Green Thumbs
There are a number of ways you can grow your own food. You should probably start with fruits and veggies. Give some thought to herbs and spices. If you have a balcony, you can grow tomatoes in a plastic garbage can, carrots in a tub, green onions in a shallow wood box. Tomatoes can make it without full sun all day. Once it gets big, you will have to water a tomato plant every day.
If you’re interested in growing your own food, you will have to provide the necessary nutrients. One way is to compost. The key to successful composting is to make it clean and easy. Have a separate holding can for the organic materials you use and want to compost. This will reduce the number of trips outside to dump your compost material. Any vegetable pieces or skins, stale bread, coffee grinds, tea leaves, banana peels - almost anything that’s made primarily from plant products can be safely and easily composted. In addition, egg shells and shrimp shells can be included. It’s not an especially good idea to compost meats or animal waste as these items can attract unwanted critters to your compost pile.
My solution is a small, stainless steel can. It includes a removal bucket I carry out to the compost pile. It has a lid that stays closed until I step on the pedal allowing me to dump in my scraps without touching anything. It’s small enough to hold several days’ worth of kitchen scraps and contain any odor. After I dump the contents, I use a hose to rinse out any scraps that stick to the bucket and I scrub it out with an old dish brush every few months. A simple solution for slight smells is to add a bit of citrus - a squeeze of lemon juice or a few orange peels just after empting the bucket. The acid keeps the anaerobic bacteria from getting established and causing a stink.
In addition to using kitchen scraps, you can compost fallen leaves and grass clippings. The leaves are mostly carbon and the grass clippings and kitchen scraps are mostly nitrogen. Both are necessary to promote a healthy compost pile. You’re looking for a ratio of about 25 to 1 or 25 times as much carbon as nitrogen. It’s easier to think in terms of brown and green. Most compostable material that is brown in color is made up of carbon. Most of the compostable material that is green in color is made up of nitrogen. Think more brown and less green.
There is another option for recycling your food scraps into compost. You can use worms to eat your leftover food and quickly turn it into worm castings, a wonderful compost for your garden. The term is called vermiculture - link
A system like this can be used indoors with almost no odor. You place food scraps in the top and the worms eat them turning the waste into castings that fall through into the lower chamber for your use in the garden. Vermicomposting is done with "redworms" (Eisenia Fetida), "tigers" (Lumbricus Rubellus) and Indian Blues (Perionyx Excavatus). The composting worms are placed in a box or bin along with "bedding" of shredded cardboard and /or paper moistened to about 75% water content. Worms need a moist environment in order to breathe. The bedding should be suitably dampened but not wet (like a wet sponge with the water squeezed out). Add a couple of handfuls of sand or soil to provide necessary grit for the worm's digestion of food. The pH of the bedding is very important. If it becomes either too acidic or too alkaline this will upset and possibly kill the worms. As a preventive measure, sprinkle 1 teaspoon of dolomite lime onto the food or bedding once a week.
Having a mixture of the 3 different species gives the group a wider range of suitable conditions. These species eat fast and breed fast. They will double their populations in 3-4 months under the right conditions. Worms reach adulthood in about 6 weeks and can reproduce up to 3 times a week for their lifespan (2-3 years). The worm population will be controlled by the size of their environment so you will never end up with too many worms.
Redworms can tolerate a temperature range of around 10 degrees C to 28 degrees C, although they will be most active at about 25 degrees C. Worms are sensitive to light and when they become exposed to it, they will burrow into their bedding. This is useful when you want to harvest your worms. You should have a damp cover (gunny sack or old carpet) over the worms to keep them dark and moist.
The ratio of worms to food waste should be: one pound per day of food waste, use two pounds of worms (roughly 2000). If you are unable to get this many worms to start with, reduce the amount of food waste accordingly while the population steadily increases. If you have the correct ratio, there is little to do other than adding food, until about 2.5 months have passed. There should be little or no original bedding visible in the bin, and the contents will be brown and earthy looking worm castings.
It is important to separate the worms from the finished compost, otherwise the worms will begin to die. The quickest way is to simply move the finished compost over to one side of the bin, place new bedding in the space created, and put food waste in the new bedding. The worms will gradually move over and the finished compost can be skimmed off as needed.
By the way, chickens love meal worms as a treat. Chickens can also be used to process kitchen scraps. I previously discussed chickens as a way to create compost here. Feed the chickens your leftover food and rake up their manure. You must allow the chicken manure to sit or cure for a while or it will burn your plants.
