Earthworms are are for just that… the Earth.  Bin worms are red wrigglers.  They are adapted (my anthropologist husband cringes at that word) for digestion of decaying matter (ie. kitchen scraps).  They are much different than soil dwelling worms.  Sadly, our nursery does not sell red wrigglers and we cannot find a supplier for them.  However, there are multiple locations online that you can purchase your worms from.  Personally, I purchased mine 2 years ago from Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm.  This is where I direct people if they are interested in starting a worm bin.

So where is the weekend project in all of this?  Actually, it is more of an afternoon project.  So easy you could call it stupid easy.  First, visit this website to get the nitty gritty on how to make a cheap and easy bin.  You don’t need to purchase special worm bins.  The worms don’t care.

Next, you’ll need to get your bin ready for the worms.  When I started my bin I did loads of research on how to do this and how to get ready.  This was all well and good, but some of what I tried failed miserably.  Not so much that I had to start totally over, but I did have to let my bin sit for quite a long time.

Place a thin layer of garden soil in the bottom of your bin.  Healthy, fertile soil is best, but I just grabbed a shovel full and threw it in.  Next is the covering.  I’m not talking about the lid for the bin.  This is the biggest mistake I made when I started my bin.  If your scraps are not covered you will get gnats.  Gnats are gross.  When you open your bin and are attacked by thousands of flying little insects it’s icky.  Shred 2-3 Sunday newspapers and moisten them.  I throw the shreds into a giant tub and hose them down with the garden hose.  Once they are sufficiently moist, wring them out so they are only damp.  You don’t want your bin drying out, but you also don’t want it sopping wet.

Now you have your bin, worms, bottom layer and top layer.  Place the soil in the bottom as mentioned before, place your food scraps in a thin layer on one side of the bin (more on food scraps in a bit), then the worms on top of the food, then cover with a thick layer of the shredded newspaper.  The better the covering the fewer gnats.  Every few days place your food scraps under the shredded paper on the opposite side that you placed it the week before.  If you notice that your worms are not keeping up with the scraps leave the bin alone for a week or two.

The best thing to do is start slow.  You won’t be able to throw weeks worth of kitchen scraps in all at once and expect the worms to consume everything.  They are small, and need to get to work and reproduce.

As far as the food scraps go… that is where I had to do the most tweaking.  I found that if I put in large scraps the worms couldn’t handle it.  Or they could, they were just slow.  I started collecting my scraps in a bowl on the kitchen counter.  I had the tendency to forget about the scraps if they were in a covered bucket.  In the bowl they were more noticeable.  Every 3 days I put all of the scraps into my food processor and whiz them around until they are finely chopped.  I have to do it in batches.  I then put that mash in the bin.

As time goes on you will get a nice layer of vermicompost.  As that happens keep burying your food scraps under the compost.  They deeper it is buried the less likely the bin is to get gnats.

A few other tips and tricks:

1) Don’t put moldy food on the bin
2) Don’t put fat scraps in the bin (no meat)
3) worms don’t like onions, garlic or heavy quantities of citrus.
4) worms won’t break down avocado rinds, but they do like them for reproduction.
5) it is ok to forget about your bin for a few weeks/months at a time. I left my bin outside without feeding the worms the past 2 winters and they are still there.
6) if your bin gets too wet leave the lid slightly ajar and let it dry out a bit. This also works to get rid of gnats.
7) replace your shredded paper bedding as the worms consume it. As you get more castings (vermicompost) you will have to put in less paper.

Good luck on your bins.  They are very simple and rewarding.  If you have photos of your own worm bins please share them with us.  We love to know what creative ideas people are coming up with.  You can email your photos to sproutoff@sproutingoff.com.

Last year I started my experience with heirloom tomatoes. I grew three and all of them bent the cages over by the end of July. We ended up using wooden stakes and fashioning makeshift cages. That worked until the end of summer.

