Heap o Worms - Update

Stick a fork in it; it's done. (Guardian caiman at left.)

Earlier this year, I wrote about how I abandoned the bin, and experimented with freestyle vermiposting. Having had a wooden bin that succumbed to rat raids or some unknown catastrophe, I just started tossing kitchen scraps and the neighbor's juice-machine pulp in a heap, aiming for an old-school compost, but thwarted by the cool wet NW winter. Then I noticed that worms migrated in, and the compost was just not heating up, so I took to tossing on dirt from molehills to aid the vermiferous digestive process, and turning it all with a fork from time to time.

Even in January, it seemed to be working just fine. I never added worms, but there they were. No idea whether they were heeding the dinner bell and crawling in from elsewhere, or if I had a breeding population, but each time I turned over the heap, scads of red wriggling worms appeared. The color and activity makes me think they are "red wigglers," the favored variety for composting, but again, I have no idea if that's true; my curiosity tends to take a nap when things are working fine (unlike those missing scapes, what the hell?).

On the initial worm heap, I would put fresh material on one side, followed with some brown matter (dead leaves and twigs, mostly, the idea being to get some partially decomposed material with it's microbiota to balance the fresh "green" stuff), finally dusted with some soil (I mostly used backdirt from molehills, which around here is the glacially deposited, mostly inorganic, sandy clay substrate). Then I'd flip the other side on top. Back and forth.

That worked fine. Yielding this:

Heap #1, cross section.

So yeah. Update: It worked. A few months turned all my kitchen waste and the neigbor's juice pulp into fine black loam. Because of the addition of sandy soil, it actually has more structure than typical worm castings, although it may not be quite so potent. Better yet, the soil for a couple of feet around the heap is spongy-soft; even after I harvest the good stuff, the network of worm-tunnels full o castings will make this a good spot to garden.

Hell yeah, I'll take that.

 
In May, I stopped adding material to Worm Heap #1, figuring I'd let the worms work their way through the last of the fresh scraps and make for a harvest that had only the good stuff (and presumably, fewer worms, wh would have moved on in search of food.

The new heap took shape about 10 yards away, beginning with a layer of dead leaves, poplar and spruce buds (thank you, windfall), and whatever. By now, my juice-fiend neighbor was keeping his pulp to himself, but it being Spring now, there was a supply of garden thinnings.

Heap # 2, cross section.

To augment the thinnings, I also tossed on weeds, unless they were the kind that would take root too easily, or were full of seed.

As if haphazard weed-tossing is not lazy enough, I decided this time to forego the periodic turning with a pitchfork. Not having giant clumps of carrot-pulp that need aerating to prevent slimy non-decomposition, it didn't seem so crucial, and an experiment in the name of finding an easier way is one gamble I'll usually take.

So far, so good. With drier weather, I pay a bit more attention to watering the heap, but no turning. After adding a decent amount of green material, I'll rake the garden paths toward the heap to give it an influx of brown matter, or shovel on some molehill dirt. Not quite so systematic, but still there is a good mix of green, brown, and grit. Maybe not as pretty as Heap #1, and to the untrained eye it may appear haphazard, but if it works, it's a refinement of technique from the standpoint of energy input (according to my back). More to the point, the worms are there in droves, and the green and brown stuff is turning into dirt.

Toss it, and they will come.

Maybe I'll do another update, but if not, just assume this is working. At this point, I cannot see the sense in trying real composting again. Or even making another worm bin. I have yet to sort Heap #1 (I'll sift it through 1/2-inch mesh to remove the sticks and avocado pits, which are apparently indestructable), but there must be at least 20 gallons of black gold there, and I should be able to do this twice a year. The sandy glacial soil in this yard should improve.

Ex Scape

Weird, but this 5th year of growing garlic in the Northwest, and for the first time it did not put out scapes. Planted in October, and we probably had the most normal year of the past few, but May and June rolled by with almost no scapes.

