Tales from the Bucket: Dirt Nap

Dirt Nap

No, that's not the reason I've been silent (fortunately), but the current bokashi-bucket tweak.

Some disciplined container gardeners "rest" mixes between use in order to prevent pathogen transfer, discourage insects, and limit the spread of pot-weeds. I'm not often that disciplined--typically, if I have a container full of potting mix, there are three plants on hand I could put in it! But this hasn't been a typical year.

There's a depth factor for sun-sterilization, and I haven't bothered with anything like proper procedure, but something like fifty days of 100+ heat and sun, following after yet another season of drought, has left a bunch of pots filled with dry mixes but largely devoid of life. Plant, animal, insect, or, just possibly, microbe.

Obviously, can't have that. Not at the house of buckets. -G- The usual procedure for using bokashi in container mixes is simply to layer mature bokashi between inches of soil-based mix, but that assumes a mix that's damp enough to work with. I'm not planning on watering dirt weeks before planting-time! We're under watering restrictions.

Understand, we're talking dry, dry former soil, some of it baked into rocklike chunks and the rest all dust and flyaway clumps. I did try digging a hole, scooping some bokashi in, and filling it back up; but the dirt was so resistant to absorption that it was still all powdery when the crepuscular scavengers came by for dinner... The only saving grace was that it was easy to clean up; just took a broom.

So now I'm doing the initial bucket-fermentation stage with that dry-as-ashes dirt.

Call this an advanced technique, because I certainly wouldn't recommend it to a beginner! There's a decent chance it will fail according to one of my basic criteria: presence of insects, due to eggs or estivating critters. Or even, if you have a deep enough pot that some moisture remained in the bottom, worms. Verne and company are only really welcome outdoors; I can tolerate a closed wormery indoors in some circumstances, but would rather not. And they don't tolerate the pH in a working bucket, so they have to be carefully repotted once hatched or revived.

There's also a more-than-slight chance of starting a hot-composting reaction in the container, not necessarily a problem but certainly something to watch. (I'm mostly thinking about the paper towels soaked in bacon grease, or the glistening fast-food bags, and wondering just how thick the soil layer has to be to exclude the oxygen a fire would need.)

And if you're fermenting things generally not considered compostable in a home setting--that is to say, meats--there's always the need to ensure a quick and thorough fermentation, and that can be a bit more difficult with changing volumes of organics and inorganics. In practice, that means you may have to more actively manage the planter-bucket than you would a more standard bokashi bucket set-up. Not too much work, mainly a matter of juggling additions to be sure you have a few inches of fermentables all at once, with AEM. Still, one more thing to pay attention to, as opposed to the standard "dump, cover, forget" easier-than-trashing method.

But on the positive side, this entire bucket-to-garden technique uses no water beyond the cup or so to mix up sufficient AEM or bokashi bran for a single bucket/planter. There's no draining required (usually). And at the end, if you've been sufficiently generous with your ratios, you have a bucket full of just-moist-enough, oddly pickle-scented soil-and-fertilizer mix ready to be inoculated with worms or dumped into next season's raised beds or containers on top of a layer of leaves and poor soil, and covered to rest again until planting-time.

Only this resting time, the microbes are all awake and chomping. The fall tomato bed's starting to look really nice, and the first bed I constructed with this stuff is growing nice, bushy basil on only two quarts of greywater per plant per week (olla pots, naturally).

Basic procedure:

If you've got a deep container full of dirt, may as well use that. Bag the base in case of seepage or bugs.

*Partially empty or fill container so it's about half filled with dessicated soil.
*Apply EM as in a standard bucket.
*Add fermentables and EM as usual, at least a few inches worth.
*Add one inch dry soil.
*Repeat until out of soil or space.
*Lest rest until a nice thick acetobacter mat connects the whole.

Note that the top layer of soil should be moist at an inch down after about a day, from absorption. If it is not at least damp, add a small bit of moisture. Very small, and not too soon.

Don't forget to keep this covered! It may not look like a standard bokashi bucket, but it's still fermenting in there. I covered one working soil-bucket simply with a plastic bag, figuring the soil would work to exclude oxygen. Came home to an apartment permeated with Eau de Pickle Factory Explosion.

Really a better idea to do this outside, but 1) the heat outside my door would dry the fermentables before the microbes could do their thing, and 2) I'm too lazy to carry my kitchen waster across the threshhold even once a day. Easier to keep the bucket next to the garbage and recycling. Covered. Lesson learned.


So far, I haven't used the resulting white-threaded enriched soil for direct-planting, but I'm planning to; I'll simply stop fermenting with three or four inches of space left in my planter, let the concoction rest, then top with an olla pot and transplant in moistened unfermented potting mix.


This isn't exactly the all-in-one bucket I'm still dreaming of, and seeing as it requires horrible lifeless soil I'd rather not be in a position to ever use this technique again, but...did I mention toil-free basil in August? Hope for the fall garden even when all is dry and sere? And not having to rinse out bokashi buckets when it's 105 is also a plus, I think.

Hey, look: the garden's alive! And so is the blog.

Image from an article titled RIP: Recycle in Peace (Yes, that is an urn-planter!)

Introducing Nigel

The vermi-family has grown: I have African Nightcrawlers now. Actually, have had for a couple of months, though not many to speak of at first...so I didn't. But now Nigel's a definite presence.

The image above, from localharvest.org, is nothing at all like the material I started from. Local bokashi-and-beyond purveyor Microbial Earth offers an "African Nightcrawlers & humified compost mix"--according to the label, approximately 200 to 300 cocoons packaged with coir and compost for direct-to-garden application.

My vermigardening's mostly containerized, so I potted some herbs with a little of this mix added in, and set up a planter tower after my usual practice but without any actual worms, just the cocoon-and-compost stuff.

Well, in the interest of accuracy I should mention the two or three thread-thin hatchlings I found in the bag. But no breeding populations, you understand.

So at first, I assumed the worms I saw in the new tower were volunteers from the established colonies. But African Night Crawlers (ANC) are larger than the others. Much larger. When, on lifting the tops off two worm-homes, I saw worms in one that were twice as large as those in the other, I knew Nigel had established.

Still not quite as impressive a tangle as that image, but he's expanding quickly enough that I'm planning to divide him this weekend--probably a little soon for that, but he's just so big. It looks like he's cramped for space.

Haven't yet found any in the olla pots, so he may be brighter than Verne (EF). Or maybe it's the size thing again, or age; it tends to be larger, presumably older, iterations of Verne who move comparative mountains to get into the damp, cool clay containers between waterings.

So far, no vermi-battles have been observed. Verne mostly stays in his containers; Cousin Clem (Indian Blue) wanders a bit, but Repulsive (BSFL) has claimed all the good spots, so he retreats to the undersides of saucers. George the earthworm (no idea, possibly more than one species), sniffs around wherever any excess bokashi juice or Repulsive effluent has been diluted and applied, and sometimes finds his way into a recently wetted planter to become the worm equivalent of the crotchety old man in the corner house. "Hey, kids! Stay out of my burrows!" Or so I assume from the occasional vertical airspace in some of the less-tended and more populated units.

Nigel has yet to make his way out into the larger world. Which, you understand, is just fine with me! Worms that large disturb me a bit; I'll be just as happy never to encounter one without advance warning.

