Basil responds to worm castings - 2024 08 09

 


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 discovered two high potency food sources for the worms - alfalfa pellets and rabbit droppings (w/ old bedding). 

Last week I harvested 65 lb of worm castings from the rabbit dropping feeding.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rain barrels installed - 2024 06 10

Image
  We installed the rain barrel issued from the City last fall. It has been collecting rainwater from the shed roof and the awning. It is 75 gallon capacity and fills quickly during a rainfall. Yesterday we finished installing three 80 gallon rain barrels purchased from Barr Plastics. We are now able to store over 300 gallons of water on site from rainwater collection. According to my calculations based on 1" of water per sq ft of garden per week, 300 gallons of storage capacity should be able to support 100 sq ft of garden for one month. Based on rainfall patterns here in Vancouver, it is reasonable that we should expect to be able to fill these rain barrels once per month, even during drought months. Last night when it started raining, I could hear the trickle of rain water outside my bedroom window as the empty barrel started to fill with water. The sound lulled me back to contented sleep. Calculations: 4' x 4' = 16 sq ft garden bed needs approx 10 gallons of water per w...
Read more

Busy worms - 2023 06 11

Image
  I lifted the lid on the worm farm Level 1 and could see worms at the top of the compost material, there were a couple migrating into Level 2. Microbiology is like magic. There are all these interacting lifeforms too small for me to see. What I do see is the compost pile slowly turning into soil.  This gardening experience is very different from my previous attempts - over decades - to grow a garden. I never understood soil biology. I never understood that the plants growing in the garden need bacteria working in the soil. The soil is alive. When there is healthy soil, there are healthy plants. My worm friends are teaching me about soil biology. It is fun to go out and check on them, to see how they are doing, to make sure their newsprint cover is moist. As I picked up Level 2 of my worm farm to check on Level 1 activity, I could see a couple of wigglers working their way up through the screen to get to the new food supply in level 2.
Read more