Worms... :)

So, before the Ortho rant I had promised worms... Well here they are, my cheapo homemade worm bins :)

Just two 99 cent plastic (#2) shoebox container nestled inside each other. The top one has the bottom cut out to about 3/4" in from the sides. Two strips cut lengthwise from the removed plastic rectangle bridge the opening in the short direction for a bit of support. A piece of 1/4" metal mesh (hardware cloth - $12.99 and the leftovers made a screen for my regular compost bin)  with the cut ends folded over cover the opening in the bottom. (sorry, don't have a pic of the bottom of the top container)

Here's the top container so you can see them better. The bottom container is to catch the worm leachate (pee) and other moisture dripping out. It can be used to fertilize plants too. I think I spent total about $15 buying the materials for these two containers (and part of the leftover is in use for the other composting bin) which sure as hell beats even the subsidized $60 commercial worms bins.

the two bits of broken terra cotta help keep the mesh from the container above from sagging onto the bottom

Originally there were layers of newspaper strips over the mesh to keep everything from falling into the bottom box. But my wonderful know-it-all worms ate it up and now their castings (poo) has been spilling from their feeding container above to the bottom one where I can easily scoop it up as needed. I put most of the worms back in the feeding container, but sometimes I put some of the big ones into my flower pots.

If the worms thrive and reproduce enough I may have to build larger bins at some point, but knowing how easy it is I think it will still be super cheap. For now I have a third container prepped to add whenever it's needed, and still have enough materials to build a fourth and maybe a fifth one of this size. I could have myself a deluxe worm penthouse :)

Originally I got a handful of worms from a gardener in Gardena (of all places) in summer 2010. The first few days they were just in a bucket with some dirt until I built the worms bins. I didn't really know what I was doing and at one point forgot to tend them for over a month. When I looked inside it was fairly dry and I thought for sure I'd killed them. So I let it all sit another month before I opened it up to use whatever castings there were and was astounded to find some worms still alive!

Well, that immediately got me to tending them properly. If those suckers had the will to live through my neglect I was gonna make an effort to keep them alive. And since then checking on them every day or so has become a fun habit and they still live. However, since I started with such a small batch of worms it would take a very long time for them to eat through any food. I got in the habit of putting scraps in the blender to make it easier for them. When I sorted through my regular compost bin or dug in the flower beds I'd save any red worms I found and add them to the worm bins. But there still weren't enough...

Recently I got a super boost to my worms when Archie's Garden gave me almost a full shoe box container full of worms & dirt from their vermicomposing setup. There were plenty of worms in there and they have made friends with my first worms (I hope) and now the bin colony is thriving! I've been giving them a good sized feeding about every two weeks, with a few little scraps in between. They seem to be keeping up with it.

Last Friday I collected a full cup of castings at once and made worm tea for my container garden :) The young seedlings and eager transplants really seemed to like it. When I was picking the worms out of the castings there were quite a few really tiny ones which I think means.... my worms have breeding!

*happiness*

Built me an LED Grow Box

This is late, sorry, built it about 3 weeks ago but didn't get around to uploading my camera pics.

Anyway, with instructions from The Cheap Vegetable Gardener I made my own LED Grow Box. I recommend following his instructions, they are good. Here are some pics of the construction:

measuring out the size for drilling

 

my spade bit made a nice little collar that helps hold the lights steady w/out glue

almost done with drilling, yes I use unsafe methods...

hmmm, my 70 LED set has 75 lights...

 she's a bit purty in use...

I used LED xmas lights 50% off two weeks after New Year's. I couldn't fin a set of just blue LEDs, but I got a multicolor one which I haven't added to this yet.

So far I like it. The first week I made it I had also sowing seeds indoors and several sprouted within days. It was still in the 40's overnight so I brought them all into the box from about 8pm-7am. I think it really did help, but I can't say for sure it's boosting my babies. Perhaps an experiment with a control set of seedlings is in order...

Cooking Up Some Compost

I'm still pathetic at taking progress photos. Usually I'm halfway through something before the idea of a camera even surfaces... so sorry there's not a full start to finish illustration here.