Though he's certainly welcome in the garden.

How many buckets would that fill?

From the text on the poster--details and a gallery can be found at GrowNYC--I'm assuming that little if any of this collected material is composted; clean dry and paired suggests reuse, not reclamation. And that's great! But what about filthy, torn, disreputable shreds of former garments?

Let them eat cake couture.

Verne et cie happily munched their way through the post-season potato bags, not quite waiting until the season was over before starting; Repulsive's nearly through the denim I decided was too worn to save for next year's insulation, and it's only been a couple of months; there are still bits of terrycloth in the slow-compost after nearly a year, but only bits, sufficient to add a bit of structure but nothing more. And the fabric bokashi bag (filled with matured ferment and buried at planting time) was only root-tangled threads when I repotted that particular item.

It's hardly news that natural fabrics are compostable in a home setting; the trouble is that so few of us think to do it! So, I'm trying. Dishtowels and cleaning cloths, old clothing and shopping bags, bits of fabric too small to make decent patches...into the mix they shall go.

Cleaned if needed (though I'm not much for chemicals) and tossed in after fermentation, I think. Unless I'm feeling experimental. 'cause, you know, that happens sometimes.

Been reading about the soil industry lately, picked up a new-to-me-term: low value soil-like materials. Paper waste and sand and things. Bulking and structural items, to me, since for nutrients I have bokashi. Seems strange to think of silk or linen as "low value" in any way, but a stained or torn shirt is trash, so, okay.

If we each saved one shirt from the landfill...that'd be a lot of space we didn't use. But I'm selfish, I want a personal benefit. So: if one shirt could replace one gallon of soil in a planter... Yeah, that'd work for me. Soil's expensive, relatively speaking.

Anyone need help cleaning out their closets? -G-

Project Restart: Not exactly sugarplums

At some point during the post-fire chaos, the cleaners dumped my worm towers (!), so now that's all [mostly] resolved, I've been trying to rebuild my herd. Or is it a horde? Whatever, Verne (red) and Cousin Clem (blue) were scattered from their containment some time during the past month, and I want them back!

Didn't have any cured bokashi--the cleaners again--but dried leaves a-plenty had fallen, so I filled a planter with those and poured in a bit of molasses water. Which is just what it sounds like, a teaspoon of blackstrap in a quart of tap. And having observed Verne's preferences for a while now -G-, I stuck that planter where the worm towers had been, with another planter full of rescued soil on top to hold in moisture and keep out possums and coons.

When I checked a few days later, there were worms in the planter. Not as many as had populated the towers, but enough to start again even if I hadn't had other colonies on other sites. My worm-ID'ing skills aren't all that well honed, and I did not take this chance to practice, so no real idea whether Verne or Clem showed up to the party first. Thinnish, reddish, photophobic and where I can reach him--whichever he is, I'm glad to see him.

I'll be plantering the usual mix of dried leaves and cured bokashi as soon as I have some bokashi cured, and maybe a few other tests--diluted kombucha with and without molasses; EM-1 ditto; maybe some soaked EM bokashi bran--but I think all those extra microbes might be necessary only where the carbon source isn't already so rich in diversity as fall sweepings. [Someone remind me to grab a bag of shredded paper from work!] But for now, I have a "recipe" that works for me, and it's a whole lot less labor than the apricot shortbread my family makes for Christmas.

Or gingerbread. Though if you were making that, you'd have the molasses right there...

Happy worming, and happy holidays,

DSF


[image from International Molasses.com.]

After the bucket: Good bug, bag bug?

Even on Hallowe'en, I'm not inclined to frighten anyone too badly, so no appropriate insect photo today. Besides, I like Dr. Seuss!

This fall season, I’ve been busy with non-gardening things—hence the dearth of posts—but the garden’s been ticking along with minimal care, as it’s designed to do. Bokashi is still the right solution for my situation, in large part because it, too, needs only occasional attention: If you’re not adding new organics, the household bucket can stay closed up and ignored for a couple of weeks (always assuming a deep enough reservoir or sufficient absorbent material). And as an added benefit, forgetting to take out the trash before you leave on a business trip no longer results in a stinky welcome home. -G-



Likewise, my post-bucket techniques are fairly hands-off, except for the small-batch hot compost, and that will simply convert to a slower process if you forget the hands-on part. But this week, I had a ton of garden work to do, to get ready for the advent of relatively cold weather. So I checked on some of my post-bucket setups--



--and wasn’t really surprised, though I was disappointed, to discover that only the one with the critters in it was ready. My tolerance for outdoor macro-digesters just isn’t all that high, though it’s far greater than for the indoor [zero] level. Some things, I cannot abide at all. Others I can reluctantly allow to live so long as they don’t directly bother me. Still others have me crying for the Flit!



Verne the composting worm is always welcome. (Hey, I shelled out good money for him. Several generations ago.) His cousin Clem, better known as the Indian Blue worm, is also welcome whenever he chooses to appear, though if he wanders off again, that’s okay, too; I know he’ll be back when there’s food to tempt him. George the earthworm is ever a surprise, but hardly an unwelcome one; I’ve read that earthworms don’t do well in compost bins, but apparently he’s as illiterate the rest, happily breeding in the mismatched yard waste compost cans and hatching out wherever that compost is applied.



It’s the other detritus-clearers that I have issues with. Sowbugs and so on may eat seeds and sometimes sprouts, so if they’re in the compost, I have to solarize or dry it before use. [This may not be as much of a concern for non-container gardeners, but that does me no good!] BSFL eat large quantities of the organic matter, which results in lesser volumes of finished compost for me to use. And piles of woody matter, even contained piles, attract insects the typical urban dweller really doesn’t want to see:



Cockroaches.

Also ants, mites, springtails, etc. But, really, compared to those skittering things, do the rest seem so bad? Even Repulsive might be less disturbing than roaches…



Nah.



My untowered vermidirt experiment worked just about like I’d expected it to: though I added no worms to my material, worms were present, as were BSFL, sowbugs, woodlice, and geckos with their spots stretched out from weight gain -G-. The very top layer beneath the weight was still visibly uncomposted; beneath that, an upper layer finished enough to use as mulch, and some eggshells and twigs remaining even in the lower, completed layer. Also a couple of snails clinging to the side next to the weight (not a waterproof cover, just something to keep the possums and coons out), two or three earwigs, and as many of those nasty six-legged things it pains me even to think about or type.



Oddly, one of the outdoor roach species doesn’t disturb me at all--I’ve only ever seen it outdoors, it doesn’t look much like the disgusting indoor ones, it’s extremely photophobic, and it’s common where old wood’s undisturbed, so I see it mostly running away from me when I’m cleaning up future garden space. By far the preferred view, but not welcome in a planter! Particularly considering that "away" means either deeper into the material or into another planter nearby (space constraints mean that many of my planters touch).

The other one is worse, so undeniably a cockroach that I’m likely to run screaming, or at least go find something else to do.



But the ten gallon planter with all that disgustingly thriving life held eight gallons of finished compost plus a bit of nutritive mulch, at a time when my plants need compost and mulching. This method can be used in any container and takes advantage of whatever species may be present. All it needs is a layer of soil and a weight on top, a container with solid sides and bottom drainage, and a place to rest out of the way. It can be stacked, but need not be. Placement is equally flexible: sun or shade, on soil or grass or even concrete so long as it’s within a foot or so of life. It’s a slow-compost process with hot-compost speeds, thanks to bokashi. Not as fast as managed hot compost with bokashi, but comparable to the usual figures for hot compost. Less than three months for this split harvest.



