Worm Bin

I've been contemplating how to compost my food scraps for awhile. This is partly because compost is awesome for plants, smells good, and makes me feel like I'm got an army of microbes at my command. Mostly, though, it's because I feel intensely guilty tossing food into the landfill. My city, like most US cities, doesn't separate and compost food scraps. For homeowners, the choices are pretty broad - you can have a compost heap, a compost bin, a turner, worms, windrows, bury your stuff in the ground, chickens, pigs, a goat, etc.

Unfortunately, budget and apartment dwelling limit things considerably. For example, I'm pretty sure the electric lines run straight through the narrow grass alleyway that is all the great outdoors I can lay claim to. Also, the ground would require a pick-axe to cleave it. So burying is out. So is heaping, as the landlords dutifully sweep through every few weeks to mow and remove extraneous crap.

Worms are the logical choice, of course. E. foetida, red wrigglers (or wigglers), are commonly used to compost food scraps. I've been wary, because I'm not usually very good with maintenance activities, and if the worms aren't happy, they can run. This sounds terrifying, as if 1,000 worms might take up arms and march through my apartment. I'm not creeped out by crawlies, but 1,000 worms trying to get out, chased by my cats, might try my patience. Also, worms are pricey - at ~$35/lb., they're not quite a bit more expensive than heaping stuff together and letting the microbes do all the work. And the warnings about keeping the right moisture levels and acidity make me nervous, because I have no idea what 60% moisture feels like. (Do you?) So like all things new, it's intimidating.

But I have a cunning plan. I rescued an old plastic organization system from the street last year. You know the type - it usually goes in your garage, and has a few shallow drawers, and a couple deep ones. It's probably 4 feet tall. My plan is to turn this into my worm tower over the summer, and if I love it, move it inside over the winter. I'm not sure how this will work out - the sides of the bins are clear, for one thing, and the shelves aren't tight together, so getting the worms to move between levels might be a challenge. But it's worth a try, especially since I have a load of cardboard boxes that are no longer good for holding things together. Those will serve well as bedding. And thanks to Geico and the local cable company, I have colorless computer paper. And thanks to my worthless union, I have newsprint! So having all that, how could I not order some worms, cross my fingers, and give it a go?

Of course, I have fantasies about using the worm castings to feed my seedlings, which will grow big and strong and feed me and the worms all over again. But even if I never use the castings, I'll feel much better having recycled some of my waste close to home.

Haha, not dead

So, not dead. I suck at regular posting, apparently. I've completed my seed orders, and as usual, my promises to focus on one thing have gradually fallen away. I was going to make this a soil building year, but then there's awesome new varieties to try, and herbs to grow, and co-planting to experiment with.
Here's my seed purchase list for this year. It *looks* shorter than last years list, but only because I didn't get free seeds this year. (It's okay, Seed Savers. I still love you.)

-Masai Bush Haricots Verts
-Kentucky Wonder Pole Bean
-Multicolored Pole Bean Mix
-Windsor Fava Bean
-Taylor Dwarf Horticultural Shell Bean
-Black Coco Bean
-King of the Early Bean
-Blizzard Snow Pea OG
-Easter Egg Radish
-Shinden Risoh Daikon Radish
-White Egg Turnip
-Prisma Shallots
-Mustard Mix
-Fish Hot Pepper
-Some Like it Hot Pepper Mix
-Verde Puebla Tomatillo OG
-Green Zebra Tomato
-Cherokee Purple Tomato
-Sun Gold Cherry Tomato
-Sweet Basil
-Anise Basil
-Wild Bergamot OG
-Zefa Fino Fennel
-Broadleaf Sage
-Danish Flag Poppy
-Akanata Mame - Sword Bean
-Kyoto Kujo Negi- Bunching Onion
-Ginkaku Korean Melon
-Tae Baek - Korean Radish
-Kurogoma -Black Sesame

The plot's legume heavy this year. I also requested a couple trial varieties, but I'm not sure if they'll pull through or not. I'm also holding out hope for purple tomatillos and Purple Russian tomatoes. I haven't sorted through my seed box to see if any are left from last year. If not, I may have to do an emergency purchase. And I'm going to do some cover cropping - rye and vetch, and buckwheat.

I'm really excited about the bergamot (bee balm), which is supposed to grow cooperatively with tomatoes, and attract insects that eat or parasitize nasties AND attract pollinators. Oh, and it's supposed to make a mean tea.

