If you are lucky you may have never seen this gross looking anomaly on the bottom but if you are like the rest of us you probably have seen this disorder especially on your first fruits of the season. Fortunately with some precautionary measures you should be able to minimize the effect of this on your harvest. There are three primary causes for tomato blossom end rot; inconsistent watering,…
Noticed this plant before thinking it was a weed growing next to my compost bin, but today I noticed it was actually growing out of a small slat in my compost bin. After a little more inspection I realized the distrinct tomato plant look and smell. Guess I was wrong to think those green tomatoes I threw in last fall were too immature to have viable seeds…
My soil is consisted of a high percentage of clay, as a result I am required to aerate my lawn twice a year to avoid my soil getting too compacted. I am cheap so I purchased a $10 aerator from Home Depot which I walk around the lawn giving it a nice look of a goose bathroom until the next good rain or mowing. Of course nature has an…
Unfortunately I have a small yard so my space to compost is limited so my goal is to make sure the most use out of the limited space I have. I am also impatient and don’t want to wait a couple years to finally get some compost. Here are some of my suggestions on how to be a speed composter. Make stuff smaller: The small the you break up…
Now your worms have been working hard eating, pooping, and reproducing so now it is time to harvest the fruits of their labor (worm castings) There are a few methods to harvest worm castings so I will briefly describe a few: Dump and Sort Much like it sounds you simply dump out your worms and castings onto a plastic sheet. Sort through and catch as many worms as you…
Your worms need 6 things to stay healthy: temperature, food, moisture, airflow, bedding, and darkness. Temperature: Your worms need to be stored between 55 and 77 degree. During the hot days of summer you should keep your worm bin in the shade and during winter you should keep it indoors or in your garage. Food: Worms are vegetarians so any garden waste you normally would add to your compost…
Now you have created your own worm bin now you need to get it ready for your worms. The worms need some bedding, which you can buy some coir worm bedding online or you can make some yourself by taking confidential documents from your shredder and soaking in water until it has the consistency of a wrung out sponge. Now not only shredding your documents but having worms eat…
Why would I want a worm bin? Well my initial reason was my daughter wanted a pet worm and I decided making a worm bin would be a much better option than having worms escaping in our house. After researching into the world of vermicomposting, harvesting worm poop or castings for the nicer which is basically the best thing you can add to your garden. It is also a…
Unfortunately I only have one compost bin which I continuously add materials to, so I never have a complete “batch” of compost at one given time. In order to be able to filter out the finished compost from the non-composted material I created a soil sifter (sieve) I checked out soil sifters online but didn’t find anything that I liked so I decided to make one myself. I went…
It is getting that time a year when we are all getting our seeds in order and start planning what we will be including in your garden. Every year I always tell myself “Take it easy, don’t overdo it” but unfortunately I never listen to myself and look at the many seeds in the packet and end up composting at least half of my crop of spinach, carrots, and…
I was thinking back to my first vegetable gardening experience in suburbia a few years ago. After many trips to the local home and garden store I accumulated the following: Soil amendments (compost/peat moss/perlite) $ 33.00 Garden tools (rake/fork) $ 16.00 Organic fertilizer $ 3.00 Seeds and seed starter kit $ 24.00 Kid garden tools (shovel/watering can) $ 5.00 Miscellaneous $ 10.00 Total $ 91.00 In the end of…