Imagine the ad pitch: Any size, any volume, any container, anywhere (outside). Slow-compost ease, hot-compost speed. Sounds great! But the fine print on this one might be too great a barrier for me. Roaches and grubs and earwigs, oh my!?



If it makes the plants happy...maybe. But I think I’m happier with my towers, even if they do take more infrastructure.


DSF

What's worse than vacation pictures?

How about bad compost-ana shots? No, I don't mean failed compost--just bad photos. Since it seems I can't keep even a really good camera alive for more than two years, nor take a single good photo in that time, I went with the cheapest little keyfob camera I could find.

Hey, if I can't see Repulsive through the tiny little coke-glass viewfinder, maybe I won't wince. As much.






This is what my tower-made vermicompost typically looks like. Unfiltered, not wet, solid enough to cake but not heavy. No worms, as they've moved up to the next planter, but though I never see any cocoons, they must be there, since baby worms hatch in the bags if I package this stuff up.





This is vermi-mud. Those folks who water their wormeries are probably familiar with this; in my case, it's the result of heavy fall rains backing up a reservoir and then some. It's been drained and drying for nearly a week now...






This is what the BSFL folks have started to call "grub pudding." I tried to get a picture that shows the little craters and all the tiny grubs still sluggishly moving, but if I didn't succeed, I don't think I'll mourn long. That blur in the lower left corner is a grub squirming toward me! Yecch. (-G-)

Grub pudding may look a lot like soggy vermicompost, but they are not the same.

The pictured pudding is finished--the grubs still present will die if I don't do anything, as there isn't sufficient nourishment remaining for them to mature, and it's too warm and too wet in that container for them to go dormant. The grubs can't process this material any further. But that isn't to say this is a finished compost.

A general-purpose dictionary might; but in a gardener's lexicon, compost is safe to use in nearly all situations and beneficial ditto. Oh, there are exceptions, plants that need to be starved and so on, but say compost to the average gardener and the matching concept is of a homogeneous, stable, variably textured but typically humus-like material rich in plant-accessible nutrients, that can be applied as top- or side-dressing, used as mulch or mixed into the soil, with no safety concerns and few contraindications.

Grub pudding is not stable; adding it to plantings will usually result in nutrient sequestration, seldom (if ever!) a desired outcome. Nor is it likely to improve soil tilth, another of compost's benefits. Grub poo is too fine to hold air, though water it can do. Then there's the nourishment concern; ignoring the sequestration issue, there are some plant-accessible nutrients, but how many and of what sort can be difficult to determine. In large part, it depends on what you fed the grubs; also, on what non-food techniques you employ. And as if that's not discouraging enough, there may be undesirable bacteria in finished grub pudding, also depending on what you fed the grubs, and how large the colony*.






Speaking of feeding. This is worm-food waiting to be fed. UCG from a coffeeshop, dried leaves from a chem-free neighbor, and AIM. Poor photo even in context, I know, but the leaves are pale thanks to mycelial bloom, beginning to break down.






This is a bokashi bag that should have been planted about a month ago. Don't know how much you can tell from this picture, but the bag is still identifiably a bag, while the materials within are well on their way to homogeneous etc. And, unlike grub pudding, nutrient sequestration doesn't seem to be an issue--I'm guessing the bokashi juice supplies nourishment to the plant for that first span.






And finally, a recipe I'm going to have to try again: one part each bokashi, dried leaves, and coco coir, fed to worms. This isn't a finished vermicast product, but a lightweight potting mix with a lively microbial profile and incredible results in my just-barely-started seedling mix tests. Not quite ready to use, as there are still identifiable bits, but that's my determining factor. Takes about a month, comparable to hot-composting, but with at least some of the benefits of vermicompost, and not so rich it can't be used straight (which finished vermicompost cannot be, as a seeding medium). This batch looks about a week away from harvest-time.

And I just couldn't resist the image with one Verne-bit too stubborn to leave. Sun had largely set, anyway, so not much light to bother him, and I don't think worms are photo-phobic in the other sense.

There really was a reason for this post, but I forget. Maybe I need a vacation...

DSF



*I don't worry about undesirable microbes, since Repulsive receives generous doses of EM. Nor is that additional processing a problem. These days, my grubbery is the top of a tower, with a wormery planter just beneath; all I have to do is harvest now and then. It's not perfect--fewer adult BSF find the unit than are necessary for a really vigorous population. if the goal is just to dispose of food, it works, but I have an experiment I've been planning for winter, and I may resort to bait bags once before the weather turns, to ensure a large enough colony.

A hole above the ground

Necessity is the mother of…Repulsive 2010 beta.


My usual spigots can’t handle grubbery leachate; it's pretty nearly sludge, thinner if the filter hasn't been dislodged yet but always muddy and with fine-silt particles that clog the tap. I can’t lift a full inner bucket right now to get at the lower one to empty it (wrist injury’s healing, but not yet fixed). And letting the reservoir back up into the unit is not an option. So I set the inner bucket on top of a soil-filled planter that had once been fitted out as a wormery--which means that it had ventilation holes on the sides and bottom, plus a drip-tray beneath. Also, since Verne has no concept of personal space or respect for ancestral colony gravebins, some worms.

This largish unit has about the same volume of soil beneath as potential food-and-grub volume above, and I’m not sure I’d try much less than that; eight inches of soil minimum, if my admittedly sketchy math is correct.

So far, it’s working quite well. A few grubs have no doubt squirmed into the soil, but most of them stay near the top, that being where food comes in. (I decided not to worry about it unless or until I saw a grub using the wormery part to escape; so far, no grubs have been sighted emerging from the soil layer or hatching in the soil-packed vent holes, and the mamas don't tend to bother probing them.) It's quite possible there are worms in the grubbery's inner bucket, but that's not a problem either, and the holes are there should any aggregate bit decide to move. Leachate seeps out of the grubbery into the soil, where it serves to keep the worms fed and moistened, and since soil regulates temperature and pH, there’s no need to worry about Verne no matter what the grubbery gets up to. Too, between the weight of the soil and the nesting of base and rim, plus the inevitable-here-in-Bucketville weight on top, the grubbery’s as nearly secure as I can make it. No human-perceptible odor escapes except when it's very wet--as in, after our recent storm-cycle--and then it smells like fertile wet soil, no trouble at all. Judging by the adults flying around, happy-BSFL pheromones are being produced and food-scent is perceptible to them, since despite crawl-off there's no population shortage on the horizon, but so long as my neighbors and I can't smell it, it's a success.

I'm kind of excited: a moisture-regulating grubbery means one less chore, and one less chance I might accidentally spot one of the aggregate bits that earned Repulsive his name. Well worth the temporary reallocation of a bucket of cheap dirt! Have to say, I’m not sure how well it’d work without worms in the soil layer and/or EM in the foodstuffs. Or, ideally, both. But since I do have both, this is a workable model for me.

