Fodder for Worms

So it turned out I needed to break out the second tray for the worm bin sooner than I thought, and it turned out to be a better learning experience than the first tray.
A warning, this will be pretty image intensive, as I documented everything this time in an attempt to give people an idea of what goes in to working a worm bin.
After I had loaded up the first bin with a ton of corn husks and other things that apparently take a great deal of time to break down, it became very obvious that the worms weren't going through the stuff in the trays as fast as I thought they would. This is probably because I bought less than they recommended and they hadn't had a chance to ramp up reproduction just yet, despite the plethora of food they were being given.
SO... I decided to start a second tray because I had a scraps bucket brimming to full and a pile of cardboard and newspapers ready to go and taking up space in my small-ish kitchen. I figured the worms could travel back and forth between the two trays through whatever looked yummier to them. Or tasted, since it's pitch black and they like it that way.

As you can see, it was pretty darn crowded in that first tray.

I began with the recommendation to create the food and roughage mix for the worms out of the stuff they included; the rest of the paper shreds (I tore up the paper bag they came in, too, because hey the entire point of this is not to waste resources!), the pumice, and the rest of the coconut coir, which I realized I had only used perhaps 1/4 of instead of half and probably explained why the worms were having a rough time in the first tray... not enough stuff to get a footing in.
Everything thrown together in a bowl...

This is me adding "worm minerals" on top of everything to give them some extra nutrition. I prefer gummy vitamins.

Then wet everything down and stirred it with the handy pitch fork they included.

Mmmm....

I then went about shredding the mail, the egg cartons, the extra newspapers and everything else available and tossed it in the bottom of the second tray I was prepping.

I then walked it outside and set it on top of the first tray, adding the coconut coir/paper/pumice/worm minerals mix over top of it in a surprisingly thick layer. They say this tray, being second, didn't need newspaper on the bottom of it because the worms would want to crawl up in to it so... I figured that was enough prep of the base!

Thankfully it just looks like dirt that survived a music festival.

I tossed in my scrap bin stuff to give them the "greens" that were needed to make proper compost , and to give the worms something interesting to actually find once they journeyed upwards.
Point of note here - "Greens" are plants, fruits, vegetables, loose tea, coffee grounds, anything that is wet and organic in nature. "Browns" are things like newspaper, junk mail, cartons, cardboard, anything that has been processed and is flat or "dead", if you will. It provides the proper balance of nitrogen and carbon within the wormy environment.

Yum yum yummy..... for them, anyway!

I then layered wet newspaper on top of everything per the recommendations to keep down fruit flies and pests and to help keep the environment nice and most. Plus it helps keep the inside of the lid clean.

The county newspaper - where I find out about deals on groceries from last week once it gets to me.

And voila! Finished! And seriously easy. I was able to do it with a toddler underfoot and a husband milling around trying to figure out what on earth I was doing with perfectly good mixing bowls.

Capped off smartly for that warm, dark environment your worms love!

I have noticed that within a week of putting the second tray over top of the first that the VERY full first tray dropped down at least an inch in height. A check of the contests -which I have spared you a picture of- shows everything as being wilted and a LOT more dark matter in the bottom than previously. I didn't stick my hand in it because I had a toddler there watching me and did not wish to have an emulatable moment, But it seemed to me giving them the extra space to move around actually made the digesting go faster. I call that a win!
And a fun side bit that I found out after this: I was telling my Dad about venturing in to vermiculture during our weekly phone call. He grew up on a farm, so everything that I talk about doing is stuff he has already done, including ringing the neck off a chicken when he was 6. HARD CORE.
When I explained to him that I had red wrigglers in my garage, he grew excited and told me about how HIS father used to have a huge compost pile that he raised worms in, just a pile of leaves and food scraps and whatnot in the middle of a pit made from cinder blocks. Nothing NEARLY so fancy as the small contraption I dumped money in to. But what he did was go through and not only sell the worm castings, but he also sold the worms themselves to an outfit that sold fishing bait out of vending machines all over the South. Apparently it made him a LOT of money.
"But I bet you've never seen one of those. They wouldn't be down where you live," he said softly.
"Actually, there's one right outside the car wash about a half mile from here," I told him, laughing.
It was an odd thing to learn about family history over, and do a bit of bonding with, but it was definitely cool to learn about. And also kind of funny to find out that I'm not doing anything new right now, and that this sort of thing is apparently in my DNA!
Anyway, I'm hoping this helped some folks out in getting an idea of what it takes to set up and maintain a worm bin, and I'll update again when we go to harvest the worm castings from the first bin!