I'm planning a veritable fence row of pole beans, because it's fun having something so clearly enthusiastic in the garden. Squash and melons are out, except for my own last attempt at growing melons. (I love them, and cannot come to terms with the total non-response of all things squash and melon last year.) These are small and fast, and Korea has a short growing season. I'm also planning on buying row covers for them. If it doesn't work this year, I'll add melons to my black list.

Things on my blacklist from last year:
Corn - because it attracted umpteen thousand beetles and didn't pollinate, leaving me one mockery of a kernel of corn amongst all the ears, and because it sucks nutrients and has a long season. Seriously, this is not a small-plot friendly crop.
Cucumbers - two cucumbers are not an adequate return from three plants. And one was bitter.
Eggplant - I don't have anythign against eggplant, but it wasn't prolific enough for it's deliciousness. If I only sort-of like a plant, it has to have a redeeming factor, like being fun to grow, or super attractive, or something. Mine weren't, so they're off the plot until I gain a passion for them or read a *really* tempting description.
Lovage - because it is disgusting. Seriously, seriously disgusting. People eat this? Voluntarily?
Marjoram - just not enthusiastic enough to warrant a place in the herb patch. I got three sprigs.
Squash - I think I need to baby my plants more, or maybe I just am doing it wrong, or maybe my garden hates squash. Either way, all the plants died horrible, horrible deaths.

Some of this looks like fertility issues - pollination and/or soil. Hopefully the soil will improve with time and cover crops (and every other type of organic matter I can lay my hands on). Maybe I'll try marjoram again when I've upped the soil quality. I love winter squash, so I can't imagine I won't attempt it again. But sticking with the tried and true - tomatoes, beans, more beans, radishes, turnips, tomatillos - and the only the deeply loved finicky ones - peas, shallots - and the experimental - sage, sesame - until I get the right mix is the way to go. Maybe eventually I'll have spare space again to trial big plants on, but a hill of squash will fit a load of other plants. Diversity is definitely my preference, especially when production is questionable.

Shopping!

I didn't spend as much money as I expected today, but it wasn't for lack of trying. The weather was gorgeous today, and there were lots of people with the same idea. (Trying to spend money, that is.)
The bamboo canes I bought weren't what I had in mind; they're pretty thin, so I'll see how much bracing is necessary. But I found a very reasonably priced light, so I have space to start a few more seedlings; I'm not sure, but I think it will be a few more peppers, a few more tomatoes, and flowers. Oh, half a flat is now devoted to my apartment nibbling garden; herbs and lettuce for consumption on the premises. We'll see how that goes.
I also thinned most of the plants that double-sprouted; it's disheartening, but I'll be sorry if I don't. Hopefully, I'll have a few more seedlings over the next few days; tomorrow I go to the garden to start laying things out.

I seem to be growing a lot of two kinds of plants – those that are mostly root vegetables, and those that are vines. Part of this is the joy of heirloom gardening; almost all old-school tomatoes are indeterminate (i.e. vining); so are many beans, although there’s a few older bush varieties. Most heirloom peas are tall. Most squash are not bushy.

So lots of my plants go up. I’m a big fan of vines, especially ones you don’t have to tie to things (yes, tomatoes, I’m looking at you). On the other hand, I’m a big fan of less labor, and however you cut it, trellises are labor. Something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently is how to make all that trellising as low labor as possible.

Since I’m not in my own space, I need to use something that can come down at the end of the season (or after I leave/move spaces). Bamboo, according to sources in the know, is relatively cheap. It’s also renewable, light, and comes in long sections. There’s also varieties that grow around here; I doubt that’s the variety in the gardening center/hardware store, but the potential is good. So I’m trying to come up with a way to plant/configure these poles that is aesthetically pleasing, but relatively easy and (most importantly), stable.

The teepee is traditional – three or four poles tied together at the top for climbing beans or squash. I don’t like that the poles will be closest to the paths, while the fruit will be farthest into the row; stretching into masses of scratchy squash leaves for every harvest seems a little more like pain than I like.

Since so many things are going up this year (and hopefully next), I’m considering something more along the lines of this:

which is beautiful and simple. I may try strings on the vertical, especially for the lighter crops. If I’m feeling very ambitious, two of those frames linked together (at the top and/or bottom) would be more stable.

If I’m feeling ambitious at some point, I love the clean look of these designs: http://www.tucsongardener.com/Year02/Spring2002/trellis.htm.

I don’t really want extra tool (drill) but I do like the idea of bolts and wingnuts. It won’t happen this spring, but maybe after my bamboo trellis goes the way of the compost heap.

