Five ways to celebrate Earth Day

The best quote ever: Every day is earth day. Found in the Mutts cartoon for today, April 22nd 2011.
Five ways to celebrate Earth Day everyday:
1. Grow your own greens.

2. Practice gratitude.

3. Compost your greens. Start worm composting.

4. Recycle.

5. Walk, bike or use mass transportation.

So what are you doing to celebrate?

New condo for the worms

As a gardening geek, getting a trendy looking new worm condo for my holiday present was a stroke of pure awesomeness. This one is available to residents of our city for a discount. If you are in southern California, google your city or county to find whether your municipality offers this.

The worms' new condo, named Wriggly Wranch tm, comes with a bottom level spigot for the precious worm tea, legs to keep off the ground, and coconut coir for the worms' first bed.


The good: Nice to have two trays so that you add the fresher veggies in the top bin. The spigot is a nice addition. In the previous setup, I had been using my turkey baster to suck up the worm 'tea'. Maybe I can retire the turkey baster from gardening.

The bad, maybe: Wriggly Wranch tm used to come with three trays instead of the two. We'll see if I need that third tray. The collecting spigot is also located about an inch above the bottom of the tray, which means in order to get any worm goodness, you'll have to have more than an inch of liquid to accumulate. Seems like a lot of liquid to just have hanging around. On second thought, I may have to bring out the ol turkey baster out of retirement.

Nice FAQs on worm composting explored on this blog post at North Coast Gardening.

I'll see how this works out.

Why do you compost?

Assuming you do compost, why do you compost?  Do you wish to avoid filling up landfills? Is it to have control over what goes in your garden? Does it connect with your frugal self? Do you like having worms for pets? Do you crave worm tea for your garden?

I was thinking about this as I dropped more wilted veggies into my little compost pile. I have stacked two 15 gallon pots, with something at the bottom to catch any compost drippings. For that, I use my trusty baster, stolen from the kitchen. Have no fear, know I'll get a new one for turkey day.  The earthworms are slowly migrating from the bottom pail to the top one, now filled with fresh coffee grounds, mushroom bits, broccoli peelings, egg shells, and carrot fronds.  Lovely stuff, not smelly at all. 

I'm getting quite attached to my worms; I think of them as my new pets.  It's a neat little ecosystem, ending with more compost for my garden. More control over what goes into my garden is appealing, as is the sense I'm putting less stuff into the landfills.

Composting is it's own quiet metaphor, the process of taking leftovers, unused bits of pieces normally ending up in the trash, and becoming food, home and sustenance of another process. 

I'm not sure what is the most salient reason why I compost. So many ideas and desires all in one.  It makes me wonder why others compost.

 

How do you compost?

I bring this up because I have been surprised to find how satisfying it is to keep a compost pile. It's easy to do especially if you are fortunate to have garden space. Besides, what else will I do with my cucumber peelings and wilted lettuce leaves?

Know it's been quite a frugal adventure so far on my part. I dump my wilty leaves, eggshells and chard rinds saved from the kitchen into one cracked 15 gallon bucket set in a quiet spot in my garden. I keep it covered with a heavy clay top, necessary to keep the neighborhood riff-raff out.

It didn't take long for the earthworms to find my compost, probably crawling in through the crack in my container. Since my compost pile evolved into a worm composting setup, I no longer worry about the temperature of my pile or how much browns and greens I have added. I feed my worms regularly with kitchen scraps and eggshells, occasionally the egg carton torn up.

Every few months when I do new plantings, I 'harvest' some of my compost for the soil. I take the top of my compost pile, which is really a clay top, dump all the newer stuff out, and dig out the stuff at the bottom.I find whatever it is down there to be swimming with earthworms.

 

The oldest stuff goes into my garden to start the new plantings. I throw back the stuff I pulled out into bucket.

I'm happy. I 'grow' my own compost, I have a use for my headed-for-the-trashcan greens, and my earthworms must be happy because they multiply faster than rabbits.

I must be in sync with the LA Times dry garden lady because she just wrote about composting here.

Spread burlap near the bin. Using a pitch fork, empty the still-cooking mass of unfinished recent additions onto the cloth, taking a short break to allow various creatures involved in the decomposition process to recover and retreat. As you pause, cuss. Curse the designers of these contraptions and every blithe garden writer who ever extolled one.


Stop moving the half-digested compost to the burlap once you reach finished compost. That it is done to perfection will be evident to the eyes, fingers and nose. It will be almost black. It will crumble to the touch. And it will be headily sweet-smelling.

Start scooping this finished compost into a wheelbarrow.