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(Building a compost bin) Organically Improving Your Soil with Vermiculture

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By Jeffry Bullock

 Maybe you’ve never heard the term vermiculture, if so don’t feel bad, many experienced gardeners are unfamiliar with this organic practice. I think vermiculture is fascinating; simply put it’s the process of composting kitchen waste with earthworms. We’re not talking about common night crawlers, but special varieties of worms such as red worms, and red wigglers.

Okay, I’ll admit to owning an ant farm when I was a kid, but this is so much more practical. Vermiculture, or vermicomposting as its also known is more like beekeeping; yes I’ve given that a try too. But just imagine for a second, you feed the worms your leftover garbage and kitchen scraps. The worms then quickly eat all those leftovers, sparing you the hassles of taking out the garbage.

And here’s the best part, while the composting worms are disposing of your garbage, they’re also producing a terrific organic fertilizer and soil conditioner called earthworm castings. Well, okay… the term earthworm casting is just a nice name for earthworm excrement. I don’t know who thought up the name earthworm castings, but I guess it makes sense if you think it through.

You may have seen worm castings for sale at your local garden center and didn’t realize what you were dealing with, but now you know. Don’t worry, earthworm castings are clean, odorless, and sterile… trust me on this one. You don’t need gloves or a shovel to handle them, and they are wonderful for improving your soil quality and for promoting the growth and health of all your plants.

So you can purchase bags of earthworm castings to use around the garden or if you’re a little more adventurous you can set up an “earthworm farm” and produce your own. The farm is actually just a worm bin that can be set up indoors or outdoors depending on the climate.

Vermicomposting isn’t complicated, but the worms are living creatures, and have certain requirements. For example they don’t tolerate extremely hot living conditions, and they also won’t survive freezing. The worms are pretty healthy eaters, so while eggshells are fine, don’t try slipping any meat, fats, or greasy foods into their diet.

If this sounds a little like having a pet, well it is. Not terribly demanding, but they do require a little of your attention to make sure that things run smoothly. In exchange they’ll be hard at work performing their community service to save the environment and to help you grow a better garden.

Kids love vermicomposting and some schools even include vermiculture as part of the curriculum. For those of you wishing that they had grown up with a worm bin instead of that ant farm, it’s not too late to try one out. You can find plans for building homemade bins or you can purchase fancy multi-level bins over the Internet. And unlike those ant farms, you can have these bins delivered complete with the composting worms.

If you’re up for the challenge and interested in recycling your family’s kitchen waste into a valuable fertilizer and soil conditioner, try your hand at vermiculture. During long winters, it may even help to pass the time until you can get back out into the garden.

To learn about celosia caracas and celosia plumosa, visit the Celosia Flower website.

How To Set up A Vegetable Patch

By Gillian Pearce

 It is very rewarding to work on a vegetable plot. It is good exercise and the home grown vegetables taste better than anything bought in a shop. You are also aware of exactly what’s gone into the produce. A veg plot needs assorted jobs for which you’ll require the right tools. The basics will be sufficient and they are a fork, spade, hoe, trowel and a rake. It is usually best to get well-known brand names. Other makes may cost less money but they are less likely to last so long. A wheelbarrow is also helpful and a watering can. Sometimes, there are drought orders and it’s a good idea to have one or two rain butts. If you are beginning your vegetable plot from scratch and it is a substantial area, you might want to use a rotary cultivator to assist with the digging. It will save you lots of time and cut out your back ache. They can be leased if you do not want to buy one.

To begin with, you need to locate and plan out your plot. Crops should be moved around to keep the soil healthy. Apply a soil tester to check what type of soil you have. This is critical since different kinds of soil need different methods of dealing with it. The soil might be dense clay, light and sandy or chalk or alkaline. This also affects what sort of vegetables you should produce in the produce plot, as plants respond differently to different soil types.

