Gardening by Cathy

a green, caring vegetable farmer.

It is so refreshing to see a producer who truly cares about the customer. Henry grows over 100 types of different vegetables on his farm. Why? For starters he doesn’t want to turn a customer away and then there is his favorite reason, biodiversity. Some years weather patterns are more favorable to one variety over another. A late growing vegetable may do well most years and then one year we have an unusual spring or summer and that vegetable produces poorly. In that unusual year a different variety will take up the slack and do well.

Exciting and tantalizing to the tastebuds are the phrases that come to mind when we explore all the kinds of vegetables we have to choose from on Henry Brockmans farm located in central Illinois. Talk about over 500 varieties of the typical vegetable groups and this starts to get mind boggling. What is that I hear, central Illinois is a bit far to travel for organic vegetables? For you Chicagoans, don’t worry, Henry comes to you.

Starting in mid-May and until the first Saturday in November, Henry is committed to supplying Chicago customers with his colorful bounty at the Evanston Farmers Market every Saturday from 7 am to 1 pm. (However, to get a good selection, be there by 7 am!) For those already near the Peoria area, Henry has a package crate deal. Henry’s CSA delivers spring, summer and winter crates to local subscibers for a total of 26 weeks. This is a far cry from the stilted meager vegetable variety found at ones local supermarket. You even have the wholesomeness of organically grown vegetables too.

Don’t think his dedication has gone unrewarded. In March Henry Brockman along with his extended family is to receive the $1000 North Central Region Patrick Madden award sponsored by the United States Department of Agriculture’s Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program (SARE).

If you want to explore organic foods further, he has written a book called Organic Matters. For more information or to subscribe to Henry’s CSA visit www.henryfarms.com

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What if you don’t see any cocoons after a few months?  Then you first need to check the temperature.  Does the bedding feel hot or cold to the touch?  Grains can heat up the compost, so perhaps you should cut back on the amount of grains or leave them out altogether.  Next, check for smells.  Does it have a sour smell?  Perhaps you have used too much fruit rind as well.  Do you have enough air circulation getting to the bedding?  Sometimes just bottom holes or holes on the sides of the main bin are not enough.  You may have to have the worm bin lid slightly ajar to provide a much needed air flow.

Also, you need to completely replace the bedding at least every 3 months.  Maybe every two months if you have the containers overcrowded with red worm, especially in the wintertime.  What is the bedding, again?   Refer back to the previous posts for a detailed explanation.  In a nutshell, you need to have a body of shredded cardboard with some eggshells at the very least with a covering of shredded, dampened paper as the covering.

This has been the steps to successful vermicomposting.

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For adequate drainage, be sure to drill holes in the individual tray bottoms and/or sides of the bins or construct the bin of chicken wire which is full of holes. Lastly, if you are using a plastic container, leaving the lid ajar would also promote air circulation. The red worms may not need a fan, but they do need their oxygen too.

After 4-6 months for larger bins and 2-3 months for smaller bins, you need to change the bedding. Although the plants love the worm casting and actually thrive in this, these castings are toxic to the worms themselves. So either you constantly harvest the worm castings or you move them into new “clean” bedding as described above. How to do this? There are various methods used to accomplish this. One is the dump method. Here you get a large clean cloth or paper and dump the bin contents onto it. Wait 10 minutes and start removing the top decomposed layers until you start to see worms. Stop and wait another 10 minutes and repeat until you have separated the worms from the old bedding. You don’t have to be perfect here. Store the old bedding however you like to use as natural fertilizer in your garden. Lastly divide up and place the newly harvested worms in their new bedding and the process starts all over again.

Some things to watch for are the formation of swollen bands or clitellum around the worms in the upper part of their body. This means the worm is mature enough to mate. Hence, after a couple of weeks you should look for round pineapple like balls that are cocoons containing the eggs of the red worms. Actually these cocoons start out white, turning yellow and then brown and lastly red just before hatching. Typically out of the 20 eggs, 2-3 become red wormlings. If you see this, you can rest assured that you have provided an environment that the worms are content with.