Anyway, Finally made a compost bin in the beginning of November 2010 (yes, composting the Halloween pumpkins was the final push). I, uh, "comandeered" a lonely unused plastic trash bin in the backyard for the proect. Very simple - just turned it upside down, cut the bottom off with an old bow saw, and put a cover on with one of the those swingy doors. I decided to set the bin upside down so that it's wider at the bottom and will be easier for me to lift off to get at the finished compost. A few days later I drilled some air holes in the sides with a 1/2" spade drill bit. Used stuff we had, cost me nothing but twenty minutes.

before I drilled the holes

I'm surprised how fast a compost bin can fill up, even from what I feel is a modest garden effort. Also surprising how fast the stuff starts compacting itself down as the process begins! Within two week it was filled to the brim from the last fall trimmings. A week later it had sunk down enough to add more trimmings. It sits near the kitchen door so scraps can go right in, and also near the gate to the front yard where the majority of composting material comes from.

Problem number one presented itself to me at that time and the bin was about two months old. Not enough air circulation at the bottom. I had made sure to put some woody zinnia stems at the bottom to help keep air flowing down there when I started adding material to the bin. But with all the green waste piling up in there and all insane rain we had squished it down and the woody stems got soggy and soft.

ew, anaerobic decomposition...not good.

My first day home I was compelled to fix it. Pulled everything out of the bin (interesting to see the progress of decay on the way down) till I got to the mucky stuff at the bottom and lifted the container off. Ew, it was stinky because no air was getting into it. Please note: the upper parts of the bin were fine, smells like earth and cut grass and stuff - that is good decomposition. That is how compost is supposed to be made. The stink at the bottom was my fault for not making sure enough air was circulating. Anyway, dad was starting to prune his roses that morning too so I had him save the branches and canes he pruned off for my bin. I broke them short enough to fit sideways into the bin and layered a bunch of them at the bottom to create airspace. Then I got some of the large leaves that hadn't broken down yet and made a thin layer on top the rose branches, then put everything back into the bin. I mixed all the materials up so the soggy stinky bits would air out quickly and the good bacteria would get back into them. I also drilled more holes near the bottom. About 30 minutes (minus rose pruning time).

ah, dad's roses were good for something besides making me bleed...

It was really interesting when I had emptied the bin out and could see how things were breaking down. The chunks of pumpkin (I'd broken it up into palm-sized pieces when tossing it in) where still chunks of...well they were still chunky. Very brown and gray and soft, but still recognizable. A couple of weeks after starting the bin my favorite Starbucks had given me I kid you not about 10 lbs of used coffee grounds. I put half in and gave the other half to Jean. I'd tried to sprinkle it all around evenly, but it sort of migrated to one spot and tricked me into thinking I had finished compost already. Well, I broke those clumps up and spread them around properly.

a decomposing medley of goodies :)

On to problemo number two - the compost suddenly stopped processing itself. I was getting used to filling the bin to the brim, then seeing the level drop over the week until there was a good space at the top to add more prunings the next weekend. After dealing with the soggy bottom the materials stopped compacting themselves for a couple weeks. Ah - moisture! Soon after the holidays the crazy rainy weather went away and we got our dry conditions back. Water wasn't getting in from the air holes in the sides or from the dirt under it, and I'd added more air holes, and I hadn't been watering the compost.  Ooooops. A couple of days of light sprays from the hose and a cup of water with the evening's kitchen scraps got things moving again. Five minutes for each spray down with the hose (gotta dig out the water gun head) and a minute to give it a glass of water.

Problem number three - unfortunately the convenient swingy door isn't working out. Because the bin is upside down the small end is at the top and the cover doesn't fit snuggly on it. SO when pushing the door open the whole cover sometimes slips and falls off. Also it makes access to the fresh stuff on top a snap for fruit flies and omg I'm sick of looking at mating fruit flies! Here see -

haha, made you look :9

So I took the fancy cover off and put the typical round metal lid you saw in the background in the first pic. The fly population immediately plummeted. There's still a few but less every day. I hope in summer when the sun rises so high the compost bin is in sun most of the day that it'll be too hot for the little bugger to even think of sneaking in. Two minutes to change the lid.

