jenny.shadegarden

  Last night I made a 45-minute presentation to the Grandview Garden Club about what I have learned about worm composting and the impact it has had on our garden here at Ferndale St. I told the story in two chapters. The first chapter provided context for the condition of the garden when the worms arrived and the progress we have made over two growing seasons since introducing worm castings to the mix. The second chapter told the story of my history with worms, since I got my first worms, cocoons and nesting materials in the summer of 2023. It was an interesting process to write through those stories. I learned more about my own growth as a gardener and a worm cultivator.  One of the surprising offshoots from the presentation was the ideas that emerged for increasing our neighbourhood capacity and capability to cultivate worms and improve permaculture gardening.

  Worms are thriving on a mix of cardboard, sterile compost dirt from the municipality, coffee chaff from a local coffee roaster, alfalfa pellets, kitchen compost and clippings from mowing the yard. I have not been an exemplary gardener this year. I have been trying to do too many things everyday and falling behind on everything. I did not have a plan when I laid out my beds in the spring and I created areas that were difficult to access for watering. I don't know which volunteer plants to keep and which ones I need to remove or at least reduce. I tried soaker hoses this year but because my plantings are in clumps on raised beds, a lot of the water is falling in areas that don't benefit the plants I am cultivating but it does benefit the plants I don't want to cultivate. My rain barrels are catching rain on the west side of the house but most of my garden is on the east and south side of the house. I have to carry every gallon from the rain barrels around the house to throw...

  In the dark, early morning I woke from deep sleep to the sound of rainfall. Not just the light patter of a few drops but the steady staccato of rain falling on the roof of the house and on the street outside. Out of curiosity I checked the rainfall records at  https://vancouver.weatherstats.ca . In the last week I had finally started hand watering with water from the municipal supply. I was able to keep the garden going with my bucket brigade from the rain barrels until the last week of July, when the barrels were finally empty. The combined rainfall in Vancouver for the months of June and July was less than 3 inches in total. My last record of rainfall collecting in the rain barrels was May 29. That was the last time they were filled. That gave me 300 gallons of water to keep the gardens and worms hydrated. When I checked at 5 am, the first 80 gallon rain barrel was filled and cascading into the second barrel. That seems like a huge amount of water to collect since last nig...

  My tomatoes right now Things have gotten a little out of hand.

  It was a light rain overnight, but it was enough to fill the rain barrels for another week of watering the garden.  It feels good to collect the rain water and use it to grow flowers, berries, and vegetables. 

  In these days fraught with news of authoritarianism it is calming to see the bees busy about their work after a light morning rain.

  Yesterday mid-morning I went to check on the worms in their bins and found the floor littered with dead escapees. I had just changed out another pair of bins the day before - removing half the volume of worm castings, leaving as many worms in the bin as possible, and then refilling the bin with compost soil from the city, alfalfa pellets, greens from the garden and cardboard topper. As I swept up the little carcasses I realized I could no longer manage the work of looking after the worm bins through the winter. I am currently overwhelmed with recovering from caregiving, re-organizing my household, and getting my own health back after dental surgery.  I talked it over with my dear husband and decided to re-home my worm bins to the garden for the winter. I am adopting the hugelkulture method of gardening, creating hills of composted dirt on top of composting leaves and brown materials. To re-home the worms I tipped each bin upside down on the hills of new soil we brought in la...

  My friend, Virginia, is having to dig up her garden to make way for a laneway house. She has given me a collection of plants to re-home. Yesterday I constructed my first garden mounds using the hugelkulur method.  The first step was to dig and rake back the garden soil I put down last spring. The soil that was placed on cardboard last spring came up easily. The sections where I ran out of cardboard were threaded with fine white roots from the poplar tree. It's roots go everywhere. The second step was to pile leaves from the poplar tree to make a thick bed to lay a foundation for each garden mound. The third step was to pile the garden soil on top of the leaves.  The fourth step was to bring a large helping of compost from the kitchen bins. This compost is also full of worms. The fifth and last step was to plant some of the transplants from Virginia into the new mounds.  What I like about this method: The worms can go up and down between the ground and the mound - w...

  When I finished gardening yesterday I had the sidewalks blown clean and the leaves collected in the gardens. Last night another rain storm blew in and today the sidewalks are covered with more leaf gold. This year I am trying a new method to incorporate the leaves into the garden. Instead of putting cardboard down to create a semi-permeable barrier between tree roots and garden beds, I am laying down a thick carpet of leaves. Then I am piling a mound of dirt made up from last year's beds and new compost from the kitchen, as well as worm castings (and worms) from the worm bins. I'm adapting the Hugelkultur Method to take advantage of the windfall from the poplar tree, but also to protect my garden beds from the moisture and nutrient thieving tree roots that stunt growth above ground. I'll wait until things dry out a bit and then collect up this latest batch of leaves to form the foundation for more garden mounds.

  Every year our giant Lombardi Poplar tree drops leaves and branches by the truckload. In the past we would send this windfall to the City composting system.  This year I started to think about the leaves, how I could use them to create a base for my garden beds instead of using cardboard.  The leaves don't break down for the worm bins because they retain their shape unless they are mulched with the lawn mower. Mulching with the lawn mower doesn't work because there are so many leaves they clog the machine. My thinking this year is that I am going to use the leaves to create an organic barrier between the moisture and nutrient thirsty tree roots while providing a semi-permeable membrane so the worms can move in and out of the garden bed. At the same time, I don't want to make any permanent garden beds, I want to be able to move the beds around to continue building up the layer of leaves season after season.  This year, I started an experiment of creating a moveable ...

  It is time to re-organize the garden for winter composting and garden layout for next spring. My best growing results have been in the garden bags using a combination of inert 'compost' soil from the city and then adding worm castings and live compost from my system to add life to the soil.  Putting the plantings into the garden bags protects them from the invasive tree roots from the poplar tree, it also means they are dependent on me for all their water and nutrients.

  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...

  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.

  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...

  I have adopted a basic rule to organize my plantings - food crops are in containers, non-food pollinators and flowers are planted into the ground. My thinking is that the food crops need more consistent moisture and soil enrichment, which is going to attract the inquisitive, acquisitive roots of the Lombardi Poplar, whose roots radiate over the entire surface of our property. The non-food plants are more used to finding their nutrients and moisture in relation to the existing ecosystem of roots.  I had run out of garden bags yesterday, but the peas and bean shoots were not going to wait for me to get another order from the Amazon. The plastic bins have holes drilled in the bottom to allow excess moisture to flow through. I have ordered another batch of grow bags to transfer the plantings. Come to think of it - I am going to need another load of soil from the city to mix in with my compost and worm castings. I have used up the last of the soil we brought in last year. I could...

  The worms have been busy. Two weeks ago I collected the worm castings and re-organized the bins. Today I collected another harvest of worm castings.  I have eight production bins. I'm not worrying about saving the cocoons. I started by scraping off the top surface of the castings that didn't have any worms. After that I dumped the castings that had no food left in them but were full of worms into a separate 'decanter' bin. I left this bin out in the sun and returned to it every 20 minutes or so to pull off the top layer of castings that the worms had vacated to get out of the sun. At the same time, I turned the castings over and pulled out handfuls of worms to put back into the production bins. It didn't take too long before I had decanted these three buckets of castings and the majority of the worms are back in their production bins.  I was surprised at the volume of castings after two weeks. I'm in the middle of planting the garden and I am using the casting...