This year I had planned to do the same thing, but since I was growing 10 varieties the cost of stakes was going to be more than I could really afford. Instead I came up with a plan to do it the old fashioned way. Stake and tie. Each plant was staked when it was planted (no plant was over 18″ tall at that point) and I used hemp twine to affix the vines to the stake. Each week I go out and survey the plants. I tie up where necessary and let the rest roam around in the beds. I did cage one variety that was supposed to be a smaller one, but I used one of the little cages instead of my big sturdy one (which is currently being used as a peony cage). The branches quickly outgrew the cage and the stems started to snap under the weight of the fruit.

I am quickly realizing that stake and tie was not the best plan. Ok, maybe it’s the stakes or maybe the size of the tomatoes. Either way we are now putting out support lines to hold the stakes up. I am going to have to rework my cage plan for next year. I would like to purchase Texas Tomato Cages, but at the price they are asking I simply cannot afford them. I may devise a PVC pipe plan.

A favorite in our house is “Purple Soup,” aka Borscht.  Sadly, I never had Borscht in Russia made by an actual Russian.  We did have a potluck one night and my dear friend Suzanne fixed a lovely Borscht.  It was near the end of our stay so I didn’t have the time to taste the rich soup in every restaurant I came in contact with. Had I known it was so good I would have been on a one woman mission to find the best Borscht in Khabarovsk.

Two years ago I started creating our weekly menu and posting on my personal blog.  During the summer we have “market night.”  This meant I go to the farmer’s market and pick up a bunch of stuff and make dinner out of it.  One week I found beets, carrots, potatoes, onions, dill and ground beef.  Hmm, sounded like a certain soup I’d had in Russia.  When I got home I searched the internet for recipes that looked easy.  I didn’t find any that I particularly cared for so I combined a few and made it up as I went along.  What resulted was the best soup I’ve ever made.  It was a hit with the (then) two year old crowd.

Ever since my son has begged me to plant beets in the garden so we can make “Purple Soup.”  Beets are so easy to grow and I don’t know why I didn’t plant them in years past.  What we are finding now is that summertime is a little too warm to be eating hot heavy Borscht.  I love the flavors, but the idea of standing over a hot stove when it’s 80 degrees in your house is unimaginable.  To make up for that we created a summer version, Borscht Salad.  The best part is the whole salad is grown in our garden.

Borscht Salad

Various lettuce (we use oak leaf, red leaf and butter crunch)
Various salad greens (arugula, cress, escarole, whatever is on hand)
3-4 baby beets (I grow Choigga) cubed
2-3 carrots sliced
Dill
blue cheese crumbles (purchased from a local cheese maker at the farmer’s market)

Throw all the salad fixings into a large bowl and top with a balsamic vinaigrette (my husband makes our vinaigrette so you’d have to ask him what is in it).

Perfect salad for a hot summer day.

Since bark is rather expensive we have opted for simple hand weeding. It is a tiring back breaking process that if not completed by late spring will surely kill you in the heat of the summer. I weed in the mornings if possible or only on cloudy days since the majority of my weeding needs to be done in the hottest parts of our garden. I attempted to get a few things done yesterday, but even at 75 degrees outside that was too much.

I do have a plan to make future weeding easier. I started this little experiment earlier this year and so far it is paying off (sort of).

My mother-in-law came to assist me with some gardening earlier this spring and between the two of us we knocked out a huge section of my corner garden bed. Once the ground was clear I laid down a nice thick layer of Tagro. If you shovel it yourself Tagro is free. The unfortunate part was that I didn’t keep up on the weeding of that area and now the weeds have grown back. The good news is that since I put down the layer of Tagro the weeds in that section are much easier to pull. I didn’t mix the Tagro into the soil, but rather used it as sort of a mulch. This is not the Tagro Mulch that can be available, but straight forward I shoveled it into buckets and put it in the back of my SUV stuff.

