We’ve been up to our eyes in busyness…spring is that way.
Here are some more photos from March:
potting soil made from worm castings, sand, compost, peat
Rain garden at night in the rain...dug down a couple of feet & filled with mulch & rocks. It filled up with water and didn't overflow.
Lots more snow today! We have maybe 3 feet. Also, we woke up this morning to no power…so, first thing, Mike made a fire and brought in some snow to melt on the woodstove to make coffee…after all, no power means no heat (even the geothermal runs on electricity) and no water (electricity needed to run pump) and no cooking on the gas stove (ignition works by electricity)…not very off-the-grid, is it? But at least we have this alternative…thanks be for woodstoves!! Fortunately, the power came back on around noon.
An indoor chore for today was to work on making potting soil, a several step process. Today I removed the middle tier of the worm farm…there is wonderful, dark compost within (see photo)!! However, there were also MANY worms. Ideally the worms were supposed to migrate up into the top bin in search of new food, but most of them hadn’t made it up yet (I gave them at least 3 weeks and tried bribing them with lots of garbage!!). So, I spent about an hour sitting on the floor pulling worms out of the finished bin and putting them into the top bin. Of course I didn’t get them all…sorry, worms, but some of you will have to be sacrificed for the cause of compost…be reassured that most of your relatives will live on for generations…
Here’s a photo of the inside of a worm bin (in which worms eat the kitchen scraps and produce compost), which I’ll talk about later…but the exciting news is that I was searching the net for information on how to make your own potting soil, and I hit the jackpot!! This fantastic site is administered by the National Center for Appropriate Technology, in part by a grant from the USDA, specifically for organic growers, and even tiny ones like us can benefit. There are scads of recipes for potting soil, not to mention discussions on each ingredient, the sustainability of using peat moss, etc., etc. Here’s the link:
http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/potmix.html#appendix3
Many thanks to whoever put this information together!!
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