Also, this is totally the sort of thing I’d pay a handy-person a little extra to put together . . . if there are any starving artists handy with a truck for delivery and a drill, they could make something. (But generally the prices charged are completely out of hand. I don’t need my trellis buffed, polished, painted bright green, or inlaid with butterflies. I just need it upright for a season.)

Seeds in the Office

My apartment is dark. Not quite "I live in a basement" but definitely no sunny windowsills to be found. My glass looks east across a brief grassy stretch (I'm being generous here) onto a brick wall and into my neighbor's dining room. (Interesting stuff, other people's eating habits.) There's also a tree nearby. As a result, the "put seeds in a sunny spot" doesn't work for me, despite the assumption of every gardening book I've read that everyone has several wide, clutter-free, sunny windowsills ripe for quickening.
However, my office does, in fact, have exactly such a spot. It's southern facing. It gets loads of sun, filtered only by blinds which could easily be pulled up. There's also 9-10 hours of fluorescent lights. The ledge is a good 4-5" wide, and of course there's a corner of my desk as well. I don't think bringing in flats of seedlings would be wise, but what would be wrong with a few appropriately spaced pepper and tomato seedlings? And some basil. And maybe a rosemary. And, of course, the ubiquitous spider plant. And marjoram is supposed to keep away unwanted visitors - could it be this easy to keep out wandering students and staff?
People have done more with less, that's for sure.

Down the Garden Path

I sat down with Coleman's book last night. It's about market gardening, but at some point, the difference between "ordinary" vegetable gardening and organic, sustainable market vegetable gardening is pretty subtle. He offers suggestions for the size of rows: 42" or 60" of vegetables. I went for 42" - although that garden soil looks fluffy and comfortable, I have no desire to have to lean on it to reach the middle of the plot. (There lurk nettles and goatheads and stickers, not to mention the cutest little milipedes known to man.) Unfortunately, he recommends paths designed for your walking tractor (preferably Italian, and blue). Nothing for the person who doesn't have a walking tractor. Bizarrely, this seems to be a topic neglected by those other OCD gardeners out there. 12"? 18"? 24"? How to combine the most comfortable space with as much growing ground as possible?
The math works out nicely in a 25'x25' plot with 42" rows and 18" paths, so I guess I'll plan for that for now.

Retooling the community plan

So the land-owner who offered me space in his yard to garden apparently doesn't want to offer me much space in his yard to garden. So I'm sending in my community garden applications again - this time in several places, with the hope that waiting lists will turn into ground at some point.

I have options: the closest garden offers plots that are only 6x4 (maybe). The middle garden has slightly more space (10x8), and the farthest garden has plots between 20x20 and 25x25. Guess which one I really want?

I may still ask around the neighborhood for little pieces of ground to plant melons or winter squash - I sort of envision little bits of food plants scattered across the city. There are plenty of spaces that aren't being utilized well. It's certainly more convenient to have a garden of my own, though, and the community gardens are nice because you don't have to talk to people.

I still think that borrowing a non-gardener's land isn't a bad idea. The advantage for the owner is fresh food, a nicer looking yard (hopefully), improved soil, not having to mow . . . kind of like having a hired gardener, except some of your produce goes missing. (For most harvests, this is No Big Deal - just plop a few extra plants out.)

2008 Variety Possibilities

One of the interesting things about planting so many heirloom varieties is that you get a lot more climbing things. Almost all modern tomatoes found in the catalogs are determinate. They grow to a certain height, set fruit at once, and die. Lovely for farmers, but not so lovely for most gardeners, who may not want to spend harvest weekend putting up a garden’s worth of tomatoes. Many of the older varieties are vining tomatoes. They grow and make fruit and flowers until frost (or disease or pests) strike them dead. The same is true with beans – almost all the beans in the catalogs are “bush” beans. Hmmm. I love climbing plants – there’s something satisfying about watching plants cover a trellis or fence (or fellow plant). Last year, bindweed or morning glory nearly consumed the community garden, swarming up and over everything in its way. It took near-daily vigilance to keep the vines from covering the garden in a blaze of blue and white flowers and brilliant green leaves. Where there was no fence, it clambered up tomatoes and sunflowers just as happily. I like to imagine it dormant under the ice, plotting to vault from the mass of dead oat grass over the tender seedlings yet to be planted.