I haven’t gotten around that side of the bed to reweed that section, but I gave a few weeds a test pull and sure enough they come out much easier than the other spots. Another garden blogger has the same idea and it seems to be working for her also.

Another trick for easier weeding is for the ground to be somewhat moist. If the ground is allowed to dry out (like mine often is) the weeding is much tougher. My plan, along with the Tagro, is to hook up micro-irrigation sprinklers in the sections that I’ve weeded to keep the soil moist and to aid in future weeding.

I already have sprinklers like this in other flower beds and it seems to be working. I go out to the beds about once a week or so and use my circle hoe to attack the little weed sprouts. As the fall and following spring arrive I will lay down a nice layer of corn gluten to prevent the new weed sprouts and hopefully by next year I will have my beautiful weed-less garden back.

While my Horticopia program is much more comprehensive, the Sunset Plant Finder is more economical (read: free).  This is especially good for those of us who are saving our pennies.

I did a cursory walk through of the program last week and I was quite impressed.  You start by finding your Sunset Climate Zone.  If you don’t know your zone there is a handy pop-up map that helps you locate it (although the words and numbers on the map are rather small).  I should quickly mention this is not for just the West coast.  The database encompasses the entire US.

From there select what kind of plant (you can select more than one option ie. evergreen + shrub), how much sun and how much water and click “Find Plants.”  You will get an initial list of plant material that will suit your needs.  Once the initial list is populated you can narrow your search by height, width, flower color, foliage color, and a a few other special considerations.

However, this program was just recently launched and the programmers are working to continually update the database.  I assume that in the coming months more plants will be added along with additional photos and (hopefully) more information.  In the end it is a great program and I suggest you check it out.

The plant information is also helpful.  If you click on the name of the plant you are interested in it will give you a photo or color drawing (most of the time) of the plant, a description and a little culture information.

There are some drawbacks to this program.  As I mentioned before the wording on the climate zone maps are fairly small.  I have quite a large monitor and even then they are small.  You also have to populate the first list to narrow your search.  This is an extra step that I don’t care for.  There are limited photos of the plant on the list page and the individual plant pages do not include (or give limited)  pest and disease information.

Being the frugal gardener I am I didn’t go out and purchase a fancy worm bin.  That would be too easy (and not to mention expensive).  I did some internet searches and found a few ideas.  The one I went with is courtesy of WSU Whatcom County Extension.  Honestly, is there anything a county extension office doesn’t know?

The gist of the whole thing is to get yourself two 8-10 gallon Rubbermaid containers.  Drill a bunch of holes, insert shredded newspaper bedding, a little bit of soil and some worms.  Feed the worms regularly and viola!  Instant (or not so instant) vermicompost.  And if you want to be super frugal you can collect the worms right out of your own garden.  I went the easy route and purchased mine from Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm.  He had a great price, and I do believe he takes paypal.

However, like I mentioned, it took me months to get it right.  The first week I had the bin I dumped loads of vegetable peels, scraps and the like into the bin.  I just wanted to make my worms happy.  I had done lots of research on how to do this and thought I was doing it all correctly.  What I failed to realized was that I only had about 250 worms and worms are small.  They may be voracious eaters, but they are still small.

Within a few weeks my bin was over run with gnats.  And ohh how I hate gnats.  In fact I have one flying around my office that is tormenting me to no end.  Tried as I might I could not get rid of the gnats.  My bin was also a wet soggy mess… resulting in worm loss and proliferation of more gnats.  I would try leaving the lid off in the warm sun for hours.  The gnats didn’t go away and it just baked my little worms.  In an effort to sop up some of the moisture I emptied my shredder bin into my worm bin and mixed it in with the little vermicompost I did get.  Unfortunately, I didn’t realize I had sent credit cards through the shredder until it was too late.  (I still deal with little bits of plastic).  I was about ready to give up on the whole endeavor.

