really well in my current container / bedding / feeding / extraction configuration. Container - medium size mortar mixing containers, a combination of two bins. The bottom bin is intact, waterproof. I put spacers in the bottom to lift the second aerated bin above the base. The second aerated bin has been peppered with holes to allow excess moisture to drip into the base. Sometimes there are some castings that have dropped through the holes. Also, sometimes there are worms that have slipped out into the base when there is excess moisture. These worms will drown or die if they aren't rescued in time. Bedding - a combination of coffee chaff from the local coffee roaster (brown compost) and soil from the city's composting program (I consider this material brown compost because it is inert due to high heat during the composting process). The lid is made out of Amazon shipping boxes that have been soaked in water until they are soft. T...

  I am now operating 10 medium mortar mixing trays for my worm bins. Last week I extracted 5 - 2 gal buckets of worm castings.  I gave one bucket away yesterday, and today I collected another 4 - 2 gal buckets of castings. All the buckets of worm castings have been consolidated in a separate bin because I was running out of 2 gal buckets.  Today all the bins were re-mixed and fed. Last week I used soaked cardboard for 'lids' to keep the bins from drying out. We are in a heat wave here. The worms LOVED that wet cardboard. They were already breaking it down on the dirt side, even as the topside dried out due to evaporation. Next each bin will receive a light sprinkling of alfalfa pellets, compost soil and coffee chaff before being closed up again with the soaked cardboard. I'm not going to add in any moisture to the bin soil. They have maintained a good moisture level this week. My estimation is that I have approximately 20 gal of worm castings on hand.