~An end note; I negotiated to borrow my husband's travel laptop and will be using it write updates going forward. Thank you to everybody for your patience!

Vermiculture and Lactobacillus

Things are finally winding down on the "moving our lives to new digs" forefront. We have most of the necessities finally, and as of yesterday we emptied out our smaller storage unit and got everything in to the mid-sized unit. That was a hell of an accomplishment and a nice milestone.
The homesteading activities did NOT go on hiatus, however! I am bound and determined to work on things even if we don't have the "traditional " setup just yet!
The two projects that have been consuming my imagination are... Yogurt making and worm bins!
The yogurt was started first because you basically need milk, bacteria, containers and a fridge. I had all of those components walking in the door to our new place so nothing else was necessary. (Although I will cop to buying a 12-pack of Ball canning jars. Because it's something I would like to do one day.)
After asking if anybody had any recipes for making yogurt and being INUNDATED with the recipe on how to make it -and I will be honest, everybody told me their recipe made THE BEST YOGURTS EVAR and it was all literally the same set up steps- I went ahead and tried with organic whole milk snagged out of the dairy section of the supermarket. Nothing fancy, In fact, the love/hate/love/omgendthispain relationship I have with dairy had me concerned that perhaps I should be trying raw milk. Or almond milk. Or goat's milk. More on this in a bit. But for that first batch I crafted 3 and 3/5ths jars of whole cow's milk yogurt. I covered them in towels to keep them warm, dropped a lobster pot over top of them and let them sit for 14 hours.

And in this photo you see our high-tech yogurt making operation complete with stripey towel.

It was an utter success, and the worst part was waiting for the milk to cool down. I went and stirred it every time I got fidgety and tested the temp with a meat probe thermometer, because we are FANCY around here. As my friend Jennifer said, yogurt making is something you do while you're doing other things. Because really it's like that thing where you go do other stuff while the dryer is running. Or paint is drying. Or your mother in law is giving you advice. That kind of thing.
I DID cheat and use a single serve thing of Fage yogurt instead of going the purist route and popping open probiotic capsules, but there are no regrets. I enjoy the Fage product (or could when it still agreed with me) and therefore their bacteria was desirable.
You will note a trend of me buying food from places I like then using it to make my own food. Constantly. The only reason I don't have blueberry bushes right now is because you can't grow them from blueberries at the farmer's market!
After seeing how easy it was to do the cow's milk, I opted to look up almond milk yogurt and goat's milk yogurt and give it a shot.
No. Never again.
Because THIS is what happened with the almond yogurt after I cultured it and stashed it in the fridge for 2 days....

The separation was noticable in all 4 jars, and only got worse as it "aged". 

....and the smell was not good. Not good at all. Given that eating the homemade cow's milk stuff has actually proven to not trouble my stomach in the least, I will give up trying to make yogurt out of milk alternatives.
As far as the goat yogurt? I made it from raw goat's milk, and a mere teaspoon of it left me with goat flavoring in my mouth for an hour. I'll be using it for casseroles coming up, but it's just too strong for me to throw granola and fruit in to and munch on in the morning.
Happily, my second batch of cow's milk yogurt turned out better than the first, and this time in order to keep my kitchen counter clean I put it in the oven and left the light on overnight. The jars were warm to the touch when I stumbled downstairs 14-15 hours later, and definitely firmer and creamier somehow than the first batch was. I'm looking forward to making my third batch tomorrow and rolling the last of the second batch in to it as the culture! I have a love of generational things, and having my own slowly personalizing yogurt bacteria culture pleases me.

A successful "jarring" occasion. Get it??

Now! On to vermiculture!
I hate food waste. This was probably instilled in me by my father, who had to make do with soooo much less as a kid than I did when he was growing up. You ate the watermelon rind, damnit, (pickled for a treat sometimes) and the corn cob was sweet so you chewed on that, too, to get a little sugar when 5 cent candy was outside of what you could afford.
This is why I was chafing at the bit that we would be losing our compost bin with the sale of our last place. There would be so many fruit skins and pits and vegetable peelings going down the road in a plastic bag to a dumpster, waiting to be transported to a landfill where they would just sit, removed from the energy cycle until the bag split open and things could properly rot and shift around. I am also looking to start as many projects as can be safely and sanitarily done in our diminished space so there's less downtime when we finally have a place we can muck about in the dirt on. So while a compost bin would not be doable due to the smell and potential seepage and the fact that we can't put anything out on the grass because the landscapers can't mow  -not to mention complaints that we're putting rotting food outside that might attract the wildlife- I knew that a worm bin was the way to go.
I found a very simple model, the Worm Factory 360, on Amazon. It was compact and expandable depending on the needs of the household, meaning we could stow it in a corner in the garage and have our neighbors be none the wiser.
There are a TON of tutorials out there on making worm bins and some of them could be made with something as simple as a rubbermaid storage container. If you have the room or can have your worm bin outside, it's a much cheaper option and I highly recommend it. I only went with pre-made because it needed to be very compact and very clean. The model we got has a small bowl at the bottom to catch drippings if the compost gets too wet which you can pour off courtesy of a spigot as "worm tea" and go make your houseplant and garden plants' day by adding it to their regular water.
It arrived with a lot of bells and whistles, and a VERY in depth booklet explaining how to go about starting up the bin, caring for the worms, setting up the substraight, etc. I was so excited that I got to work immediately despite not having purchased the worms yet.
I started out by mixing up the coconut fibers, crushed mineral and shredded paper that they included in to a damp mound to help keep moisture and air in to the initial pan.