I thought at first it might have been a nutrition issue--these were in an abandoned garden plot from the previous renters, and I didn't amend the soil heavily (although I do think the garlic got the same dusting of blood and bone meal as the taters)--but an afterthought planting near the house in poorer soil did send out a few scapes.

The garlic itself seems fine, if not particularly large. I saw some other patches that produced scapes, and farmers at the market were selling them, so it's not some Olympia-wide scape famine.

It's a mystery to me. A little sad, because I like chopped scapes (the Garlic Calendar makes a big deal of watching for and making use of them), but more of a teasing enigma than a disaster.

Anybody else have this problem?

Garden at the end of May

Let's see,...we had the fake Spring of mid-May, and then the week o cool rain, ruining many a Memorial Day plan.

I'll admit that the warm week tricked me into buying a dozen tomato plants (among them every single Paul Robeson I could find and several Marmondes), but at least I had the sense to tuck them into the hoop house, where carrots are also sprouting just fine. On the other hand, the beans planted without cover went into hibernation until yesterday.

Meanwhile, in the next row, Ozette potatoes are growing better than any taters I've ever planted. I've been good to them, prepping the ground with plenty of cultivation and doses of bone meal and wood ash, but not overly solicitous. I've hilled them up, digging into the grass next to them and shaking the dirt free where it could do some good. Mostly, sun and rain have done their job, and the plants look healthy and sturdy. Now, a week into June and back in sunny weather, they are flowering. I could start graffling soon, but will hold off.

"Graffling" is old southern term for reaching into the dirt and feeling around, pulling a few tubers without hurting the plant and stopping the rest of the crop from continuing to grow. There are variants, but this is how I remember Grandma saying it. She was a mischievious and skilled gardener. She might appreciate the random offshoots of my garden more than the neat rows. I wish she were around to enjoy a meal of new potatoes.

We Are Devonian: The Scouring Rush

Back in the Paleozoic, when the animals were just getting started and plants had the run of the land, just begining to evolve fancy things like roots and seeds, flora like the horsetail were common. In the primeval swamplands of every state in the union, they still are.

Equisetum hyemale, the scouring rush horsetail, is one of those survivors. In pristine wetlands and roadside bar ditches alike, this ancient (way pre-dinosaur, my friends) green shoots up from the mud and then shoots out spores. The stalk segments can be a source of pure water, if you find yourself thirsty in a swamp, but today my interest is in the properties implied by the common name, the Scouring Rush.

Those same hollow segments that hold water are formed of a tough, silica-rich material that turns out to be a fine (in multiple senses of the word) abrasive. Having been around for hundreds of millions of years before humans, it's abrasive power apparent to any creature with a sense of touch, this horsetail had to have been among the first plants used by hominids, smoothing down anything from a hangnail to a bone tool.

This modern hominid, having tried out the scouring rush on carvings where an absolute burlessness and skin-smooth contact is the goal, has learned that this horsetail is one of the finest finishers available. I am pretty sure it beats a 000 steel wool, maybe even 0000.

Rush, clogged with grease.

But it also turns out to be (surprise!) a fine scouring tool. Gotta clean a skillet or wok? You want this. One or two segments and some warm water is all you need. Skudge skraped free, burnt oil and fat stick to the plant. Rub till it feels smoothe, and you are done.

Other than a few decorative plantings in pots and ponds where the landscape architect didn't have to worry about their invasiveness of simply did not know she was dealing with something so ridiculously common as to be free, the scouring rush is there for the taking. This is a species whose gathering will not upset anyone, kinda like nettles. If you have pots to clean, or carvings to polish, grab a few fistfuls. Dry them out (I just put them in a dry vase), and they'll be ready when you need 'em.

Then, compost them. They are literally and figuratively green. They are free. They are so abundant that nobody will complain if you rip them out by the fist-full. 

Open a Heap o Worms

 

I've never been the best composter, but even so the Northwest is the most difficult place by far that I've ever tried to do it. People talk about it a lot, blogs and newspapers run articles about composting, hell, even the county will subsidize your purchase of a bin. But some of the best gardeners I know, when pressed, will admit that our cool wet Winters (and Falls and Springs--let's be honest) make it a challenge at best. Sure, selectivity of materials, great diligence, and willingness to have multiple composts in the works at any given time can cook up some fine black gold, but it ain't easy.