I am planting vines this year, then. All my tomato varieties are indeterminate – partly luck, but also because they’re from Seed Savers, and the urge to grow and set fruit at will has not been bred out for the convenience of the commercial grower. Most of my beans are bush habit, which is actually sort of a good thing, considering how much fun it is to make trellises. The limas and (shockingly) the Climbing French Beans climb. And, of course, my peas. Last year I bought Dwarf Grey Sugar Peas. They were neither dwarf nor grey, and there weren’t very many peas. Instead of being the 2.5-3’ advertised, my plants hit the top of the 5’5” fence and kept going. This year I have naturally taller varieties (Golden Sweet and Mammoth) and one short variety (British Wonder). We’ll see what we see.

So here are the variety choices for 2008. Even I realize that there's no way that all of these can be fully planted out, so I've got a lot of reading to do to figure out how much of what to plant. These are just the seeds broken out into categories.

I pretty much plan on planting all the peas. I’m especially excited about the Golden Sweet, which is supposedly one of the varieties Mendel used in his experiments. And beans are marvelous, and supposedly easy to save for seed. Other than that, I want to plant a variety of things and try saving seeds. Squash and melons are among the easiest things to give away - no washing, no packaging, just the handing over of pre-packaged flesh. I'm sitting down with Eliot Coleman's graphs tonight to see when I should expect to plant and harvest the other sorts of bounty. Hopefully I can work out something.

Beans
Arikara Yellow
Climbing French Bean
Jacob's Cattle Gasless
Lina Cisco's Bird Egg
Shirofuma(Shirofumi?)
Sieva Lima Bean
Vermont Cranberry Bean
Windsor Fava Bean

Beet
Albino
Bull's Blood

Broccoli
Romanesco Broccoli

Cabbage
Copenhagen Market Cabbage
Mammoth Red Rock Cabbage
Des Vertus Cabbage

Chard
Five Color Silverbeet

Corn
Country Gentleman
Golden Bantam

Cucumber
Armenian Cucumber
Double Yield Cucumber
Jelly Melon Cucumber
White Wonder Cucumber

Eggplant
Goyo Kumba
Lao Purple Stripe
Red Ruffled Eggplant
Turkish Orange Eggplant

Grains
Copperhead Amaranth

Herbs
Sweet Basil Genova strain.
Thai Basil
Garlic Chives Allium tuberosum
Zefa Fino Fennel
Lavender Lavandula angustifolia
Lemon Balm Melissa officinalis
Lovage "Magnus"
Sweet Marjoram Origanum majorana
Common Mint Mentha spicata
Triple-curled parsley
Rosemary Rosmarinus officinalis
Broadleaf Sage Salvia officinalis
Spearmint
Thyme
German Thyme Thymus vulgaris

Lettuce and Greens
Amish Deer Tongue Lettuce
Red Leprechaun Lettuce
Arugula (“wild”)
Curly Cress
Green Wave Mustard
Hon Tsai Tai
Red Shiso Perilla frutescens
Reine des Glaces Lettuce - (a.k.a. Ice Queen)

Melons
Amarillo Oro
Minnesota Midget Melon
Eden's Gem Melon Emerald Gem Melon
Jenny Lind Melon
Pride of Wisconsin
Schoon's Hard Shell
Small Shining Light Watermelon

Okra
Clemson Spineless Okra

Onion
White Wing Onion

Parsnip
Harris Model Parsnip

Pea
British Wonder Pea
Golden Sweet Pea
Mammoth Melting Sugar Pea

Pepper
Balloon Pepper
Candlelight Pepper
Georgia Flame Pepper
Thai Hot Pepper
Tobago Seasoning Pepper
Wenk's Yellow Hots

Squash
Anna Swartz Hubbard Squash
Chirimen Squash
Fordhook Acorn Squash
Galeux d'Eysines
Jaune et Verte Squash
Sweet Meat Winter Squash

Tomatillo
Purple Tomatillo

Tomatoes
Amish Paste
Bloody Butcher
Giant Syrian Tomato
Gourmet Yellow Stuffer Tomato
Plum Lemon Tomato
Purple Russian Tomato
Roman Candle Tomato

Turnip
Purple Top White Globe Turnip

Flowers
Flashback Calendula
Painted Tongue - Salpiglossis sinuata
King-size Strawflower Mixture - Helichrysum bracteatum
Mahogany Midget - Coreopsis tinctoria.
Sacred datura - Datura wrightii
Black Peony Poppy
Wildflower Mix - Dame’s Rocket, Black-Eyed Susan, Shirley Poppy, Blazing Star and Bachelor’s Button.

Nasturtium
Ladybird Nasturtium
Tall Climbing Mix
Tip Top Nasturtium Mix

Sunflower
Rostov Sunflower
Autumn Beauty Mix Sunflower