Yummy!

I then set down a few layers of wet newspaper to keep the worms from falling through the bin floor since there would be no soil yet for them to roll around in, added the substrate in, then tossed on all of the vegetable and fruit scraps I'd been saving up that week so the worms could start out with something yummy. I'd made chicken chili, so there were a LOT of greens to deal with.

Fun fact, you can throw in newspapers, flyers and junk mail for them to chew! As long as it's not glossy!

As you can see, we opted for the orangey-red model, because that seemed more fun to me than black or green and it would also stand out in the garage for people not to kick or bump accidentally. It lives right by the door going in to the garage currently, but I'm hoping to move it to the far wall after we get the mess in there from moving better organized.
After all that was complete, the only thing left to do was wet down some more layers of newspaper, lay them on top, then replace the lid. Voila! First pan started!

Looking respectable and slightly short.

One of the nice things about this model is that when one pan fills up, you just add another on top, and eventually the worms get done chowing on what's below and move up through the grid on the pan's bottom. It came with 4 pans but can expand up to 8 high. Seeing as you can sell the castings and that I will definitely be needing it to amend pot and garden soil in the future, I suspect we'll need those full 8 pans. But for now, we start with just the one!
 I then had to figure out how to get worms since it did not come with them. I opted to buy 500 live red wrigglers off of Amazon and opted for rush delivery because it's damned hot out currently and I didn't want them to get too stressed. There are cheaper ways to get your worms, such as having a friend dig a bunch out of their worm bin, or visit a vermiculture or bait place and snagging them there. I was in a hurry and didn't think I had the time to sit down and research where to go to get cheap or free worms. In hindsight, I could easily check it out. If something happens and I need to repopulate this bin, or a second or bigger bin when we're finally truly settled, I'm going to go the non-website route. You'd rather have local worms anyway, aclimated to the soil and climate.
When the worms arrived, it turned out they were from a worm farm north of here in PA. I was highly amused at the thought of those little guys traveling through the mail to come to rest still within the same state they started in. It was a cool day, and I popped open the bag ASAP to check on them.
As mentioned by the fabulous in depth booklet from the bin, the worms were in a ball in the middle of the peat and not feeling up to doing much. I quickly took them out to the bin, popped the top, peeled back the newspaper and just dropped them on in. To help rehydrate them I also drizzled half a cup of water over the peat and the ball of worms. They began to move immediately, to my relief.

Smile for the camera! Or... not.

Over the next 48 hours I checked several times to make sure none were making a run for it. Some explored out to the edges of the bin, but nobody fell all the way to the floor. As of tonight when I went to put this week's compost pail of goodies in, they had all disappeared down in to the greenery and were munching away happily.
So there you have it, my adventure with tiny, tiny creatures and learning to make my own food and make best use of what has already been consumed and left afterwards. When the first tray is mostly turned to worm castings I'll take a few pictures so everyone can view the transformation. The more I look at the amount of food in there and the number of worms I bought, I'm starting to think the advice of buying at least a pound of worms was wiser. about 1,000 worms equals a pound, but I didn't think I would have enough for 1,000 worms to eat so I hedged. I could take stuff out to the bin every day if I wanted, between junk mail and deliveries and cooking dinner. They'll catch up eventually, I'm just not sure how quickly. A mini science experiment, perhaps!
As far as the yogurt, in the near future I'm going to do a post showing all the things I've been doing with that on top of just maufacturing it. It is the single most popular thing I make currently, with Girlchild requesting "Yoguh" every morning when we start making breakfast. She downs it like it's going out of style, prompting me to make more each time! But I digress, this post is enormous, and that's it for now.
Thanks to all for reading!