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Next, sprinkle a light layer of crushed eggshells, followed by a light layer of sand. Since the worms do not have teeth, by swallowing sand grains it helps their muscular gizzard to grind away at the vegetable matter. Next, a light layer of soil gives them some additional bacteria to aid breaking down the plant material. Finally, a thick layer of lightly moistened shredded paper, gives the worms the privacy and darkness that they crave. Now place the worms on top and give them time to disappear into their new home. After this, be sure to use a sprinkling can to lightly water on top of these layers so that there will be a uniform wetness to the red worm bin. It is important to note that if you provided for adequate drainage, the excess water will quickly run off a nicely moist bedding for the red worms to thrive in.

Feeding the worms may initially take some adjustment. Always separate all vegetable leftovers from the meat and dairy products. Now, you can feed them daily, using the dump and run method. You gently, but firmly peel back the top layer of the bin(s) and place the food item(s) and then place the shredded paper layer back exactly the way you found it. Or you can feed them weekly by placing a layer of vegetable slurry fairly deep within the bin for the squirmies to munch on.

So what do you need in a worm bin? You need adequate depth for the worms to bury themselves in the bedding and adequate drainage and ventilation. That’s about it. A depth of 3 inches or more will meet the needs of the worms and either individual trays stacked on one another or one huge bin will provide the ventilation needed

Stay tuned to Part IV

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Growing your own red worms is easy if you remember a few basic rules. Worms need oxygen just as humans do, only their exchange site of Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide is their skin instead of lungs. Therefore, worms need adequate circulation. Worms also live in temperatures that we are able to survive in as well-45 to 95 degrees. Red worms are different than the garden variety or even the night crawlers and should be grown in bins and not in soil. The purpose of red worms is to decompose vegetable matter waste whereas garden worms open up the soil for oxygen to reach the plant roots.

Do feed vegetables, leaves, eggshells, and some fruit rinds to the red worms. Do not feed them any dairy or meat products and limit grains as well. Our goal is to make an odorless compost, one that does not overheat and thereby kill the red worms or one that does not attract rodents or other animals due to dairy or meat products used.

A layered approach seems to meet the red worms desires for darkness and nondisturbance and keeps the smells down of decaying vegetable matter. One starts with a thick layer of shredded moistened cardboard that is the wetness of a wrung out sponge. Next, a layer of either soft vegegable matter such as table scraps or a slurry of the same that has been pulverized in a blender. Using a vegetable slurry is helpful allowing for a fast start in multiplying your worms since they do not have to wait for bacteria to breakdown the vegetables. In this manner, the now-sedentary worms do not have to expend much energy in obtaining the food. Hence, they can grow more quickly. This is a great way to have a multitude of worms with very little work.

Stay tuned for Part III

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Today with the concern that we are slowly poisoning ourselves it is comforting to know that there is an all organic alternative to chemical fertilizers. Vermicomposting refers to the turning of our vegetable garbage into a soil additive called Worm Castings.

The natural fertilizer contained in worm castings is very high in nutrients. Take a typical soil. Worm castings contain several times the available Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P), and Potassium (K); and three times the available calcium(Ca). Nitrogen is hard to supply to a soil since it comes in volatile forms such as an ammonia-like gas that quickly dissipates or is bound so tightly that the plants cannot use it. However, worm castings allow for the slow release of its nutrients to the soil, making them readily available to the plants roots. How is this done? Basically, via the breakdown of organic matter, humus is formed. Humus contains humic acid which loosely holds onto N, P, K and Ca It has been found that a soil composed of 15% worm casting is optimal for the growth of plants. More that this, there is no observable difference in plant growth.

Now, soil castings take longer to break down or erode that regular soil. How is this possible? The red worms digest the vegetable matter as well as some paper and/or cardboard by passing it through their crop, muscular gizzard, and intestines where it is ground up and mixed with their enzymes and mucous. Hence, this mucous coating remains on the worm casting and quickly dries to provide a barrier to resist being eroded by water. In fact, worm castings also take 2-3 times their weight in water and so help to keep a soil moist.

Stay tuned for Part II

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