All seems hunky-dory now :)

So. Starting a compost bin -EASY!
Maintaining a compost bin - Easy! Yes, even after the blunders I made I still find it easy. All you have to do is make sure moisture and air are in balance and it takes care of itself. You'r gonna be pruning your plants, cutting grass and raking leaves anyway. Just as easy to put them in a compost bin as the green waste bin. If it gets out of balance you'll notice quickly enough and solutions to the problem are also simple. The longest time I spent fixing a problem was the 30 minutes to empty it, put down branches and refill it when if was too wet. That's not bad.

I supposed outside of an urban setting it might be more troublesome with some critters looking for food, but then you'd already be used to them eating your garden anyway.

It's been about three months now, I'm still waiting on my first batch of compost but it's winter so of course it's taking awhile to get going. What I want to do now it get a simple holding area made of wood stakes and wire mesh set up next to the compost bin. I'll put the compost out of the bin into there for 2-3 weeks to "age" before using it in the garden. Surfing the internet I found that in the last phase of breaking down the compost drops in temperature and can look like it's done. But if you put it into the garden during that time it drains out the nitrogen in the surrounding soil to fuel it's last few weeks of decomposition. Keeping it in a holding place while it does that should save my plants from burning or nutrient loss. I expect the holding area will take about a half hour to put together once I have the materials together.

I'm really glad I started this bin.

How to Make a Personalized Garden Card

A few months back I had a post about the Postcarden that had just come out. A pretty nifty gift there, perfect for a girlfriend of mine, but discovered too late for her birthday.

So I just had to start constructing one from scratch. Inspired the by the above version of the Postcarden I decided to make one that looked like her home. Yeah, I'm sort of new to planning an organized post, and it didn't occur to me to document the process until halfway though...sorry.

So here is the practice mock-up. Knowing I was bound to screw up since I just jumped right in without a plan :D I started with scratch paper. First I took measurements of the Priority Mail box it was gonna have to fit into, I think it came out to 8"Lx4"Wx1.5"H. I wrote down the dimensions of each piece directly on it so I wouldn't lose anything in translation.

The base is a large piece, about 8"x7", that make the floor and the two longest fences by folding up 1.5" on each of the long sides. The two short end fences I made with flaps to glue to the base and adjoining fences (5"x2"), the flaps were 1/2" on 3 sides. The walls of the house I cut the full height of the house (4.5") so they could be glued the full depth of the fence to be very strong since they had to be folded down to fit the box. The two walls making the front and back of the house (4.5"x5", 4.5"x4" for the edge wall) I added 1/2" flaps to the upper portion to eventually be glued to the other two walls (by the recipient after opening). I lightly scored the walls where they needed to fold at the top of the fence so it would be clean. The wall down the center of the garden card - I made with a 1/2" flap to glue to the base and it just fit laying flat on the base when folded (5"x4"). The roof was one piece (5"x4.5") folded along the center lengthwise, I did not make any attachment flaps for the roof since it is optional (if you grow sprouts inside the house portion they will need light). For the growing trays I cut the bottoms off of two 1 quart sized milk jugs to a height of 1.25", they happened to fit perfectly!

base, fences and walls taped during testing, milk trays in place

full test mock-up

mock-up in folded position for the box

mock-up folded and inside gift box :)

now that I know the dimensions of each piece I carefully marked up the final pieces on tinted cardstock paper

by now Felis silvetris catus "Gojira" has decided I have been paying too much attention to something 'not-me'

I used two colors of cardstock - one for the base, fences and roof; another for the walls

Here you can compare the final garden card to the mock-up. I only screwed up on the final garden card once so the hour spent on the mock-up was well worth it. In the back are the reference photos of my friend's house and "Gojira" now that she's finally interested in what I'm doing.