So a couple of years ago, I figured I'd try worm composting, but again, I was not so good at it. Ultimately, I did not have enough bedding and space to accomodate the volume of kitchen and garden waste I produce. In the meantime, I am pretty sure, rats gobbled up many of the specially purchased red wiggler worms alleged to be master casters (although I've had no luck to date finding reliable information on vermipredation).

Now I live alone, and don't have as many daily food scraps, but since I press cider, pickle, and can in bursts, I produce occasional heaps of peels and pulp. Add to this a helpful neighbor who makes a lot of juice and gifts me with bins of finely ground veggie and fruit every week or so, and I have so much fresh material that any compost or worm bin is bound to be overwhelmed.

Until I gave up. 

At least, I stopped trying to go the usual routes, like paying for special worms or compost bins. Taking the DIY ethic to it's sometimes backbreaking and stubborn extreme, I resolved to make due with the tools, soil, and critters I have. 

Over the carrot and kale pulp, a layer of old leaves.

I pushed my failed compost into a heap. The humble heap (a word of Anglo-Saxon origin, more faithful to the spirit of a shapeless mass of rotting vegetables than the Latin-derived "pile," which is a bit too prissy and upright for what this is). Somehow I got it into my head that I could coax the local earthworms up into it. The up-side of our cool wet climate is that it is rarely outright freezing, and worms are often close to the surface throughout Winter. In fact, I knew from my compost failures over the years that they would migrate into a heap if it weren't burning up at proper compost temperatures. [You may not be a big worm fan, but they probably beat my similar cannot-compost-adaptation/rationalization involving rats.]

So I decided to set the table a bit more to their liking. When I go on a cooking binge, or the juicaholic neighbor has one of his own, the debris goes on half the heap, as in the opening photo. Then I scrounge up some old dead leaves for variety and anti-bird cover, and toss them on, like in the second photo. Finally, I layer on some mineral soil. Luckily for me, moles are constantly kicking up backdirt from their endless tunneling under the lawn, and all I have to do is scoop up a few shovels of that nicely broken up soil and toss them on. Like in the last of this most un-photogenic series, here:

Yep, that there's a dirt-covered heap. One of the internet's finest photos.

The dirt is something earthworms like, even need, giving their guts the grit to digest the vegetative matter. According to my reasoning, which lies somewhere between superstitious hunch and scientific hypothesis, the combination of new scraps with old microbe-laden duff and mineral soil should be a balanced meal that lets the worms thrive and make more worms. Lately, as I turn the heap, the number of worms suggests that I am onto something.

Speaking of turning, my hunch/hypothesis is that this is the crucial activity on the part of me, the human steward of this worm mountain. Earthworms are good aerators, but the frequent addition of more fresh vegetable peels and pulp, of wet leaves and often sodden soil, is enough to compact the heap into a stanking anaerobic mess that will never decompose fully. Turning the pile loosens the material, creates new air pockets, and facilitates migration of interior to exterior and vice versa.

This is why, in the first photo, you see carrot pulp on only one side. In a week or so, I'll dig in deep to the other side with the fork, and turn it over on top of the left before depositing a new load of scraps, leaves, and soil onto the right. If I see any slimy clumps, I'll break them up. Maybe toss on more leaves or soil, or just pull out a few twigs; I respond to the moment. In time lapse photography, you would see the heap shift from one side to the other. 

This hypothesis/hunch has yet to run through the test. The look and smell of the heap, not to mention the burgeoning worm population, suggest it is working. As time passes, I imagine that I'll be able to harvest shovel-fuls of fertile dirt-compost-castings, as the pile continues its slow swaying dance and the worms shimmy inside. I may set up a half-inch screen box nearby and harvest the fine fallout that way, tossing the rest back into the pile. Or maybe, some other idea will occur to me. In the meantime, I toss dinner scraps on every day or so, a pile of pulp every week or so, and engage in a burst of heavy labor now and then. And the worms eat and make more worms.