We went away for the summer, school started, then the snow started.  All the while I neglected my little worms.  No fresh bedding, no new food.  I was sure that the prolonged cold we’d experienced would put an end to my little friends.  At some point in February I took the lid off of the bin hoping I could at least salvage a little bit of vermicompost.  To my surprise my worms were still alive… and hungry.  So I started feeding them.

Here’s what I do that works.

1. I keep my worm box in the garage.  I put it on the lid for the other Rubbermaid container and elevated by two pieces of 2×2.  This lets the worm tea collect in the tray below.  I empty the tray in the warmer months and put the tea on various stuff in the garden.
2. I always have a 3-4″ layer of moist shredded newspaper on top of the worms.  If it starts to get a little thin I add more.  I think the newspaper is vital.
3. I bury the “food” deep in the vermicompost.  Covering up as much food as possible helps to keep the gnats away.
4. I never ever put any moldy food into the bin.  If it sits in the bucket in the house too long and gets moldy it goes in to the trash.
5. Once a week (or less often) I take all of the bits out of my inside bin and run them through the Cuisinart to chop them up in to a fine food mash.  That is what I bury under the verimcompost and newspaper.  I have some non-chopped food in the bin right now and it has been there for weeks.  They are very slow at breaking things down.

The bin I have inside was purchased in the kitchen section of IKEA.  It has a lid, sits next to the garbage can and works quite nicely.  I peel vegetables onto a paper towel and throw the whole pile into the holding bin (paper towel and all, the towel helps absorb moisture so mold doesn’t grow).  I wash the inside bin out once a month or so.

This is a great project to do with children.  It helped my son get over his fear of worms.  He asks almost every day if we can go feed the worms.  This way he sees that we don’t waste anything and that is a good thing.

So many of us are looking for inexpensive ways to improve our homes inside and out.  With a little ingenuity it isn’t that difficult.  Since this isn’t a home improvement site I’m going to focus on ways to improve the landscape in an economical fashion.

The obvious choice would be to home compost.  What?  You don’t have your own compost bin?  That’s ok, neither do I.  It’s not for lack of want.  We are looking to rearrange some fencing to make our back yard a little bigger and we’re waiting for that to happen.  Other no brainer choices would be rain barrels (don’t have those either).  Both will give you resources that cost nothing.

If you are like me and don’t have a rain barrel or compost bin you’ll need to find other ways to save money.  One thing that I do is utilize a local resource for organic fertilizer and compost.  Those of you lucky enough to live in Pierce County Tagro and Soundgro.  Both can be obtained for free.

With Soundgro you can only get the free stuff on one day a year.  Last year we were lucky enough to drive by the Chambers Creek facility on free day and scored 2 50 lb. bags for free.  We then purchased an additional 50 lb. bag for $3.25.  This year the even was on March 14th and sadly, we missed it.  Luckily, we still have 2 of the 50 lb. bags from last year.

Tagro is available for free direct from the facility.  Just back up your truck, car or whatever and fill it up with as much as you can shovel.  I have a small SUV and we take a frillion 5 gallon buckets and fill them to the brim.  I could borrow a friend’s truck, but I’m lazy and the buckets work.  In addition to the free compost you can purchase a cart full of potting soil for only $5.  It is enough potting soil to fill both of my front window boxes and then some (a lot actually).

If you are like me, you might be skeptical about the use of biosolid fertilizer.  Everything I was taught in school pointed to it being un-safe for garden use.  Things have changed in the 8 years since I’ve graduated.  The process of  making the biosolids is quite safe and the end product is amazing.  Last year my vegetable garden was lush and beautiful.  I used a small quantity of Tagro in the beds and added Soundgro in too.

This year, we are utilizing the free Tagro by spending our “gardening days” (Tuesdays and Thursdays) picking up the compost in the morning, weeding and applying in the afternoon.  I’m working on our flower beds little bits at a time to make things more manageable.

I plan to continue this series of “gardening on the cheap” throughout the season.  If you have any additional money saving tips you can send them to me at lisa@sproutingoff.com.