At some point, of course, I’ll have to do something with the unit, but with any luck at all, that won't be until fall. Lure the last layers to an alternate location, let the grubs in the unit mature and crawl off or go dormant, let the worms work the bucket over the winter, and in spring and harvest a bucket or so of rich vermidirt and worms. From stuff I wasn't willing to feed my bokashi buckets.

The obvious next step is to test this as an urban pet waste disposal; I've had some success with temporary in-ground units, but that only works where you have a hole in the ground away and downslope from your garden! Too, that was to get rid of the leavings from the neighbors' dogs. The household feline's box is a very different matter. EM, obviously, but what then? I'd thought about BSFL before, but they don't like clay, and there remained the question of what to do about the remains in the bucket once they'd done their part.

Worms were also a possibility, of course, but they can't handle fresh liquid wastes. Grubs + worms seemed reasonable, except for everyone saying how difficult it is to maintain them together.

We shall, as ever, see.


Glad to be back,
DSF


Photo courtesy of USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service , where some very odd photo categories can be found!

I really hope Verne can’t count

Firefly
Year’s first firefly sighting on the porch Tuesday night. Not so happy the following morning, as that night was also the year’s first major possum raid. I’d harvested a bucket early Tuesday [next post], about three and a half gallons of dark, moist compost-rich soil—or maybe soil-rich compost, considering the starting ratios. Whatever you care to call it, it was still too damp to pot with, so I set the filled planters of the stuff out to air awhile.

I didn’t mix in any vermicompost or scatter cocoons or anything, but Verne’s pretty much claimed the porch for his own, so I wasn’t at all surprised to find a respectable mini-wriggle in the planter I checked for readiness in the evening. What I should have done then was to stack and weight those planters until the weekend, when I can sheet-dry the compost. What I did was shrug and move on. Smiling at the firefly.

Sigh. Still, not like Verne’s been decimated, or that the possum wouldn't have found me sooner or later anyway.

DSF

The Return of Repulsive

Soldier Fly

What I learned this year: don't let him freeze. If you're willing to have a grubbery, it may as well be a year-round one. Also, way too much work to get it started up again! Though I imagine part of the problem is my refusal to let the things roam free...

Six or seven weeks ago, the early-waking grubs wandered out of their winter beds and went wherever maturing grubs go to sprout wings. (Not toward the space I occupy, fortunately!) Putting together a starter-pack for someone around March 28, I discovered that I had only a couple of dozen dormant ones left, plus the last few just waking. Didn't seem worth the effort to set up a hatchery--obviously, they'd done just fine in the leaf-filled berry punnets I'd used for winter quarters--so I left the stragglers alone to do their thing.

And in the meantime, I cleaned out the frozen grubbery, to my relief much less disgusting than had it been active, and soaked it in a strong dilution of AEM as a sort of compromise between the impulse to scour and the desire to retain some happy-grub pheromone. While I was mucking about, I converted the grubbery full of finished proto-compost to a wormery [which sounds much more involved than it was: I dumped a cup of unfiltered half-finished vermicompost in there], then confirmed that all the dormant ones had crawled away and set up bait bags to await the egg-layers.

March 30 or so. First recorded sighting of an adult: April 24th. Checked the bait-bags that day, but nothing.

And more nothing. And still more. I used bait bags all last summer and fall, to replenish grubbery populations since my unit does not provide free access for egg-layers (any hole an adult can use to get in, a larva can use to get out, and I can't handle that). Simple design: mylar coffee bag about half-full of UCG, closed, with one or more holes above but near the level of the organics. Propped up next to or behind the grubbery to take advantage of that fabled happy-grub scent. It worked very, very well all last year. But this spring? Nope.

What if I left the bag open at the top? Well, then I got flies--just not the right sort. The only thing worse than a bait-bag full of BSFL is one full of ...things... that are not BSFL. Yecch! Tried different sorts of foods with pretty much the same results, though I did achieve small populations of BSFL with cured bokashi. No idea whether predation or selective egg-laying was the cause of that less-than-boom, but a quart of cured bokashi netted me only about an ounce of BSFL. And this early in the year, those new-hatched bits of Repulsive showed no inclination to hurry up and mature so they could breed more.

Not that they should need to. The adults were flying around, they just weren't laying in the bait-bags. Or in the proto-compost wormery, though I left it open for a few days to see if they would. Apparently, there's no happy-grub pheremone if they finish their meal. Call that lesson #2. And for #3: nor is their happy-grub pheromone if the grubs die in the grubbery!

But Repulsive is endemic in my area, which is how I ended up with him in the first place. Additional pheromone signatures shouldn't have been necessary. Why wasn't he (well, his female members)laying where I wanted him????

Lesson #4. Finally got the right conditions, but it had nothing to do with me: It rained. Rain got into the various baits, and all of them sprouted BSFL as if by magic. (Black magic, that'd be. -G-) Grubs in all their disgusting multitudes, so numerous and so voracious that they went through the baits in no time. Writhing, squirming, smelly mud, just what every gardener needs! But, hey, I set out food for them, guess I really did want the things. (Why, again?) No need to tolerate the muck, now they're hatched; they're getting dumped into the grubbery, along with a whole bunch of EM bokashi bran.

And I'm going back to spritzing AEM into bagged UCG. It hadn't occurred to me that lack of moisture might be the deterrent, as UCG tends to be fairly damp, but the last set of bait bags were all filled from the same batch of collected UCG, and it was much drier than I'm used to seeing. My other baits all seemed wet enough to start with, but Austin's doing its usual summer-preview thing, with strings of 90+ and sunny days. Enough to dry out anything!

Had I put the bait(s) in a standard-model grubbery, with the access holes for egg-layers, it'd have stayed damp enough to be inviting. But, all in all, I think I'm sticking with the no-escape grubbery. Other folks have good results with barriers, but I'm just too squeamish to try it again. Ramp into bird feeder bottle for the pre-adults; bait bags for the mamas to lay. And no grubs roaming free!

He's Repulsive enough when I know where he'll be.

Happy grubbing!

DSF

Tower Test: The Which Way is Up? Wormery

Can Verne Read a Compass?*

Success or failure? Depends on your needs, I guess. Can you add bokashi directly to a smaller worm unit, without pre-composting, using this technique? Seems so, though more testing’s probably a good idea. Will your worms die or run away? Not based on current evidence, though perhaps Verne is special. Will you get vermicompost out of it? Yes, in time. Am I planning on adding it to my rotation? Not on your gamma seal! Though I may try something midway between this and my usual worm-feeding practice, one of these days…

I’m recovering from a bokashi shortage, so when the debatable item I decided to add anyway turned out to be unsuited for a household bucket, I just tossed in an extra scoop of EM bokashi bran and set the container aside to cure a little longer than standard. When I opened the bucket, there was evidence of fermentation (vinegar scent and visible acetobacters), but not nearly enough to make me happy. I really should have added more EM bokashi bran and stuck it back in its corner awhile, but I’m impatient as well as lazy, and having found the ambition to empty that bucket, I didn’t want to waste it. The ambition, I mean. Or the bokashi, come to think of it. –G–

How lazy am I? I’m so lazy that the idea of mixing cured bokashi and dried leaves in a one to one ratio and setting the mix aside, covered, sometimes sounds like too much work. Why should I have to play personal chef for Verne? Other people get fine results adding food directly to a wormery; in larger outdoor units, including cured bokashi. I wanted to skip the pre-composting step. And the mixing. And (always!) the sweeping.

