My Garden in May

Do you remember what my garden looked like a month ago? Isn't it amazing what one month can do? My broccoli is gigantic, though sadly, one of them died of some kind of wilt. We have been enjoying lettuce and peas and soon we will have beet greens! The summer crops have all gone in, though I definitely want to add a few more peppers, but I will buy those already grown and plant them in the next week or so.

Look in the foreground of the pictures and you can see what look like weeds but are actually strawberry plants! I planted 18 Everbearing strawberry plants and if I am lucky I will get a small harvest in September.

I have two tomato plants in the front garden beds, two in pots in the back and three still under the lights in the basement! Canning tomatoes this year will be a stupendous endeavor!

I decided to plant some marigolds because they are pretty AND they deter pests. So far so good. Here are some things that I have learned recently:

•  Plant WAY more peas! I only planted 3 seeds to begin with and this variety really likes to be close with other pea plants and produces better when it is; plus I didn't plant enough for our enjoyment. These peas are very sweet and wonderful tasting right out of the shell.
• Mulch, mulch, mulch! Right after I plant seeds I really need to mulch next time. The sun just baked my carrot, spinach and scallion seedlings despite diligent watering. I only have 4 carrots, 3 scallions and 5 spinach plants from the initial 20 or so seeds I sowed for each variety!
• Plan on planting garlic rather than planting it as an after-thought after some cloves sprouted in my pantry. They need to be planted earlier. I have two that are going strong, though, so I should at least make up for that.

I love my garden and so does Andrew. Despite the work that it entails Andrew and I really enjoy working in the garden together. Oh! I checked on my composting worms today and they are doing great! I found tons of cocoons and they seem quite happy. I am glad that they are so easy to take care of!

WORMS!

While this may gross some people out, this is our worm bin. We made it ourselves and it cost us less than $10 using this tutorial. I would have taken a picture of the inside but I didn't think anyone would truly appreciate it, especially the worms since they do not like to be disturbed. Worm composting or Vermiculture is a very simple, economical and fast solution to composting if you: 1) Do not have much space and 2) Do not want to have to deal with the sometimes complex nature of traditional composting.

Worm composting produces the best kind of compost you can get: worm castings. You can't compost with just ANY worms though, you need Redworms, or Eisenia foetida. These little guys eat half their body weight every day and with one pound of Redworms you will have about 5 gallons of worms castings in around two months.

Redworms, as you might imagine, eat organic material. Their bedding is made up of strips of newspaper that have been moistened so that they can breathe. They eat the newspaper. They also like to eat kitchen scraps. They just LOVE rotting organic material. The only things that they do not eat are meat and dairy. As far as pet's go they are very easy and prefer to be left alone to reproduce and eat.

So, does anyone have any questions?