25 lbs of worm castings!

Worm castings or vermicompost as it is called is an excellent, nutrient-rich organic fertilizer and soil conditioner you can get at the garden nurseries. Last year while planting tomatoes I added some worm castings that I bought to put in each hole with the plants to make the soil richer. I vowed that I would not buy them again as they are expensive. I thought with all stuff here on the property that I could feed the worms, I should get some red wiggler worms and become a worm farmer. So I did.

Screening the worm castings

Wednesday I ‘harvested’ my first worm castings. My worm bin is outside and consists of some straw bales formed in a ‘U’ shape that I have across from the chicken coop. I built it last fall and have fed the red wigglers a variety of food including giant pumpkins, coffee grounds, eggshells, straw, newspaper, fruit (no citrus-it will kill them) and vegetable kitchen scraps. Just like a regular compost bin but no work is involved-no turning the pile over and over to get it to decompose. The worms do the work. They eat everything and leave their castings behind. I built a screen to sift out the worms and debris from the castings. I sifted it twice to make sure I got the worms and stuff separated from the castings. I got a full 5 gallon bucket of castings! Unbelievable and wonderful! I took it up to the house to see how much the bucket weighed and it weighed 25 lbs!

The last few days I’ve harvested shallot scapes. They are just like garlic scapes in that they are the flower bulb. I pick it before it opens so all its energy will go into making the bulbs below the ground larger.

They are really delicious sautéed. We already made an omelet with cheese, spinach and scapes and also in some fried rice. If you see them on your shallots or garlic, cut them off  but don’t throw them away!

Get more tomatoes with Epsom Salts

Epsom Salts May help increase blossoms in tomatoes and pepper plants. Increase in blossoms means more tomatoes and peppers!

Epsom salts contain magnesium sulfate, two important elements for plant growth.

Magnesium- can become depleted in soil usually later in the season. Magnesium helps strengthen plant cell walls, helping the plant to absorb nutrients. It also helps to increase blossoms.

Sulfur- improves the growth and overall health of plants, it may also help our high alkaline soil here in the southwest.

There are two ways to use Epsom salts for tomatoes.

1. Mix 1 tbsp of Epsom salts into the soil at the bottom of the planting hole when transplanting tomatoes or peppers or mix 1 tbsp in a gallon of water and water the transplant. It may help plants absorb Calcium and other nutrients from the soil.

2. Use as a foliar spray of 1 tbsp per gallon of water when the plants flower. Epsom salt helps set more blossoms.

I’ve used Epsom Salts on my tomatoes, peppers and even roses for years. It will help roses produce more flowers. Scratch in 1/2 cup of  Epsom salts in soil around rose bush and water in.

I started transplanting tomatoes into the new garden section. My friend Tom, and I got 15 of them in the soil-all ready to go. We added to each hole: more compost, yum-yum mix, mycorrhizal fungi (for root growth), worm castings, epsom salts (for many blossoms), and dry milk (adds calcium to avoid blossom rend rot later). And this year to (hopefully) conserve on water usage, I’m trying silicon gel granules and some volcanic ash, both of which will keep water longer around the plant root zone.  All this stuff is mixed up with some of the existing soil in the hole.  Then we put the tomato plants in (and if they are rootbound, open the roots up a little), made a well around each one and water each hole several times to get the soil wet. Then I go back a third time and water in some Superthrive and seaweed fertilizer (helps with plant transplant shock). Afterwards I put a drip line around each plant and then put a wall-of-water around each of them to keep them warm at night because just when we think we are out of the woods weatherwise, it gets cold again.

To keep the wall-of-waters from collapsing when the wind gets blowing hard, I put some bamboo stakes inside the walls as shown in the second picture. Overkill? Maybe. But I will get some fantastic tomatoes during the season. I still need to put the main drip hose (1/2 inch size) around the perimeter of the patch and connect each individual drip line to it but I can hand water every other day for now till I get to it. Planting is the hands on intensive part-later it will be a breeze watching them grow..

Tomorrow-May 16, Amy Hetager, from Home Grown New Mexico, is coming with her students from Americorp to plant some more tomatoes. No shortage here-still got 55+ tomatoes to put in the ground!