Bokashi is acidic, and worms like acid about as much as your average wicked witch likes water. Too, wet bokashi + dry or barely damp carbon = heat. Not necessary fatal-to-worms temperatures, but even without that, a sudden jump in bedding temp is not guaranteed to make your worms happy. (And, no, I still can’t tell a happy worm by sight, except that I figure if they’re in the towers and planters for me to see them, they must not be too unhappy. Or they’d leave.) Adding bokashi directly to any of the 1 to 2-gallon planters I use for wormery trays is not a good idea. Before I gave it up as too risky, I even had troubles when doing the pre-composting in a no-worms planter just beneath the planted layer in a tower wormery, when gravity pulled bokashi juice from that tray, through the empty one beneath, and into the top wormy planter. Imagine the high-pitched screams: “I’m mel-ting!” Thank you, no.

But Verne’s not as cautious about bokashi as I am on his behalf; some of his aggregate members have infiltrated pre-composting worm-food trays many, many days before I’d thought it safe. While I’d never seen him go after unamended bokashi, perhaps he might! And it would be so much more convenient to set the stuff someplace he could get to it whenever he wished, a space safe from Repulsive and those nasty sharp-nosed rat-tailed possums. If only there were some way to keep the too-strong liquid from dripping down on his little red heads… Yep, I stuck the bokashi layer beneath the worm tray. All the vermi-lit says that composting worms move UP toward food, but as I’ve noted before, Verne doesn’t read. He can find his way into a thirty gallon trash bin doing duty as a cold compost container; a simple reverse shouldn’t be much trouble! So I risked the health of a single tray and assembled a stack of planters: one leaf-filled planter instead of a reservoir, one filled with the well-cured but mediocre bokashi, one layer from an active wormery, and an “emergency hatch” layer on top: a few inches of moistened soil beneath a heavy clay saucer, in case contact with the bokashi altered the pH of the active layer too much and the worms needed to run away.

A week after assembly, there was only one worm beneath the saucer. A collection of wrigglers in the active tray. And some uncounted number in the bokashi layer, mostly younger (smaller) ones, healthy enough to wriggle away from light, and showing no reluctance to dive deeper into the bokashi.

But.

The mediocre bokashi’s smell had concentrated rather than dissipating as it would have in a composting or worm-food planting. One whiff, and I wasn’t about to pester Verne for a headcount. I didn’t even lift that tray to check the status of that leafy reservoir, just hurriedly dropped the worm planter back on top to keep the smell from spreading! Had it not been a mediocre ferment, the smell would have been less overpowering, but the issue remains: a full tray of bokashi, unamended by dried leaves, finished compost, or soil, may retain its odor for some time after assembly.

So this belongs in the same drawer as the clean-the-fridge bokashi bucket. Something to assemble and set aside in an area out of doors, not in direct sun, secure against pests and weather, and sufficiently out of the way that it can sit, undisturbed, for at least one month, and likely two or three.

As I said up top, this is not something I’m planning on doing routinely--I don’t really have a secure enough space, and it’s not all that much work to mix some dried leaves or porch sweepings into the cured bokashi--but this feed-from-below model may prove useful for me. Space is always a concern; if I could add food to the towers without a separate pre-composting area, that really would help! Too, though I have no shortage of dried leaves here at home, that may not always be the case. Nice to have options.

Even if I am going back to my standard one-to-one. At least the neighbors will be happy, as that does mean I have to sweep.

*Blogger's still not giving me an image option! Grr.

Mucking about

Repulsive's waking (I was quite surprised to find active grubs in the dormant-grub boxes this weekend), so it's time to do something about his grubberies. Yes, that's plural--he had two last year, though not simultaneously. Unlike Verne, he is not allowed to colonize at his pleasure! I changed buckets early in the fall, as it was that or deal with the horror of emptying the "proto-compost" from an active grubbery, but while the stated intent was to let the stuff cure, and the actual intent to let any remaining grubs mature and move away, I think at this point it's just taking up space.

About three gallons of space. It's not all finished grub poo, as I use the grubberies for bone, which shouldn't yet be wholly decomposed, but the total bone volume can't be so much as a full gallon. All the rest is...not soil, but something not too unrelated to use for making mud-pies, assuming you were far less squeamish than I, or didn't know where it came from, maybe.

So if I have two-thirds of a bucket of aged soil-like material, why haven't I used it up yet? Two reasons. The first is half superstition: I'm afraid of the lure of the happy-grub pheromone! BSFL excreta is supposed to be prime worm-food, but I'm worried that if I add it to the towers, grubs will follow. A singular grub in the wormery isn't an issue, but I don't want Repulsive to feel welcome in the worm-homes. It's not so much of a concern as all that, considering that the towers are fed largely on dried leaves and there's a fair bit of soil in there, too, so BSFL wouldn't thrive, but I haven't the courage to risk it. The second reason it's still sitting around is consistency: the stuff Repulsive (ahem) leaves behind is more finely textured than espresso grounds. Far too finely textured to be of much use to me as a soil amendment, with my containers and reservoirs, though in-ground gardeners might well benefit from it.

What am I to do with it? I've used some in starter-packs, but can't make any more of those just now--the dormant grubs have awakened and left their boxes to roam uncontained! [Yecch.] Could just dump it, I suppose, use it to fill a ditch or pothole or something. It'd break down in time, but before that, might attract worms to the area. Perhaps I could dump it one of the area's unofficial dog parks, where a few BSFL would be helpful! Or, rather than carry it offsite, I could start a bog garden in a bucket or planter with rather more surface area than the grubbery, an idea I have to admit holds some appeal.

But I'm lazy, and there are so many different experiments running already! This time, I think I'll add a scoop of Verne and what happens.

DSF


today's image is from National Geographic; that's Arizona Slot Canyon mud, and I'm pretty sure there's no way to make BSFL produce anything that looks like that.

intervention cannot be far behind

My winter wormery*, about which I seem not to have written (bad blogger! no chocolate), proved to be a hospitable home for more than Verne. The immature insects may or may not live through the planned solarization**--I'm baiting away such of the wriggle as is willing to be moved, but the rest shall be sacrificed. Had considered, briefly, trying the usual soil-cover/weight/time salvage technique, but it turns out I need the container.

See, the insulated cooler's a good size and well suited for large-plant hydroponics, and I've just learned of a variation on the aquaponics model I simply have to try. Not quite as described, of course; fermenting food doesn't require rabbits around here. I have buckets for that!

My adventures in low-tech hydro don't get a lot of space on the 'slope, mostly because they're neither wholly failures nor great successes, and therefore don't make great reading. -G- Also, they don't use a great deal of bokashi, though I have been known to add a few drops of very diluted bokashi juice to a feed-mix. But hydroponics has a lot of benefits for the soil-poor gardener. Beginning with the fact that it doesn't take any soil.

I'm far too lazy to be forever brewing up and aerating seaweed and vermicompost teas for optimum nutrition; hence the appeal of aquaponics, where my goldfish fertilizes the water for me. But my aquarium bucket's only good for a few heads of lettuce or other "wet-footed" plants at a time. Can't drain off much of the water for additional plants, either, lest the fish succumb to terminal stress.

