Worm Depository 11/06/07
My friend Godsil, co-founder of the Milwaukee Renaissance, wrote a draft for a Holiday Gift, a “City Farm Startup Kit” for Spring 2008. Godsil is a board member of Growing Power and is the person who inspired me to get into the home model of Growing Power. However his draft kit did not mention worms or worm-related components like worm condos or a worm depository (see picture). Worms are at the heart of Growing Power. When I mentioned that to him he suggested that I draft my own Startup Kit, based on my experiences the last two years in applying the Growing Power model to home and garden. It is much too early for me to talk about Holiday gifts, but since some components of this kit need immediate attention here goes: the first part of the kit. More will follow and by the Friday after Thanksgiving, the official start of the Holiday buying spree, I should have it finished. The entire kit should be posted on the Growing Renewable Affordable Food GRAF site as it unfolds.
Parts of this startup kit will have two versions; one will be for those who want to give our GP home model garden to themselves or another at the most — extremely — affordable price, and the other version, in parentheses “( )”, will be for those who want to purchase some of the ingredients or components.
All the steps apply whether your garden is a few pots on your deck, in a window box, or in an outside garden, small or large. Only the dimensions vary. The rest is the same old, same old. Also I will try to use terms that everyone is familiar with or that can be found in the Glossary.
Step 1: Making soil
(Part of this step can be skipped if one wishes to purchase already made compost from Growing Power at $75 a square yard, about three wheel-barrows full.)
You need to gather, as soon as possible or add to an existing pile, the ingredients for compost. You will need some space outside that gets plenty of air, rain and snow, but is somewhat blocked-off, like with chicken wire, fencing or something. The ingredients of compost are 75% Carbon and 25% nitrogen. Carbon is wood chips (free from the city dump), leaves (free everywhere), shredded paper, torn up cardboard and such. Nitrogen is kitchen scraps (no meat or dairy products) overripe vegetables and fruits from grocery stores or markets, coffee grounds from coffee shops, brewer’s waste from a brewery, garden waste from this year like grass or plants and such. Gathering the ingredients will cost you time and transportation but they are all easily available at no cost.
Since you are going to leave the compost to cook over the winter you can put it in layers on your compost pile, making sure the bottom and top layer are always carbon. This will keep critters away from your compost. To speed things up a little you may want to use a pitchfork to mix up the pile occasionally, until the pile is frozen.
If you already have a compost pile started you might just want to add to it and to add some worms, free from Growing Power to good worm owners. The worms will work during the winter, eating the compost and making the bottom of the pile a castings-enriched compost. If you are using worms make sure there is a thick coat of wood chips and/or leaves on top. This will freeze and the worms will be warm and cozy inside (see above picture).
(If you purchase already-cooked compost from Growing Power you may want to ask them for some free worms.) When spring comes you will want to turn this compost pile over, the bottom being enriched compost for the garden and the top being the bottom of a new pile of compost.
As my Italian wife says of basil: “You can never have too much”. This applies to compost. When the ingredients of the compost pile break down (“cook”), the remaining pile will be only ¼ of its original size.
So step one is to purchase or gather compost now. Total cost so far is $0 or $75. For more information on this Gift of a GP Home Garden you can check the Diary of a Worm or GRAF web pages.
Step Two of the Gift that Keeps on Giving will be published next week.
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