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