Vermicompost tea is one of the more common non-commercial feed-mixes, but I found only one authority willing to substitute fermentation for aeration in the process. (Which doesn't necessarily mean it isn't possible. Someone has to be first!) For the most part, homebrew recipes for hydroponic nutrient solutions are relatively labor-intensive, though it's generally assumed that labor will be mechanical.

But this model lets the worms do all the work. No tea-aeration necessary. For that matter, no brewing. I absolutely have to try it. Or maybe I just couldn't resist the name. Vermiponics, isn't it great?

Now if only I could figure out where I'm going to put this newest experiment. To grow plants, I need sunlight...

Feeling rootbound and overly shaded,

DSF

Note that this image is of a blackworm, Lumbriculus variegatus, not Verne. But, hey, how many swimming worm animations have you seen lately? It comes from the Charles Drewes' collection of educational materials.

*The Igloo was an insulated cooler donated by a neighbor. ("It has a spigot. I thought of you.") No airholes added, but container not filled, to allow an airpocket of sorts. Mesh frame to allow for drainage; standard worm bedding of moistened cardboard and newspaper, soil for grit, etc. Started with leaves and bokashi, pre-composted in the container before the worms were added. Fed infrequent large batches of compostables. Happy worms, finished vermicompost with some patches of pure 'cast, babies, and more insects than I've seen in a wormery since I gave up on the indoor model. Not something I'm doing again!


**Simple plan: carboard over pavement, far away from my plants. Very thin layer of insect-ridden bedding more or less free of worms. Clear plastic cover. Weights. More time than you'd think.

There’s a hole in my bucket wallet

Blew the garden budget again, though not by so much as you might suppose; aside from a pack of tomato seedlings I couldn’t resist, all this year’s new stuff has been or will be started from seed, much of it bought locally. Or produced and collected here on-site, like the shepherd’s purse, hyacinth vine, and amaranth. New purchases included a few different sorts of tomatoes—not that I expect them all to thrive, but so I can be sure of having any, and to try the different leaves—a couple of edible curiosities (eggplants shaped like miniature pumpkins? I couldn’t resist!), and a bunch of things the standard American grocery-shopper has never heard of, plus one or two sometimes considered weeds.

Sadly, I don’t think this is the year I’ll be growing enough produce to skip the greengrocers entirely (small spaces=smallish yields, though bokashi’s helping), so I’ve chosen as usual to focus on things I can’t get there or that I can’t afford to get there.

A few durable goods went into the virtual shopping cart, including a pressure sprayer to make bokashi juice application easier. Plus, I bought a few more bags of dirt—given the quality, I don’t think it merits the label soil—though not for immediate use. I am planning to refill the planter tower and let the feral worm colony play awhile, and to set up a test in temporary vermicomposting if I can talk a particular friend into loaning me the space. Also picked up, from the same retailer and brand as the dirt, some “humus” (those quotes denoting doubt) for a few different tests.

Can’t quite bring myself to admit the total here; more than I meant to spend, but less than the season cost of a single share in a CSA in this area. And unlike with the CSA, there’s no risk I’ll end up with a box full of things I don’t eat.

It could have been much worse. High-quality chem-free compost typically makes up a fair percentage of my total cost; so far this year, I’ve bought not so much as a single quart. Between bokashi and Verne (and George), there’s been no need—though that may change once the raised beds are in. Too, I usually end up buying eighty or so quarts of potting soil every spring, to replace the worst of the potted stuff and top off the permanent planters, and until this year have always bought the best I can afford, since I know how important it is. But thanks to last fall’s cheap-as-dirt test, that hasn’t been necessary either.

So wherefore the post-shopping-spree regret? Well, there were a lot of seeds. And though the local drought is officially over, that’s more likely a temporary condition than not, so I’m determined to fit out all my containers with some form of irrigation, preferably primary though I’ll take supplementary if that’s all I can get. Which in many cases equals additional cost, for clay pots to plant with the transplants, or hoses to connect to an external reservoir, or more nested-bucket sets and wicks and hollow pipes and things to make SIPs.

On the other side of the balance sheet, Verne has more than proved himself worth the one-time investment. I don’t think I’ll ever bother with an indoor wormery again, and neither are worms my choice for a primary landfill-diversion scenario, but outdoors, he’s doing his part to maintain soil health in the towers and planters, keeping me from having to replace soil as often (or at all? Too soon to say), and since he’s enthusiastic about his business, there’s no need for me to buy any vermicompost or vermicompost tea this season, either. Or, obviously, worms.

The bokashi’s worth the cost, too. Naturally –G–. Though EM-1 and molasses (and bran, for the standard recipe) are repeated costs, it’s cheaper to buy them than finished composts, fertilizers, and “instant” plant foods. Not to mention the non-monetary benefits.

One of these seasons, I’ll stick to my budget. Really. Maybe if I just start with a higher number…? Oh, that sounds like a bad idea!

DSF

[image from Botanical Interests, which is the right company, though mine were purchased from a local retailer]

It's In the Bag

Saturday morning's garden chore was a good deal messier than I'd expected--in part from lack of practice and weather conditions, but also lack of forethought. Next time will be better, and there will certainly be a next time. This was notable largely for being my first garden bag.

Since posting my intent to try this, I've acquired two small testing spaces to plant them in, one I'll be administering, and one that will adopted by someone else after I've started it. Haven't decided yet whether I'll be trying the same mix and technique in both or not, but it was time to decant a curing bucket and I had all the necessary supplies, so I figured I might as well mix up a bag and worry about the details later.

Problem the first: declaring a top. The paper leaf and lawn bags are designed to stand on their narrow bottom for ease of filling, but to use as a garden, you would logically set it on its side. If I wanted a thick soil layer in the top of the bag once it was placed, I'd have to take care how the bag was filled, stored, and transported. After a few minutes of fiddling, I decided it wasn’t going to happen that day; for this bag, I’d do limited soil mixed in with the leaves and bokashi, and add more soil at planting-time. Which meant there was no need to declare a top immediately. (Phew!)

Problem the second: "dried" leaves. Our drought has officially been declared at an end--temporarily, if you ask me, but that's irrelevant. What matters is that, while it wasn't actually raining Saturday, the sky'd been doing what my grandparents would call "spritzing" off and on the past few days. Some of my leaves were damp enough to make kitchen gloves a better option than the ones made for the garden. Not sure how much excess moisture that added, but paper's breathable enough that it won't go anaerobic; my major concern was that the soggy, relatively heavy, acidic leaf-mats, together with the wettish bokashi, might damage the bag’s integrity too much for me to able to neatly move it later. Guess we'll see.