The only animal whose manure you can use immediately is the rabbit. Rabbits eat greens and produce round droppings that can be put directly into the garden to nourish your plants. Too many meals of straight greens may cause problems with the digestive tracts of rabbits.
If you’re interested in growing your own food, you will have to provide the necessary nutrients. One way is to compost. The key to successful composting is to make it clean and easy. Have a separate holding can for the organic materials you use and want to compost. This will reduce the number of trips outside to dump your compost material. Any vegetable pieces or skins, stale bread, coffee grinds, tea leaves, banana peels - almost anything that’s made primarily from plant products can be safely and easily composted. In addition, egg shells and shrimp shells can be included. It’s not an especially good idea to compost meats or animal waste as these items can attract unwanted critters to your compost pile.
My solution is a small, stainless steel can. It includes a removal bucket I carry out to the compost pile. It has a lid that stays closed until I step on the pedal allowing me to dump in my scraps without touching anything. It’s small enough to hold several days’ worth of kitchen scraps and contain any odor. After I dump the contents, I use a hose to rinse out any scraps that stick to the bucket and I scrub it out with an old dish brush every few months. A simple solution for slight smells is to add a bit of citrus - a squeeze of lemon juice or a few orange peels just after empting the bucket. The acid keeps the anaerobic bacteria from getting established and causing a stink.
In addition to using kitchen scraps, you can compost fallen leaves and grass clippings. The leaves are mostly carbon and the grass clippings and kitchen scraps are mostly nitrogen. Both are necessary to promote a healthy compost pile. You’re looking for a ratio of about 25 to 1 or 25 times as much carbon as nitrogen. It’s easier to think in terms of brown and green. Most compostable material that is brown in color is made up of carbon. Most of the compostable material that is green in color is made up of nitrogen. Think more brown and less green.
There is another option for recycling your food scraps into compost. You can use worms to eat your leftover food and quickly turn it into worm castings, a wonderful compost for your garden. The term is called vermiculture - link
A system like this can be used indoors with almost no odor. You place food scraps in the top and the worms eat them turning the waste into castings that fall through into the lower chamber for your use in the garden. Vermicomposting is done with "redworms" (Eisenia Fetida), "tigers" (Lumbricus Rubellus) and Indian Blues (Perionyx Excavatus). The composting worms are placed in a box or bin along with "bedding" of shredded cardboard and /or paper moistened to about 75% water content. Worms need a moist environment in order to breathe. The bedding should be suitably dampened but not wet (like a wet sponge with the water squeezed out). Add a couple of handfuls of sand or soil to provide necessary grit for the worm's digestion of food. The pH of the bedding is very important. If it becomes either too acidic or too alkaline this will upset and possibly kill the worms. As a preventive measure, sprinkle 1 teaspoon of dolomite lime onto the food or bedding once a week.
Having a mixture of the 3 different species gives the group a wider range of suitable conditions. These species eat fast and breed fast. They will double their populations in 3-4 months under the right conditions. Worms reach adulthood in about 6 weeks and can reproduce up to 3 times a week for their lifespan (2-3 years). The worm population will be controlled by the size of their environment so you will never end up with too many worms.
Redworms can tolerate a temperature range of around 10 degrees C to 28 degrees C, although they will be most active at about 25 degrees C. Worms are sensitive to light and when they become exposed to it, they will burrow into their bedding. This is useful when you want to harvest your worms. You should have a damp cover (gunny sack or old carpet) over the worms to keep them dark and moist.
The ratio of worms to food waste should be: one pound per day of food waste, use two pounds of worms (roughly 2000). If you are unable to get this many worms to start with, reduce the amount of food waste accordingly while the population steadily increases. If you have the correct ratio, there is little to do other than adding food, until about 2.5 months have passed. There should be little or no original bedding visible in the bin, and the contents will be brown and earthy looking worm castings.
It is important to separate the worms from the finished compost, otherwise the worms will begin to die. The quickest way is to simply move the finished compost over to one side of the bin, place new bedding in the space created, and put food waste in the new bedding. The worms will gradually move over and the finished compost can be skimmed off as needed.
By the way, chickens love meal worms as a treat. Chickens can also be used to process kitchen scraps. I previously discussed chickens as a way to create compost here. Feed the chickens your leftover food and rake up their manure. You must allow the chicken manure to sit or cure for a while or it will burn your plants.
The only animal whose manure you can use immediately is the rabbit. Rabbits eat greens and produce round droppings that can be put directly into the garden to nourish your plants. Too many meals of straight greens may cause problems with the digestive tracts of rabbits.
posted by Sleeplesserf at 2:39 AM
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