I pencilled on fence slats, wall boards, doors, posts, windows, etc. I also cut out the windows for fun. The mini-clothes pins are from Michael's, they are extremely cute and useful for gluing small things. Here they are holding the fence pieces in place as their glue dries. The ones on the walls are just so I can see the progress, they are not glued since the walls need to fold down later. I'm using the trays from the mock-up for the final.

the final Garden Card with roof before being folded and packed into the box

1 hr mock-up, 30 min cutting & assembling final, 15 min appeasing "Gojira", 1 hr decorating final & gift box = 2.75 hrs total

the opened Garden Card

I also ended up creating a 8"x4" backdrop piece with sky and trees for everyone who chipped in on the recipient's other gift to sign. Included with the garden card are two snack size zip baggies with seed starting soil and a packet of baby greens seeds to grow. I wanted to have lemon or wheatgrass seed since I think that would work better, but I couldn't find any in time.

Anyway, the Gin Master loved her card and immediately recognized it as her own home. Big smiles for both of us :)

Now go make your own!

Herbal Vinegar Hair Rinse

While going through The Bountiful Container cover-to-cover (this books is awesome, thanks Fern!) I came across their instruction for making herbal vinegars. To sum up it involves soaking herbs in vinegar to extract culinary or medicinal properties into the vinegar, herbs are strained out at the end. I don't cook much with vinegar (yet) but I was entrigued by the recommendation of using it for a natural hair rinse. Further online and book research says:

• Hair and skin naturally are slightly acidic
• Most hair and skin products are alkaline
• The regular use of hair and skin products upsets the natural pH balance of hair and skin
• Using vinegar as a rinse for hair and skin can correct the pH balance

Well, I'm up for using my green children in new and fun ways, so I decided to try it out. The most common recipe I found is to soak 1/4 Cup herbs to 2 Cups of apple cider vinegar (reportedly the best because it is closest to natural hair acidity, but any type would work) for 2 weeks.

Chop up 1/4 Cup of herbs, get your vinegar and your measuring cup. I used parsley (reported to intensify dark hair and make hair shiny) in this batch.

I used an empty wine bottle since glass won't affect the vinegar. The funnel held the herbs while I used a wood paint brush handle to push them down the bottle neck. This was little time consuming and can be frustrating. On another batch I used a jam jar which didn't give me any trouble. I also did a batch in a Pacifico beer bottle which has a standard opening but a very wide neck which I was able to stuff herbs into easily by funneling them with my hand and pushing them in with a finger.

After the herbs are in add the 2 Cups vinegar, then toped it with a bottle stopper. The mixture should be left to soak in a dark location for 2 weeks, and shaken once a day. I keep mine in the closet, when I dress in the morning I see them and remember to shake the mixture up.

When the 2 weeks are up strain out the herbs, most instructions recommend a brown coffee filter but a fine mesh strainer worked just as well. These last two photos are a different batch than above, made with lavender (reported to cleans out oil, encourage hair growth, and sooth the scalp).

It would be a good idea to label your herbal vinegar if you're making several. Also mark the date, a couple of resources mentioned herbal vinegars should be used within 6 to 12 months, although I am not entirely sure that is the case.

To use: wash hair with shampoo as usual. Mix 1 Tbsp of herbal vinegar with 1 Cup warm water and pour over hair, massage into scalp. The vinegar scent will evaporate as hair dries but the herbal scent will stay. You do not need to rinse out the vinegar, but if you really dislike the smell you may. I have found it easiest to pour the vinegar into a mug and take that into the shower with me, when I'm ready to use it I hold the cup up to add the water from the shower.

So far I have been using a herbal vinegar I made with lavender, rosemary (reported to encourage growth, make hair shiny, intensify dark hair, condition hair and reduce dandruff) and parsley for 2 weeks and I love it! I have been using the herbal vinegar instead of conditioner and I think it's a lot better in many ways. My hair feel softer and cleaner, it gets less oily between washes (I wash it every it every 2 days), I need less mousse to control the frizz (which is now not even very noticable if I forget to mousse), and according to friends it smells nice. I have to rely on my friends reports for the scent, my hair is too short to pull up to my nose for a sniff :\

A few days ago I had to use a regular conditioner instead of my vinegar and afterwards noticed right away that my air was not doing as well. It felt heavy and oily. I am now going to be sticking the herbal vinegars!

