Worm Bins

In my search for organic fertilizer for my vegetables I came across a book called Worms Eat My Garbage by Mary Appelhof. She uses Red Wiggler Worms to compost her kitchen scraps and turn them into worm castings (manure) called vermicompost, which is rich in organic matter and contains Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Potash, plus 11 other trace minerals.


The bedding material for the worm bin is shredded paper and newspaper. I tear the newspaper by hand and use a paper shredder for junk mail and other pieces of scrap paper. The kitchen scraps are then burried in the bedding material or placed on top and occasionally covered with fresh bedding. The worm bin is practically odor free due to aerobic decomposition.

Top: New Bin with Fresh Bedding and Scraps

Bottom: Older Bin That is About 50% Worm Castings

Rain Barrel

Last winter I built a rain barrel and added a gutter to the back porch to funnel the rain to it. I added a piece of screen over the end of the gutter to filter out the trash and I also added a spigot at the bottom and another garden hose attachment at the top for overflow. I keep the garden hose, which runs to my bee and butterfly garden, attached to the top overflow connection. This funnels all the extra over flow to my flowers during a rain. When it has been dry for several days, I move the hose down to the spigot attachment and turn it on to drain the barrel. There is plenty of water pressure for the water to travel to the garden, plus the garden is a little downhill. I have read that a rain barrel has enough pressure to push the water through a soaker hose, but I have not tried it yet. I also have a small bird bath under the spigot and try to leave it dripping slowly to keep the bird bath full and to attract birds with the sound of the dripping water. The rain barrel quickly fills up with only a light rain because the gutter funnels the water from a large area of the roof. The rain water is good to use for the plants and animals because it doesn’t contain any chemicals such as chlorine and fluoride.

 Rain Barrel Overflow During a Light Rain

Overflow Hose Running to the Butterfly Garden

Home Grown Food

For Thanksgiving, in addition to turkey and a squash casserole, we prepared two food items that had organic roots : a salad using Black Seeded Simpson lettuce that we grew in a container garden and pumpkin pies made from our Fairy Tale pumpkins that we bought at a farmer's market in south Alabama.  Both turned out really well, especially the pumpkin pies. 

I found the recipe for the pumpkin pies at http://www.pickyourown.org/pumpkinpie.php.  The Fairy Tale pumpkins were easy to work with; however, they were more watery after baking in the oven than we anticipated.  After scooping the pumpkin out from the skin, I lined a colander with paper towels to allow the water, and not the pumpkin, to drain through.  It took over an hour to drain--I put a container under the colander just to see how much "pumpkin water" it held and it was quite a lot!  I'm glad we did that or else our pumpkin pies would have been really watery. 

Funny thing, though, was that, after seeing how much baked pumpkin there was, we thought we had enough pumpkin to fill four pies but once the water drained out, it was just enough for two pies--the pumpkin glop shrunk right before our eyes!  At the grocery store, I found some organic eggs from free range chickens (chickens that are not fed growth hormones) and used those in the pumpkin pies as well.  We hope to get a few chickens ourselves one day for eggs and also for fertilizer for my husband's gardening.

Fairy Tale Pumpkin Pies

The Warre' Beehive

The Warre’ behive was designed by a French Pastor, Abbe’ Emile Warre’, in the early 1900’s. He recommend this design after experimenting with over 350 different types of beehives over a 50 year period. He called his hive la Ruche Populaire, which is translated as 'the People's Hive'. The Warre’ beehive is built to be bee-friendly and to manage with minimal intrusion. It is only opened once a year to collect the honey. This also keeps the nest scent and heat at the proper level, which causes less stress and work for the bees and is supposed to help control pests and pathogens in the beehive.

I built two Warre’ behives this fall and plan to experiment with them in the spring. I tried to start a Langstroth hive last spring with a swarm that I captured in a bait hive on April 2nd. The swarm was doing good until they absconded from the hive on May 26th due to a hive beetle infestation. I recaught the swarm in a fig tree and put them in a new hive but they never fully recovered. I tried feeding them to help build the swarm back up. This attracted other bees that robbed the hive and killed most of the bees in it on June 24th.

Part of the problem with the swarm I caught was that the swarm was small and the Langstroth hive was to large for the bees to defend it against the hive beetles. The Warre’ hive is smaller and it also has a smaller entrance that will be easier to defend. Aother feature is that the hive is tall, narrow and square which is closer to the natural shape of a hollow tree. I built a hive beetle trap into the bottom of one of the hives so that I can compare the results of hive beetle control with Warre’s original design.

Small Swarm in My Langstroth Hive

Preparing for Rabbits

My wife has been interested in getting a rabbit for a while and I have wanted some manure to fertilize my organic flower and vegetable gardens so we decided to build a cage in preparation for acquiring a couple of rabbits this spring. After looking at http://www.albc-usa.org/cpl/wtchlist.html, a heritage animal breeds website, we decided that we liked the Blace de Hotot which is a threatened breed from Normany, France. It is a large, white rabbit with thin black bands around each eye. This variety was produced through cross breeding around 1912.

