jenny.shadegarden

  Yesterday I extracted 70 lb of worm castings from my 10 bins (bin on the right). This was one week of production. I am trying to get into a regular weekly schedule for extracting castings and feeding the worms. The bin on the left is the mix of food and bedding to be added for this week's feeding. My worm production system is utilizing the sterile compost soil produced by the City of Vancouver (city soil) and turning it into high quality, microbe rich worm castings. Last week I extracted 65 lbs of worm castings to make room to add new food. Most of the green food had been consumed. Last week's food recipe: old alfalfa pellets, somewhat moldy (part of green mix) overgrown lettuce plants from the garden (part of green mix) city soil (part of brown mix) coffee chaff (part of brown mix) This mix was soaked in water for several hours to soften the alfalfa pellets. After extracting the worm castings, I divided the bin of food into the 10 worm bins. There is a layer of old, damp car...

  My garden is partially shaded by surrounding trees. The soil environment is dominated by a giant Lombardi Poplar that sends it's hungry thirsty roots everywhere. I am not an experienced gardener, I've been trying permaculture techniques to create a food garden. This year I planted in garden bags to protect the food plants from unfair competition. We brought in several truckloads of soil from the city composting system, which has nice texture but no nutrients or micro-organisms. I started worm farming to generate worm castings to add as soil amendment to the city soil the garden bags.  This is my first time starting basil plants from seed. This happy basil is being watered regularly with a slurry of worm castings. Sometimes I soak banana peels overnight and mix the worm castings into that mix. The plants prove the theory. Adding worm castings to city soil, with some banana peel water once in a while, creates a viable growing medium for food plants in garden bags. I have disco...