The soil will need to be broken up so the seeds can settle in and so air and water can get through to them. Unless the ground is particularly hard, use a spade rather than a fork. Take the weeds out and put in fertilizer or organic manure. It is a sensible idea to set up a compost bin near the veg patch. This will become a free supply of nutritious food for the ground.

Once you have set up the area and fed the soil, you’re ready to begin planting and sowing. Partition the vegetable patch between root crops, brassica and crops not in the first two groups. Root crops include potatoes, carrots, swede, beetroot and onions. Brassicas are sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and kale. That leaves garden vegetables such as beans, squash, peas, sweet corn and salad crops like tomatoes and cucumbers.

You could start some crops growing under a cloche or in a greenhouse, especially if your are in an place where there is quite a lot of windy or cold weather. Ensure that you keep on top of the watering and weeding. Many gardeners find it helpful to put up a wall chart and plan the tasks in the vegetable garden, on a monthly basis.

Visit the grow a vegetable garden website for handy information concerning planting vegetables, growing a culinary herb plot, raised bed and vegetable container gardening. Plus all the latest news about this year’s veggie garden trends.

Tips to Pruning any Tree

By Jeffry Bullock

 There are two kinds of winter gardening. The first method usually starts in January as the gardening catalogs begin to arrive in the mail. This type of gardening is as easy as sitting in your favorite chair, browsing the catalogs, and either dreaming about what you’re going to do this spring, or actually drawing designs for the gardens you intend to work on.

The second type of winter gardening is to actually get out in the yard and do a little work. Of course if it’s bitter cold, you’d be better off waiting for a good day. Winter is a good time to do some pruning if the temperatures are around 30 degrees or so. I don’t recommend pruning if it’s considerably below freezing because the wood is brittle and will shatter when you make a cut.

One of the advantages of pruning during the winter is that you can see much better what needs to be cut out and what should stay. At least that’s true with deciduous plants. The other advantage is that the plants are dormant, and won’t mind you doing a little work on them.

Ornamental trees should pruned to remove competing branches. Weeping Cherries, Flowering Dogwoods, Flowering Crabapples etc. have a tendency to send branches in many different directions. It is your job to decide how you want the plant to look, and then start pruning to achieve that look.

But first stick your head inside the tree and see what you can eliminate from there. This is like looking under the hood, and when you do you’ll see a lot of small branches that have been starved of sunlight, that certainly don’t add anything to the plant. They are just there, and should be cut out.

Any branch that is growing toward the center of the tree where it will get little sunlight should be cut out. Where there are two branches that are crossing, one of them should be eliminated. Once you get the inside of the plant cleaned up, you can start shaping the outside.

Shaping the outside is actually quite easy. Just picture how you want the plant to look, and picture imaginary lines of the finished outline of the plant. Cut off anything that is outside of these imaginary lines. It is also important to cut the tips of branches that have not yet reached these imaginary lines in order to force the plant to fill out.

For the most part plants have two kinds of growth: Terminal branches and lateral branches. Each branch has one terminal bud at the very end, and many lateral branches along the sides. The terminal buds grow in an outward direction away from the plant. Left uncut they just keep growing in the same direction, and the plant grows tall and very thin. That’s why the trees in the woods are so thin and not very attractive.

When you cut a branch on a plant, the plant sets new buds just below where you cut. When you remove the terminal bud the plant will set multiple buds; this is how you make a plant nice and full. Don’t be afraid to trim your plants, they will be much nicer because of it. The more you trim them, the fuller they become.

Lots of people have a real problem with this. They just can’t bring themselves to prune. Especially when it comes to plants like Japanese Red Maples. It kills them to even think about pruning a plant like this. Just do it! You’ll have a beautiful plant because of it.

Look at the plant objectively. If you see a branch that looks like it’s growing too far in the wrong direction, cut it. If you make a mistake it will grow back. Not pruning is the only mistake you can make. I hope this helps and doesn’t get you in trouble with your significant other. Many a family feud has started over pruning.

Visit the Celosia Flower website to learn about celosia plumosa and celosia plant.

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Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 at 4:15 pm and is filed under gardening. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.