Dalai Lama mediating. Photo courtesy of factsanddetails.com

I think one of my biggest challenges in this life is patience. Vegetable gardening is a lesson in patience. In the late winter I want to start all my seeds early (like right away) that I will transplant later, BUT NO, I MUST WAIT till the timing is right. Plant too early and I have these leggy things. Then after I get the seeds planted and they come up, I want them ready to plant BUT NO, I MUST WAIT and transplant them up to the next size pots to get bigger.  Then they are ready to transplant into the garden (I think) BUT NO, I MUST WAIT till the weather temperatures are above freezing at night. Then the days and nights are perfect and I think I can put them out, BUT NO I MUST WAIT till I harden the plants off outside.  Then once they are in the ground I want them to explode in growth immediately BUT NO, I MUST WAIT till they get acclimated. I watch while they sit there awhile. After that I want to immediately get those big juicy tomatoes that I have been WAITING FOR since the end of the previous season (think November), BUT NO, I MUST WAIT and watch the tomatoes stay green while they grow. I WAIT AND WAIT AND WAIT and then the garden kicks ass and really produces those veggies but it is now MID JULY-AUGUST and the picking season is JUST STARTING. Then I want to pick all those huge long-growing tomatoes that are still green BUT NO, I MUST WAIT till October and then a freeze is forecast, I run out to pick them and the season is over! BUT WAIT not quite because then I bring all the huge green tomatoes inside and I MUST WAIT till they finally turn red. WAIT, WAIT, WAIT! Finally when the season is over I will have canned a zillion pickles and  tons of spaghetti sauce and froze a gazillion gallons of plain tomato sauce and dried millions of pounds of apples (yes I think so this year) and made thousands of pounds of pumpkin soup, pumpkin pies, pumpkin bread, pumpkin muffins (you get the picture) and I’m exhausted and CAN’T WAIT TILL IT’S ALL OVER.  Then I recover all winter and can’t WAIT TO START the whole process again. Yes, I think gardening is a lesson in patience.

At first I couldn’t find the queen, even with a bright yellow dot on her (you can get the queen marked for easier ID). I mean how hard could this be on only 3 combs but I couldn’t see her. It took me 3 times of looking at the combs (both sides) before I finally spotted her. For a moment I thought she was gone, died or left but no finally there she was. They were hiding her!

Fava beans. (Vicia faba) (Photo credit: JMDN)

Here’s another new veggie I’m trying this year-Fava Beans.

Fava beans are in the legume family, not the bean family and add nitrogen nodules to the soil. Some people sow it as a cover crop in very early spring and then dig it under before planting or pull the plant and add it to their compost pile. I’m growing them to eat. They are used a lot in mid-eastern cuisine.

I tried growing Favas from seed inside earlier this spring and FAILED miserably. I like to share my failures as well as successes-how else can we all learn! Only 2 seeds germinated and maybe it was because my seed heating mats were FRYING every seed back then before I got a thermostat. Then a friend who was repairing the roof ran over one of them with his truck. I had put both of them on the side of the driveway to take down to the garden (thought they were out of the way) and his truck turned wide. So I took the one saved Fava plant and the rest of the Fava seeds down to the garden and decided to direct seed them. I love the black and white flowers they produce.

Fava beans like cool weather so I wasn’t sure it would even germinate here since we warm up fast but they did and here they are about 2-3 inches tall now.  Still not sure if I will get to harvest the beans later especially if we get hot fast but life’s an experiment and I’m one that tends to go for it.

I’m not sure about recipes for fava beans and I hear they are a pain in the a#* to shell as they have 2 shells on them which you must remove before eating. My friend Lava said they are good shelled fresh but wasn’t sure when they are dried. Anyone got any good recipes for both fresh shelled and after they are dry?

Finocchio fennel. Photo courtesy of growingherbsforbeginners.com

More on another new vegetable I’m trying this year-Finocchio Fennel.

There are several types of fennel, the bulb type (which is Italian called Finocchio or Florence), sweet fennel (fern like) and bronze fennel (fern like). All can be used as an herb but sweet and bronze are used for their foliage in cooking and Finocchio or Florence is used for the bulb in cooking. Sweet or bronze fennel will not bulb up. I used Finocchio in a Cioppino (seafood stew) at New Year’s and it was so wonderful that I decided to grow some. This post is about Finocchio Fennel.