Pet Potato Project Part ???

I've been horrendously sick with back to back Martian flu bugs the last few weeks, so I haven't been able to do as much around the house as I had wanted. After being laid up for a week and a half I couldn't take it anymore!!! I absolutely HAD to get one of my outdoor projects done, fever and leaking nose or not! Thankfully my fever, my Girlchild and the unrelenting heat and humidity cooperated. 
I had been taking pictures of the potato vine to keep track of how much it had grown. About 3-4 weeks ago it was only an inch above the dirt. Then suddenly.... ZIIIPPP!! It was a LOT, LOT more.
This thing has been transplanted more than an Army brat, so I was hoping to make this the last time this summer I touched it, letting it grow until it was harvested later on.
We bought a pot at Target that was sufficiently attractive but also heavy duty plastic so I wouldn't have to worry about it potentially shattering in the winter cold the way a clay pot might, and also probably shelled out $80 less. Seen here, you can see the difference in height. It was also wider by several inches, allowing for outward root expansion and tuber room.

And you can see what a monster the potato vine turned in to.

I had initially been thinking my way through several scenarios where I planted the vine and it couldn't get sunlight, so was envisioning setting it up at an angle to catch sunlight, starting the potato on top of Styrofoam that I dug out slowly from the bottom to lower it in.... but that really wasn't a problem by the time I compared the two.

Yeah. It's almost to the top already.

It'll be able to get sunshine juuuuuust fine. It's about an inch below the rim of the pot already, which now has me concerned it'll run out of room almost immediately.
The Dirt Princess was on hand to make sure that the soil was properly aerated, stealing dirt from the "master pot" I had filled to put around the potato vine once it was in the pot.

Don't mind me, Momma, I'm over here being adorbz.

So the first problem to address was the complete lack of drainage in the pot. The sheer amount of rain and humidity had already killed off my basil plants in a pot that HAD drainage and several of my herb seedlings, so keeping it from being waterlogged was a priority.

 Easily dealt with, we have a very handy drill set. I chose the 1/4 drill bit. The worst part of it was apparently the noise, but once I showed the Dirt Princess what I was doing, she was fascinated, watching the annoying little curls of plastic rise up out of the base and snap off. The entire thing was done in 2 minutes, tops.

Behold, the wonder I have wrought with power tools.

Now, had this been pottery I would've tried the same thing but using water and at a muuuuuuuch slower speed. I've heard people say "Use a masonry bit". Well... I don't have one of those, but I HAVE drilled excruciatingly slowly through a glazed pot with only a few small flakes around the hole to show for it. So I know it can be done. Just a handy tip. And don't press down too hard or you'll crack it in half. Just generally BE DELICATE WITH THE THING!
At that point we got rid of the drill and its accompanying bag o' bits before it could become a potting soil receptacle, the fate of any open receptacle on the porch when my precocious daughter decides to spread it around and share with the plants. Or the citronella candles.
I followed up with an extra two or three inches of soil at the base, oh-so-carefully tipped the plant out of its previous post, and set it in the bottom. It was shored up at the side with more potting soil, then I began the complete guesswork of filling the dirt in around the potato vine, using it to hold up and separate the now two arms of it and give them space to grow outward.

Dirt Princess shown here working on her own private and intensive project with wiry potato vine next door.

The problem is, most tutorials online assume you haven't waited while your vine bolted and you've been diligent covering it every two inches or so. AKA - you know what the hell you're doing and you're properly prepared. HAH. I managed to find one article that said once you had seven inches, bury it and keep on top of things until it reached the top of your container courtesy of Gardening Know How, Article found (here). All other references to potato vines involved sweet potatoes. Those are another devil I want to tackle, once I get a potato that creates slips and doesn't just rot instead.
It took several trips to get soil in the pot I could carry up and down the deck stairs (I will not miss those deck stairs, seriously) but eventually we had a mostly potted potato vine, looking pretty dandy.

Shown for scale on its side, the large blue pot I filled with potting soil three times to go around the potato plant.

I'm glad to get this off of my checklist of things, as we are moving on the 7th and I need everything to be transplanted by then so the plants can be moved in to their mostly permanent summer/fall homes at our new place.
I moved it in to its location where it'll get morning and early afternoon sun without an issue, and I know I have a spot at our next place that will allow for the same. And because I had been so gently placing soil in around the plant, the Dirt Princess promptly volunteered with her own soil she had been diligently spreading around and aerating, adding the last inch to the top of the soil. It was really neat to have her helping!

Look at my cool little helper!