Problem the third: vermiguilt 2010. A garden bag needs soil; I decided this particular bag needed to start with about a gallon of what some gardeners call "living soil," soil with microbes and perhaps some macro-digesters, plus organic foods for same in all stages of decomposition, and the odd inorganic for bulk and drainage. Procuring this was simple: The planter stack is now shorter by one layer, its contents gone into the bag. Worms and all. While more caring and reasonable vermi-people might be willing to separate out the worms from the food/bedding/humus/soil/whatever, I am not. In the first place, I'm lazy. In the second, garlic-scented worms? Okay, so they're not so repellent as BSFL, I still have no desire to handle the things. And in the third, it's not like they're scarce around here, not these days. Verne's done so very much colonizing I recently accused him of having gone feral. (Was he ever domesticated? Sorry, not on point.) He wriggles is way into any welcoming environment, and there's at least a chance the smarter ones might manage to survive the bag, if they're careful, maybe. Then again, maybe not. Fresh-cured bokashi is acidic, plus there's an almost inevitable heating reaction when mixing cured bokashi and dried leaves. Not sure about wet dried leaves, but if moisture content's the only retarding factor, the reaction should occur once sufficient evaporation has taken place. The bag's not tight-packed, so the reaction will fizzle--nowhere near enough dirt in there to add significantly to the pressure--but will it end in time to keep the worms from cooking? No idea, hence the guilt. But whether or not this particular set of Verne-aggregates thrives, I'm confident more will want to move in once the contents have cooked awhile.

Which brings me to problem the fourth: storage. Ideally, a garden bag might be assembled in place, wedged into a bed-box and left to cure. But that's not yet possible for me, as the raised-bed dimensions have not been marked out in either testing space, nor the edging materials acquired. Leaf and lawn bags are too identifiable to leave them in plain sight, since helpful neighbors might cart them down to street-level to be hauled away, or other greedy gardeners take them to add to their own compost piles. I had thought to just stick this bag beneath the porch, but that’s perhaps not the best option with our imminent inclement weather--better it be under a tarp and on something that will shed water, I think. And, um, maybe a wee bit insulated for the worms’ and microbes’ health? The curse of the groundhog is upon us here in Austin, you know...

Might not have been the best time to start this bag. But, hey, I'll learn something from the experience! Even negative results can be helpful, and about the worst that'll happen here is that I'll have to rebag the bag.

DSF

--image from the brilliantly named GardenSnob

Ash Verne-Day

Nowhere to put a candle, but it’s about time to celebrate Verne’s birthday. Coming up on a year since I began this second venture into vermicomposting--and I have to wonder how I ever managed to kill that first set!

Yes, okay, I do remember having parboiled the critters, indoor wormery plus Texas heat proving a fatally bad combination. And the early iterations of Verne didn’t do all that well, either, before I gave up and moved them all outdoors where they belong. But the so-perfectly-named red wigglers are so very resilient out there that I’m finding it hard to remember just how vulnernable they can be.

Small bin and temperatures under 15 degrees F? They barely even slowed down. Temperatures above 100 didn’t seem to bother them much, either. A month or two with no additional food? Fewer baby wrigglies, but no other problem. Overstuffed container? Ooh, look: hatchlings. Neither drought nor flooding containers killed them off, and even the ones in the neglected winterized closed-container test are surviving, if doing less well than those allowed to wander. (Which may not be the right verb, as it tends to imply feet, but my thesaurus doesn’t have a vermi-setting. Sorry.) And wander (slither? Slide?) they do, into every planter with any form of bokashi barring the very freshest and most acidic.

And not only planters. I knew that, of course; Verne and his earthworm cousins flock (squiggle?) to bokashi juice dilutions and so on, too. But it hadn’t really occurred to me that they might be so attracted to the stuff that they’d go places they really shouldn’t.

What can I say? They don’t have feet, I forget how mobile they really are. But I sprayed some full-strength AEM in a trash bin a couple of weeks ago—to deodorize it—and, while I had the trigger bottle in hand, spritzed the outdoor ashtray, too. Which, appropriately enough near my place, is a terra cotta pot filled with clay kitty litter.

Just the one Verne-aggregate in there when I saw it, and I promptly removed it to a less inhospitable environment, but I couldn't help wondering--if worms adapt to their environment, would I Verne pick up a taste for nicotine?

Happy -ing,

DSF

Neither Snow Nor Sleet Nor...

Okay, so we haven't exactly had any of that stuff folks used to swear wouldn't impede mail delivery, but two hard freezes (temps in the twenties) put paid to all the unprotected tender greenery, and some of the protected as well. Amaranth season is well and truly done, most of the basil melted, and so on.

Verne & Co. didn't even slow down.

The planter towers are all several planters high just now, so not even the largest of the overturned buckets I used to protect the plants on top would have offered any protection for the lowest ones. But I harvested the towers before the first expected freeze of the season and consolidated the unfinished vermicompost and worms into one or two planter trays per tower, adding a few cups of cheap potting soil by way of insulation just below the next tray of worm food.

And it seems to have done the trick. The shepherd's purse may have been slightly damaged by frost, but the wriggle's just fine. On schedule for the next feeding, even! Which is something of a problem, as their next meal isn't finished yet. (Oops.) I hadn't expected them to be so active with the temperature just above 40...guess that insulated not-quite-a-bucket test might not have been necessary after all. Expect for giving me something else to post. -G-

DSF

Time to feed the wriggle

They can’t go south for winter—they’re already here!

Or, the Riddle of the Moving Wriggle

I harvested the last of my spring potatoes earlier this month. The "grow bags" were too degraded for further use and went into the compost(s), but the one hard-sided potato planter (okay, kitty litter bucket) contained really nice soil still, once I got down past the stem-cover layer. Impressively good soil, actually; rich and dark and springy/spongy, exactly the way soil is supposed to be but container-mix at the end of a growing season never is. Checked my records and confirmed that I'd planter-finished EM bokashi for that unit.

This was my first root-crop harvest from planter-finished bokashi; I’d been a little concerned that remaining undecomposed bits might cause problems, but for whatever reason, that was not the case here. No corn-cobs came up with the russets, no dessicated citrus warped the tubers in the growing. The only things that came out of that planter were yummy potatoes, pulled weeks late without harm. Potatoes produced through a standard top-layering practice using mainly dried leaves with only the bokashi-amended soil for nourishment.

Definitely something I'll do again. But I try not to plant the same thing in the same soil twice in a row. And besides, it's not potato-planting season...

As I had no immediate need for that planter once the potatoes were out, I tossed the leafy stem-cover back in by way of mulch and decided to let it rest awhile. Sunday, I found a matching bucket, so set about creating a sub-irrigation nested set. Step one of my planter conversion required having both buckets empty.

Imagine my surprise upon upending that bucket: An inch or so of dry mulch, then lovely soil full of worms!

I don't really expect Verne and Company to go wandering. They should stay in their towers where I put them. But I didn't put any earthworms in any containers at all, so those grey ones, at least, immigrated from elsewhere. I suppose the red ones might have as well; in this area, I'm hardly the first person to have tried keeping them, and there's more than enough leafy matter around to house a few strays. Still can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that worms can get up onto the porch, but it’s happened before.

Wherever they came from, the volunteer planter-worms did a lovely job turning the leafy matter (and any remaining bokashi) into beautiful rich planting medium, and I took full advantage. The worms themselves, no matter their color, I placed into a spare tower layer for now. Except for the ones I doubtless missed during my harvesting.

I want more. More incredible soil improved and mixed in place. More happy, healthy plants. More worms moving into planters! I’ll be watching the plants potted up with this batch quite hopefully...

Spontaneous in-planter vermicast is a lovely gift; planned in-planter creation would be better still. The vermilit says worms won’t last long in a container once the food’s gone, which makes sense; conventional container gardening says not to include uncomposted material, as the decomposition process can sequester or even remove plant-required nutrients and alter soil pH. But if you could find the right balance of food to worm to plants, could you, maybe, have self-refreshing soil? Soil that would actually improve throughout a season, that would feed plants all the time without risk of salt build-up or burning?