[Oh yeah, it worked great! See the Update, and Round 2 experiment here.] 

Toeing the Line

February is time to dig. The frost has only reached skin deep this year, and the rain rain has stayed away to come again some other day. This perfect non-storm afforded me the opportunity to dig, shake and rake. I dig up some sod, shake off whatever topsoil and worms I can (most of 'em, when to soil is not saturated), and use my grandma's long-handled garden rake to get the beds ready.

My maternal grandma, whose rake I think this is, was more unruly than row-ly. Like her, I plant haphazardly, tucking things in here and there. But a true chaotic high note takes some time to achieve, and being on rented land (owned by someone I have reason to believ would not appreciate random island of plants in his lawn), I've gone for a more orderly, rectilinear garden layout this year.

Ergo the row-beds and rectangles that comprise my garden this year. The ones pictured above (wide one is for a hoophouse full o' tomatoes, other one for taters and pole beans), and a strip along the house's eastern front for snap peas, the early potatoes and various herbs and flowers. Oh, and another rectangle in the far back where there is sun in the morning and again in the later afternoon, when rays sneak in beneath the neighbor's trees. 

Planting has begun--early taters and snap peas in the sundrenched east, poppies and the first lettuce and radishes wherever--but February is mostly about getting ready. Dig the bed. Apply gore (blood and bone meal).

The linear beds will flow and then ebb, and probably become a grassless mass by Summer's end. If this became my place for more than a year, a piece of ground I could count on long-term, the lines would meander, the rectangles would chaoticize. But however anarchic my gardening may be(come), however prone I am to planting hither and yon like my grandma, a Year 1 garden looks tamer, rowed, and conventional.

Garlic year: Sprouts, Procrastination, and Loving Your Volunteers.

Everything's tilted but the garlic.

Here it is the first week of February, and the tentative sprouts of January are already nearly a brick-width high. These were planted in October (barely) in accordance with (barely) The Year According to Garlic Calendar. Blanched tips were visible weeks ago, but now the Sprouts are well on their way to Shoots, the almost-halfway-to-Equinox sun tempting chloroplasts into action. Stand back and enjoy.

 

Meanwhile, those few cloves not already et, dried, salted, or drowned in olive oil are impatient with waiting, and haved decided to grow now. Mostly, these are the center cloves of large softneck garlic (Inchelium? Music? I stopped keeping track years ago.) that were already getting spongy a month or so ago when I was putting up the crop. These were the impatient individuals of their respective knobs, itching to sprout and grow as soon as the Solstice passed, and hence past their prime by the time I got around to preserving.

As is my wont, I procrastinated on the planting as well. They could have gone in my Puget Lowlands ground a month ago, but an additional month of delay--no, outright neglect, tossed on a side counter in the kitchen without even the benefit of decent light--is my bow to evolution. Or more precisely, selection. A month gives mold and rot a chance to attack, and forces the malingerers and weaklings to show themselves. Maybe they would not die, but I would kill them (in soup or fried with onions and sausage, if they grew not into blue  fuzzy mold-bombs), and plant only their virogorous sistren.

OK, I admit it, this picture is from October. There are no green poplar leaves on the ground now.

And so today, at long last, I poked holes in the ground and dropped in the sprouting cloves. Yes, you are supposed to plant in the Fall. No, I won't regret this come Summer when I am getting big-ass bulbs of garlic from this procrastinatory planting. 

Meanwhile, back at your ranch, check and see what's sprouting this month. The forgotten and ungarvested garlic will be popping up, and you can uproot and split these heads into cloves and re-plant if you want. Sure, it's not what the books tell you to do, and it may not be optimal, but as long as you have any space to spare, it's better than letting them cram together and produce nothing, and way better than pulling and tossing them out. Let the volunteers know they are loved, give them room to grow, and your nurturing will be repaid.