Serendipity Quilting

Anybody still here?!  Don’t say you were not warned by the title of this post alone.  No fancy words used to cause confusion!  It occurred to me the other day that although I have a vermicompost category, since the blog went boom, all the information is gone.  So here we go!

I use a Can-O-Worms vermicomposter.  Many of my long time readers will remember when this little adventure started out, I tried home made bins.  I experienced a mass exodus of worms on more than one occasion, worm bin die off several times, fruit fly invasion beyond the imagination and finally came to the conclusion that this was money well spent.  I love it.  It looks like this.

I have two trays full of vermicompost…. worm castings…. whatever…. and that third tray needs to go on.  See those nifty little holes.  That means the worms crawl right on up.  by the time I’m ready to clean that bottom tray on the stack, there should be precious few worms or unhatched cocoons in there.  Just nice excellent fertilizer.  Which also has been discovered to be a natural pesticide.  Say ants be gone! Very nice!

You do want to make sure you still have worms, and by golly I do still have worms! Go me!  (Yes, that was on the top ten list of things I’d never thought I’d say!)

I always do this on a rainy day. Two reasons.  I can’t boot the longarm up so I’m looking to knock of the other items on my lists.  The second reason being worms naturally crawl up during heavy rains.  Yup…. they find that upper tray faster!  So you just put the next tray on with some dampened coconut coir.  I conveniently sat a bucket of this out in the rain earlier today so it was ready to go tonight.

Next you just cover it with a damp newspaper or advertisement that you always get in the mail.  Perfect use for  those silly weekly flyers!!

Put the lid back on and you are back in business!  I found these babies hiding in the lid!

They are a little bigger than just hatched but still small which tells me my worm bin is doing just fine! Now if you are still here, you must be really interested…. or it is like driving by that train wreck and you just can’t help yourself… you just keep looking!

If you are interested, here’s my favorite links.  For educational resources click here.   You do not want to go dig up worms in the backyard.  You do want to purchase Red Wigglers.  You can find them in bait shops sometimes.  Those are usually nice big worms to start with. It is more inexpensive to buy by the pound from a supplier who will usually give you a mix of big and small.

Well, that’s it for today boys and girls.  Anyone still here?!

Stop back by later in the week for actual quilting content….

Jan

We have officially finished all our school hours!!!  Jump for joy!!!

OK… I need to learn to use my action scene so I can get him in his full glory.  But trust me… there was plenty of outside play this morning.

I think I can even do video with this blog software…. but you know…. learning  curve and we are on summer vacation!

I did play with my close up settings and managed a much better picture of the mustard flower.

We spent some time changing some things in the garden yesterday.  The bamboo wasn’t working for tomato stakes.  I don’t know why because it has in the past.  But this year the bamboo kept blowing around.  It looked bad.  Fortunately we were able to find these square cages for $4 at Tractor Supply and by alternating them and using twine, I only needed 12 instead of 24.

I think it looks OK.  The tomatoes are really starting to take off.  The heat and the five pounds of worm castings probably help.

We also picked up these cute harvest baskets at the Tractor Supply!

The upside down tomatoes are interesting.   Apparently they try to grow up at first….

Unfortunately, my shepherds hook doesn’t look like it is loving this experiment….

Not sure what is going to happen there…..

I am not even going to worry about it today.  It is summer time! Time for flip flops!

Now I must go connect with my inner child…. or find the mimosas…. or both….

Jan