The experiment continues, I have made a few comparisson batches using lavender and parsley with white vinegar and with apple cider to see how much difference there is between them. If it's not noticable I'll be using white vinegar in the future since it's much cheaper! I need to collect more of my herbs to try out the different uses and properties. I have collected several glass wine and beer bottles to store them in and looking for more small sized ones to makes gifts in the future.

Free Sea Shells = Free Mulch & Calcium

I took a walk with some friends last week at Manhattan and Hermosa Beach. Washed up shells were all over the waterline. Manhattan had broken pieces of larger stronger shells that were worn smooth by the sand and waves. Hermosa had tons of perfect little half shells in many different colors. Remembering that I need to mulch several containers and that crushed clam & oyster shells are sometimes used as a calcium source for tomatos of course I gathered some up!

There's a mix of the large beautifully weathered shell pieces mixed with decorative glass pebbles. They are proving very good at trapping moisture in the soil without heating it up in the sun. The Lemon Cucumber should do well with them... BTW that's another tomato cage painted red with Rust-O-Leum for contrast.

I am saving the smaller half shells for crushing when I'm ready to pot more tomatos. John also collected some of them when I told him why I was gathering them. We crushed his straight away since he's been planting so many tomatos he might mix them into the surface. The shells were placed in the mortar I bought at Fiesta Hermosa from Mystic Bottle Studio Pottery. I' ve been admiring his work for some time and finally had a purpose for it :) It's really worth checking out.

First just press the pestle down on them to break them into smaller bits, then grind them by rocking the pestle back and forth with some pressure. It takes some effort but finally a small handful of shells grinded in several little batches turned into about 1 1/2 to 2 tablespoons of fine crushed shell and powder in about 20 minutes. Not bad.

It would be wise to sanitized any shell used for adding calcium to the soil. Either soaking it in a 10% bleach solution (before crushing) like other garden equipment or baking at a high temperature for several minutes should do it. Personally I'm gonna try baking it.

Any other home recipes for enriching tomato soil anyone know of?

Some Cheap Finds at Big Lots

A friend and I took a walk around Big Lots the other day and made a few good finds. Number one is this set of 3 glazed pots sizes 10.2", 7.5" and 5.5" for only $10. They come in some nice colors too! It was very hard to resist:

The other was a nice wire folding shelf I'd like to hang on the wood fence for some of my little pots, or perhaps seedlings. It was a steal at only $4:

That folding shelf became an even better deal after I saw it's high-end counterpart at the nursery the next day for $52!:

Ok, the second one is made of good quality welded metal and very sturdy...but my $4 one has 3 shelves instead of one! *neener*

Tomato Tubs Update

The other day I wandered into Pier 1 to look at their clearance items and immediatelly noticed this:

They come in coral red or green (pinkish color in the pic is from bad lighting) and are going for $69.95. Whoa. That's a lot of dough to spend for a cool container - though to be fair I think it's meant to be used as a cold drink tub and stand for entertaining. Still a lot of dough and honestly about $50 of that is just for the metal stand part.

It made me very proud that I was able to make my own very pretty pair of metal tub containers for under $20. Here's an update on how those are growing in:

The above pic is the first of the pots I planted. It has Bradywine tomato, purple basil and Scarlet Nantes carrots. Sadly three of the carrots I transplanted into it died the first week (weather got too hot with the metal tub) but I sowed new seeds in their place and you can see some of seedling coming up. The grass mulch was added after the first carrots died.

This one was the second tub I planted about a week later. It's got a Jelly Bean tomato plant, two cinnamon basils, and I sowed carrots around them all. I think the grass mulch I spread is blocking the seedlings from coming up though...

Soon I'm going to put together a post on all the awesome finds I've gotten from the thrift shops....