harvest!

exactly 3 months and 1 week after acquiring and setting up my worms, i have had my first compost harvest.

no - i don't eat compost.

for the past month i haven't been feeding my worms due to a mite infestation, a fungus gnat invasion, and a feeling of discontent noticed amid the worms.

they've been perfectly content burrowing around in their own poop but i know that after some time that becomes toxic for them and i'd have to do something soon.

so over the past month i've been digging handfuls of the stuff out and feeding it to my patio garden plants. we have tomatoes, peas, morning glories, catnip, parsley, basil, chives, cone flowers, and violets. other than the occasional dried up newspaper crust rising to the top after a day in the sun, this method has worked well.

enter vivian, my neighbor, tending her own patio garden out front this morning. she's in a robe, just like me, when i'm having an early morning garden retreat. i ask her if she'd like some compost for her plants, as i have extra and can bring her some. she says she's never used it before. i told her it's like super-nutritious dirt and she says she'd love to try. i get home and realize i can't give the stuff away with all eggshells and newspaper clumps in it. i get started sifting it in our pasta strainer. i now have about 10 containers of perfect compost to give to friends and relatives. anybody want some?

i started with 1 pound of worms, which was supposed to be about 500. after removing as many as possible prior to sifting, i found i have about the same, if not a few more. i thought they'd multiply faster than that, but maybe conditions were off. i've set up a new worm bin, similar to the old but i'm doing a different feeding cycle. it's also nice that i have the garden to take my kitchenwaste overflow.

i broke d's laptop last night. unintentionally but still. we're trying out the mac support store on 7th st. i'll let you know how it goes.

<3 & compost

180° of fresh rot

for the past few weeks, i've been riding past the garden at 6th ave and 15th street
curiously peering through the iron fence, wondering how i can get inside.

pulling up to the dutch gate, i see a waterstained note in a plastic baggie telling me i should email for more information about composting.

my heart skips a beat.

i re-read.

composting

and i know i've struck gold.

i scour the website, attend an overly political-woman run-socialist style meeting

find the compost queen and sign right up.

today d and i attended our orientation, paid our membership fee, and got to play with the steaming mush.

for those of you who don't know about compost, here's a few facts:

1. yes it smells
2. no, it's not made of poop, though you can add certain manures to it if you want
3. it needs some care and attention to become a useful material

here's how it works, in very basic terms:

there are 3 large boxes, or crates. your greens, meaning chopped up kitchen scraps consisting of fruit, vegetable, eggshells, non-greased up paper products, teabags and a ton of other stuff goes in box 1. you mix your greens with an equal amount of browns, which means natural hardwood sawdust, leaves, newpaper, cardboard, and let the sunlight, oxygen, and water do its natural thing. over a few weeks, you'll turn the box, and eventually dump it all into crate #2.

crate #2 has a vent in it. this is because compost that is properly breaking down gets really hot. apparently it can get to be about 180° in the summer. the steam needs to escape otherwise heat can build up, killing the microorganisms eating the decomposing foods, and it would seem a fire could start. this crate needs to be turned quite often to aerate it. this is the stinky box. lots of methane gas escaping as a byproduct of the carbon and nitrogen based browns and greens from crate 1.

crate 3 is the nearly finished to finished stuff. the stuff gardners love to put on their beds. the stuff houseplants love to have placed along the top of their soils. the stuff life is made of - or something. sometimes crate 3 isn't done, and you can tell by the amount of steam and the way it smells, but it can generally finish curing in barrels besides the crate. this is the stuff that needs sifting before it can be used.


so i'm pretty excited about the composting at the garden. since we've determined that my worms aren't the hungriest bunch of wigglers, i'm glad to have a place to bring my kitchen overflow. i'm up for turning next weekend. should be interesting. also a bonus is that d seems to really enjoy the garden. we're joined as a household and are psyched to get our keys next weekend.

yay!