Seed Starting and Soil Blocking

In an earlier post, I reported on starting seeds with a Park's Biodome. I was happy with it, but as an organic gardener, I had some doubts about the Styrofoam insert used to separate and hold up the plants. It also seems hard to disinfect between seasons, according to the directions.

Submerge Styrofoam in a bleach solution for thirty minutes? Really?

Last year Don and I also visited the Mother Earth News Fair, where Don attended a session on soil blocking. He was hooked! We use compost from our vermicomposting system as one of the ingredients in the soil blocks, too, which is an added bonus.

These soil blocks are a little wet, but adequate. The holes are for easy transplanting of seedlings started in smaller blocks.

The combination of the plant heating-mat and Biodome lid plus Don's homemade soil blocks is ideal for us so far. I can't believe how fast our plants sprouted, how green they are, and how healthy they look. They're growing incredibly fast. We have already needed to transplant some into larger soil blocks. Luckily, the soil-blocking system allows us to do this easily and with very little disturbance to the young plants.

Some of the basil and smaller tomato and pepper plants need transplanting into bigger soil blocks.

We started two kinds of basil, several kinds of peppers, eggplant, and several varieties of tomato. Three of Park's Maskotka hybrid tomato seeds actually germinated decently this time, too, so we're going to see how they grow this season. We will try some in our raised beds and others in our Earthbox gardening system. Weather is already warming up here in Virginia, so we look forward to a bountiful summer.

Getting ready to transplant

The transplants, right, and  the other plants go back under the grow lights.

Update on 3/19/16: These plants have been incredibly healthy and fast-growing. I have never grown tomato seedlings with such thick stems! Thicker-stemmed plants resist pests and disease better in the long run. I'm posting some pictures so you can see how well they are doing:

 The smaller tomato seedling with some peppers and basil plants.

Here are the taller tomato plants stretching toward the light.

Eggplant and tomato plants in my Earthboxes in July

Kitchen Composting

I have a confession to make: I have pet worms that live under my kitchen table.

They are not just any kind of worms. They are a specific kind of "red wriggler," or composting worms. Depending on the temperature and their living conditions, they eat up to their weight in food a day, mostly shredded paper and kitchen scraps. Their worm-castings (a nice way of saying "worm poop") is an organic fertilizer and soil amendment that is absolutely the best of anything available for your garden.  I've read that worm castings are up to eleven times more potent in their effect on plants and soil than any other type of compost.

And any excess moisture that drains from the bin can be watered down into "compost tea" that not only fertilizes your garden but protects plants against diseases, too, as a foliar spray. Since I try to garden organically, it makes sense for me to keep these quiet, easy-to-keep pets around. Why buy expensive organic fertilizers when the worms are so happy to convert your kitchen scraps for you?

I did make mistakes with them when I first brought them home. First of all, I made the mistake of buying "red wrigglers" at a local bait shop to get started. I later learned that this may have been a mistake. There are thousands of species of worms, and if you don't get just the right kind, Eisenia foetida, you can have problems.

What kind of problems? Well, the "right" kind of red wrigglers hate light, which helps keep them at home in their cozy little worm bin. Instead, I initially brought to my kitchen "Lewis and Clark" worms that were bent (pun intended) on exploring the brave, new world of my kitchen at all times of the day and night. I'd wake up in the morning to find them all over my floors, exploring my cabinets, you name it. And the only thing worse than stepping on a worm when you're blundering around bare-foot is finding your pet worms dead and drying up all over your floors, etc. After all, I like the little guys, and I feel responsible for them.

Perhaps they didn't like their initial housing arrangement. Since my wonderful fiance, Don, bought me a vermiculture bin with detailed instructions on how to get started, including advice not to buy worms at a bait store, my worms have stayed happily at home. Perhaps it's the new bin, perhaps it's changes to the bedding, perhaps my "Lewis and Clark" worms have removed themselves from the gene pool, leaving the stay-at-home types behind, or perhaps  a mix of the above. Now that they've settled in, I couldn't be happier with them. They are making some wonderful looking soil that I can't wait to add to my plantings in the spring.

For more information on vermiculture, try this Eek! website, this website from the University of Illinois, or this link I found through "Mother Earth News," which is the publication that got me into vermicomposting (worm-farming) in the first place. The composter Don bought me is called a Worm Factory. It looks just like this one:




Update for January, 2013. Our original worms went to a backyard compost pile. We had overfed them, and not fed them carefully enough, and we got vinegar flies that began to invade our whole kitchen. I wish I had remembered to try DE in the compost bin! That probably would have taken care of the problem without hurting the worms.

Don and I missed our worms, though, so I bought more a few ago from an online company that sells them. This batch of worms is doing GREAT! Whenever Don feeds them, he chops up their food into very tiny bits, and then either microwaves or freezes it first, or both. Either process kill any fly larvae that may be present in the food, thus preventing the vinegar flies. So far it's worked great, and the worms are thriving.

Don even bought a dedicated little food processor just for chopping up worm food. People tell me that my husband and I are two peas in a pod. They don't know the half of it!

Spring Garden Plans

I used an Online Garden Planner at Mother Earth News today to plan out four 4x8 foot raised beds. We have 30 Asparagus plants coming in March. I have many seeds in my refrigerator that I have saved from past years or bought on sale. I have a garlic collection arriving in the fall, too, for when most of this garden has gone by. I also want to add kale, mustard greens, and some cover crops for the fall, but I will wait to plan out the successive plantings.

This planner is free for the first 30 days. So far I am impressed enough with the planner that I am considering paying to subscribe. There are online tutorials that explain how the planner works. I do not plant in rows, so I was happy that there is a "Square Foot Garden" intensive-gardening mode. I plan to try to trellis my squash crops, but the planner doesn't seem to allow for this.

I had wanted to grow potatoes and sweet potatoes. I had also wanted to grow Hubbard squash as a "trap crop" this year, but the potatoes and trap crops will have to wait until we have time to add more beds. This is already double the growing area that Don wanted to commit to installing this season. The asparagus takes up more room than I'd expected, too.

I especially like how the planner has a list mode that tells me how many plants of each type or even variety I will need to install my beds as planned. It will send me emails when it is time to consider starting plants indoors or direct-sowing them outside. It works with the average first and last frost dates for my zip code. These can be adjusted for personal preference, too.