I tried to grow some inside from seed- it didn’t do very well only getting a few to germinate so I ended up I buying a little pack at Agua Fria nursery here in Santa Fe.

Fennel growing well-May 7

Now from from what I’ve read they are not suppose to transplant well in the soil but I had so many of them in each little cell (and they were very young) that I teased the roots apart (carefully) and transplanted them directly into the soil.  I then put a drip on each one, made a little well that I put straw in so the water would not evaporate and then I put a cage I made out of wire material and covered it with some row cover. I was afraid the row cover might be too heavy directly on the baby fennels at first as they were very delicate-hence the cage. I thought the row cover would add more protection from the wind. Fennel can handle the cold (in fact it likes it) but the wind was what I was worried about.

closeup of developing bulbs

Here is a picture of the one of them developing bulbs. All 17 of them are doing really well.

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• Eat That Bulb! Oven Caramelized Fennel (bringingeuropehome.com)
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• Shaved Fennel & Orange Salad (wreg.com)

The potatoes I planted Mar. 30 are doing great. Most of them came up with a few exceptions. Not bad for my first try. Of course the proof will be if I get some nice potatoes. Right now they are about 8 inches tall and when they hit 10 inches I will start the hilling process. Basically every ten inches or so I will add soil slowly filling the trench and burying the base of the potato plant I started with. I thought I would use straw for the hilling process but decided to stick with dirt because it is so dry here and I thought the straw would probably blow away anyways. Besides when I dig them out it will be like an Easter egg hunt! Since this is my first year at trying to grow potatoes, I am excited about what might happen.

Related articles

• Roasted Asparagus and Fingerling Potatoes with Chive Tarragon Pesto (cooktolove.com)
• Chitting and Growing Potatoes (giantveggiegardener.com)
• Potatoes Were Planted on March 30th (giantveggiegardener.com)

I got my bees last Wednesday and Sunday Caleb, Elodie and I checked them and the queen was released from her box (or as Elodie says-cage-which is more correct). The queen has a yellow dot on her to spot her easily. This will not harm her but helps you see her better. I gave them some more sugar water solution (until they get established) and they have already built about 1.5 combs of wax! Amazing. Busy as bees…

And no I didn’t plant tomatoes this past weekend. Ran out of time..Good thing.

On Sunday, Caleb and Elodie and I created a bean teepee in one the beds where pole beans will grow. I wanted to make it large enough that a person (even an adult) could sit inside it this summer when it is covered with bean plants.  I can’t wait to experience what it will be like.

Here is the pole bean teepee I had last year but it was completely closed so this year we left an opening in the tee-pee to get in and out.

I had some really tall poles so we could get the height and width needed to make it large enough. I got the poles from my friend, Tuko, who had them on an arbor at her house and was taking it down. That was many years ago and I’ve saved them all this time for something special and I think I found that special project. I’m hoping that my neighbor’s grandson, Aiden will go in it later this summer.

So today in the wind, I went out and planted some seeds before this supposed rain comes. I planted beets and carrots on both sides and then I covered them with row cover (for now) so the seeds wouldn’t blow away and stay wet longer when I water them. The row cover helps the seeds stay in place! Later after the plants come up I will take off the sheets!

I checked the bees today and they still haven’t released the queen out of her own little box yet but probably will by tomorrow. The queen comes in a little box inside the big ‘shoebox’ with the rest of the bees. All the bees have to release her. If we humans released her right away, they would probably kill her as they are all not from the same hive and need to acclimate to each other. There is a little sugar plug on the end of the queen’s box which takes the bees about 3 days to eat through thus releasing her. While they eat the little sugar plug out, they are getting use to her pheromones and by doing so will accept her. The name ‘queen’ is actually a misnomer as she does not boss the others around but is really a ‘mother’ bee, in essence a baby machine! There is no ‘leader’ in the bee colony, all the bees make decisions by consensus and the colony thinks like one organism. Kinda like the Borg in Star Trek!

RAIN=MORE FLOWERS
=MORE CROPS
=MORE BEES
=MORE HONEY!