I built the rabbit hutch out of 2X4’s, plywood, and screen. I let the size of the 2X4’s and screen determine the size of the cage. Building it this way led to very little wasting of materials. It turned out to be 8 feet long by 24 inches high by 30 inches wide. It has doors at each end and a divider in the middle to keep the buck and the doe separated until breeding time. It is on a 5 foot stand, which makes the bottom of the cage 3 feet from the ground. Since the only shady place we have to put the hutch is under our back porch, I am going to use storage containers to catch the manure that falls.

The following is a chart that shows that rabbit manure contains the highest amount of Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Potash compared to other farm animals. It does not contain weed seeds, but it still should be composted to lessen the chance of harmful pathogens and to break down the manure to make it more usable to the plant.

NPK Chart - Organic Fertilizers and Soil Amendments:

Source                        N       P        K      Comments

Rabbit manure        2.4    1.4    0.6     Most concentrated of
                                                                      animal manures in fresh form.

Cow manure          0.6     0.2    0.5    Often contains weed seeds,
                                                                      should be hot composted.

Horse manure        0.7     0.3    0.6     Medium breakdown time.

Worm castings       0.5     0.5    0.3     50% organic material
                                                                        plus 11 trace minerals.

Chicken manure     1.1     0.8    0.5     Fast acting, breaks down
                                                                        quickest of all manures.

Our rabbit cage.

Satsuma Oranges

Three years ago, my husband bought me a Satsuma Orange tree and a Meyer Lemon tree to add to the Key Lime tree I had already purchased.  Typically, one does not think of growing citrus trees in Central Alabama.  In fact, all of these trees were bought in Mobile, Alabama and moved to Prattville.  My citrus trees have been doing great outdoors during the summer months but have to be brought in during the winter months (we have them in containers).

Of the three, the Satsuma Orange tree is our favorite because of the fruit it bears in the fall months.  The Satsuma orange, which originated in China but was introduced to America by Japan, is a type of mandarin orange that is very easy to peel and that contains a sweet, usually seedless fruit.  Unlike typical oranges, you do not have to worry about orange juice squirting out or running down your hands when you peel them--my stepson loves to gobble these up!

Another unique aspect of the Satsuma oranges is that they are green when they are ripe, not orange!  They will turn orange, though, with the advent of cold weather temperatures.  Many of the "regular" oranges that we buy in grocery stores are actually picked before they are ripe for transportation purposes and are either gassed or injected with color to turn the oranges "orange," meaning they still might not be fully ripe even at market.  Think about that the next time you buy an orange and you might go out and buy your own orange tree instead! 

Satsuma Orange Tree (left)

Key Lime Tree (middle)

Meyer Lemon Tree (right)

Yummy Satsuma Oranges

Fairy Tale Pumpkins

This weekend, we visited some of our favorite fruit and vegetable markets in South Alabama in the hopes of locating a Fairy Tale pumpkin.  We found some beautiful ones at Allegri Farm Market in Daphne, AL.  Talking with the owner, we found out that these particular pumpkins were grown in Indiana, along with the Yugoslavian Finger Fruit squash we bought.

The Fairy Tale pumpkin is described as a unique eating and ornamental pumpkin.  It is supposed to be very tasty, according to online sources and the owner of the Allegri Farm Market.  The Fairy Tale pumpkin is an heirloom pumpkin originating in France.  After we use it for decoration, our plan is to make a tasty dish of it and save the seeds to plant.

The Yugoslavian Finger Fruit is an heirloom squash from Yugoslavia that dates back to 1885 and is considered a summer squash good for eating when it is young and an ornamental squash when it ages.  We are also going to save these seeds for planting.

Fairy Tale Pumpkins (left and right)

Yugoslavian Finger Fruit Squash (middle)

Fall Planting

This fall we are experimenting with several cool season crops. These include Garlic, Garlic Chives, Society Garlic, Red Grano Onions, White Bermuda Onions, Copenhagen Cabbage, Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce, Georgia Southern Collard Greens, and Scarlet Nantes Carrots. These are all open pollinated heirloom varieties from which we will save the seeds to use in a following season. We also planted herbs including Dill, Parsley, and Fennel in our herb gardens, along with the Lemon Balm, Lemon Tyme, Mint, and Chocalate Mint already there.

In addition to the vegetables and herbs, there are many types of flower seeds that should be planted in the fall. These include Gaillardia, Black-Eyed-Susan, Milkweed, Bee Balm, Lemon Bee Balm, Queen Anne's Lace, Purple Cone Flower, and Crimson Clover. These are all excellent pollen and nectar plants for bees and butterflies. We mainly plant natives, but we do use some non-native, non-invasive plants that are good pollen and nectar producers. I don't mind planting a few exotic plants for the bees. Remember that honeybees are not native either.

                

Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce

Copenhagen Cabbage (background)

Ornamental Kales (foreground)