Am I doing this wrong? Probably. But the guides I read online are very hazy about exactly what happens with the vine when you put it in dirt so I don't know for sure if it's going to be a glorious success or it's going to rot and die horribly in the next few weeks. But given how much it's fought through to get to where it is now and how gentle we were about transplanting it this time, I think in the very least I may get a next generation potato to use for next year. Barring that, I have experience and this will be more fun to try again later.
I did see a video where a man just placed wire mesh around the potato plant and literally dumped a bucket of dirt over top of it without preamble or care, explaining that it would grow up through all of that and continue to do so with each successive bucket. That has me thinking that I may be treating it TOO delicately, if anything. If this thing starts to go monster on me again, I may add a mesh cage and more dirt to get a few more inches and a few more potatoes out of it. I just have this crazy dream of making a potato dynasty out of something my daughter swiped from the grocery store, you know?? I'm looking forward to seeing potato blossoms for the first time in my life come August/September.
It felt good to be outside, although it left me very winded and dizzy after all of the carrying and hefting. An incoming cloudburst was the only thing that sent us inside afterward, otherwise I would be trying to transplant the pumpkins and watermelon seedlings that are already getting leggy on me.
There's just something about getting my hands in soil and helping living things get larger that makes me happy and content, and I needed that in the midst of growing pregnancy pains and battling illness. If I'm feeling better tomorrow, I may use the very last of my potting soil to transplant a few things and move some teddy-bear sunflowers to a more permanent home.

Gardening Update

Things are coming up green! All of the seeds we planted are starting to poke their heads up above the soil, save for the Munstead lavender and the rosemary(which we knew was a long shot anyway).
Behold the current (partial) lineup!

You will note there are 3 new pots. That's because we went back to Target for some beach gear and I noticed some different, cute pots in the dollar section. I grabbed them, hoping perhaps there would be rosemary seeds in THIS Target, as there's 2 in the area about equal distance away.
Turns out the great rosemary seed search is in vain, as there was not a single packet to be found. I feel more responsible for plants I've grown from seed for some reason, so that was kind of a bummer. HOWEVER! We also found some cilantro seeds this time, and some watermelon and pumpkin seeds. I thought those would be fun to try out. I have actually grown watermelon in the past and had a nice sized one growing on my upper deck before a bastard squirrel chewed a cavern in to it. Grrr... So I'm pretty sure we can duplicate the success.
I've also decided that even though we'll be in an apartment for the rest of the summer and a chunk of winter, I was growing most of my stuff on the deck anyway. There's plenty of room and sunshine for all of that so I'm just going ahead with plans to grow starts and keep my seedlings and treelings growing strong.
To that end, I decided to start some sweet potato slips, thusly-

And once those are ready to go, I'll get a tall pot for them like I'm doing with the Pet Potato and grow me a stack of deliciousness on the back porch.
I made a trip to Trader Joe's to get snacks for Girlchild and noted they were selling herb starts. There was a singular pot of rosemary left, thus answering my question about the missing rosemary. It is just THAT popular! It and a pot of lemon verbena came home and are perched on our neglected grill out back.
In the meantime I'm hoping that we find a permanent place to move in to with lots of light, great soil, and room for a greenhouse somewhere out back. We'll need it for all the veggies and fruits I've got going!

This is a Thing That I Wrote!

Welcome!
It's always hard to start out something new. There are schools of thought that say you have to do it with great intention, hold the image in your mind and carry it sharply so that your energy (and the Universe, as your cosmology permits) can make opportunities and churn away at a subconscious level to bring it to fruition. Another school of thought says... jump, and the net will appear. Also, stuff changes, so, like, you can adjust things later on, dude.
This is a jump and the net will appear kind of gig.
Here is what I know.
1. I love to create.
2. I love this planet we are on and everything encompassed therein.
3. It has been my goal to help this place and others on this planet as much as I can, within my capacity at the given time. (Yup. We read the Four Agreements in our 20's).
4. At this point in time my life is about to be uprooted and moved for a myriad of reasons, but this will result in a LOT of positive changes in the lives of my family members. It will also allow me to seriously take up gardening on the scale I want, and start my little homestead I've been dreaming of for 5 years.
5. My friends said it would be cool if I had a blog with this kind of stuff and apparently I bow to peer pressure.
So here it is. The blog. About the homesteading. And the gardening. And the crafting. And the arts. Because of all the constants in my daily life, there are two... changing diapers and making something.
I hope you enjoy my experiments!

**As a note, I will specifically be tagging posts according to what it's about to make things easier. People won't want to read about my painting, but love to hear about chickens. Other people will want all the fiber crafting they can fiend on, but think the rest can DIAF. I will try to accommodate!**