Hey, it’s worth a try. If I get it wrong, the worms will just emigrate. Apparently, they’re much more mobile than I think!

Welcome to Verne-ville, population one billion

The retail planter wormery pictured is about thirty inches high. Sexton's approaching that now, and while he is smaller--twelve inches in diameter as opposed to the Garden Planter's fifteen--it's not so much smaller as I'd thought, which leads me to wonder...Sexton's one of two outdoor tower wormeries, and I'm half-seriously considering adding a third. Just for me. Do I really generate that much more waste than other vermicomposters?

My planter-tower wormeries do get fed bunches of dried leaves, but it's not only that; I'm feeding about a third of my bokashi to the worms, so with no leaves at all (if that were feasible) I'd still be short on tower-space. Not the leaves alone. What else, then?

I think it's the increase in foodstuffs eligible for vermicomposting with bokashi. The meats, aromatics, oils, and grains that are either not appropriate or appropriate only in small measure in their raw state are all apparently quite acceptable to wrigglers once fermented. Whereas, back when I was feeding Verne only the recommended vegetarian chopped-frozen-and-thawed stuff, it seemed like he got a bit less than half my kitchen waste. Which would fit rather more easily.

What can I say? I like citrus! And every member of the allium family I've ever met. -G-

As for the leaves, no doubt the retailers assume that someone with the space for a "garden" wormery also has the space for a traditional compost pile, so dried leaves and other non-food compostables won't end up taking space in the wormery. But that's not always the case, and it's hard enough asking people to house and feed a collection of worms without insisting they keep a compost pile as well.

[Says the person with compost bin, three different wormery designs, bokashi buckets, and a bucket full of black soldier fly larvae. Ah, well.]

Two pounds of worms, they say, can handle up to seven pounds of waste per week. Which is apparently what the "average" family of four is expected to generated, if the Family Size Wormery is any guide. That's comparable to the Jr. Wormery figures I saw some while back, that said half a pound of worms per person's kitchen waste per week.

I generate a gallon of bokashi in an average week. Plus the odd contribution from the coffeehouse, an occasional bucket from a long-suffering friend, etc. How much does a gallon of bokashi weigh? Depends on what's being fermented! But judging by the cocoons(!) and small wrigglers I saw last time I fed Trey, it's more than his current population can eat.

The worm-boom goes on.

Smoke test

I've always loved that phrase, proof that mechanics and engineers can find humor in things other than the bills they charge me. -G- This week, I got to see if a few of my experiments were going to blow up. Or whatever.

BSFL

Repulsive v.2

Take your basic nested-bucket bokashi set-up, add a mesh layer to keep the SF-nal maggots from falling into the reservoir, drill holes in the lid and upper sides a la the jr. wormery conversion, and then insert two hollow metal poles to provide the required 40-degree-angled ramps for teen grubs to climb.

Though I don't actually recommend doing this, at least not that last step. Turns out this season's bucket-tweak is not pest-proofed yet. I knew those ramps were going to be a problem, but hadn't really thought they might be used as levers. Imagine the raccoons and/or possums waddling away, burping...

Interim solution is to take the ramps back off and weight the lid. New grubs have hatched and are eagerly eating, but I have work to do!

VERMICOMPOSTING

Verne Prime has been retired; traditional vermicomposting is too much work for me. But I've got more worms than ever before (and yes, that is a good thing). So let's bring the smudge pots to my "worm towers," Trey and Sexton. Same basic design for both: spigoted reservoir at the base, nested plastic planters with a bit more drainage than usual for plants, screws with anchors inserted in the sides to keep the layers from compacting, planter with soil and plant on top. Spanish moss wedged into the sides to help secure the layers as needed, and used as mulch for the plant. Sexton uses larger pots and more of them, and the screws are set higher to use more interior volume of each planter.

My midnight freeloaders must not have been too pleased with this design, though I am--the comparatively squat Trey was perfectly unscathed, and Sexton, which is a bit more open, was disturbed but not much discommoded. Not upended, not emptied, they didn't even disturb the soil, far less the plant in it. 'Coon or possum claws did manage to pull out the moss-wedging from one layer, and no doubt the thieves ate whatever worms they could reach through that space, but the bulk of the wriggle (that is the right collective, yeah?) remained safely in the feeding layers.

It does reinforce the caution, however, that the towers must be stable! The weight of soil and plant on top has so far proved sufficient, but I've only got a couple of levels in place right now. I had decided against a center pole for extra anchoring as I thought it might be messy--this way, planters can be easily removed and replaced with no risk of spilling--but may have to rethink that. We shall see.

BOKASHI + VERMIES

Bokashi and dried leaves together heat up too much for direct addition, and there's too much heat to put in the relatively small towers even with an empty layer between the uppermost active feeding layer and the new addition. So I think there has to be a separate container or spare planter that can be secured top and bottom against insects and larger pests, and left to rest at least four days.


Can't report on how long it takes the worms to completely devour a batch of bokashi + dried leaves, as they're still working on it, but they're multiplying like their little wormy pants are on fire! So I guess they're happy.

Success?

I don’t know yet if bokashi + vermicomposting is the perfect, complete indoor composting solution. I don’t know if, in the long term, worms will thrive on fermented versions of foods they find unacceptable in their fresh state. I don’t know if adding cured bokashi to an indoor wormery is even feasible in extreme climates--like an un-airconditioned kitchen during a Texas summer.

But I know that the outdoor iteration of Verne fed on bokashi is going well. For now. In fact, Trey seems to be doing better than Verne Prime or Junior. Interesting...

Experienced vermicomposters have been adding bokashi to their wormeries for some time, so I knew it was possible, but with caveats: Bokashi will heat up if added directly to a wormery, and the pH of freshly cured bokashi is at the extremes of worm tolerance.

Most of the folks who successfully feed their bokashi to their wormeries have outdoor units on the large side, with space enough to let the worms move away from heat and acidic additions until they decompose. I can’t offer Verne (in any of his generations) that option. So I was worried. Was I about to cook yet another bunch of worms? Would they eat their bedding and then starve rather than consume bokashi containing fat and garlic and the peels from half a dozen different kinds of citrus? Would the raccoons or possums or early blue jays devour Trey en bokashi?

So far, at least, Trey’s unit is working. A homebrew version of a retail unit, Trey is a plant-topped flowthrough constructed from a series of twelve-inch round plastic planters. Each feeding layer has about six inches of interior volume, filled with more or less equal parts dried leaves and well-cured bokashi. The bokashi heats up when dried leaves are added, but hasn’t the volume to sustain that reaction for long; by the time the worms work their way up to it, the bokashi should have cooled.

As yet, I don’t know how Trey will react to specific items within the bokashi--it’s too soon to tell anything except that he’s alive and wriggling in the feeding layers--but it does seem promising. Promising enough that I’m wondering if I can retire Verne Prime! Towers of planters topped with growing plants are a much better use of my space.

I’d keep my fingers crossed, except that’s hard while digging in the dirt. Or typing.

Fervently fermenting,

DSF

[the Spanish Moss is because it’s in Trey’s design. I’d post a picture of Trey instead, but my camera ate its last set of batteries.]