New Worm Bin

My next door neighbors are pretty awesome. Wes and Lavelle have lived in this neighborhood since it was built in the late 40's. They raised their children here, and are a big part of the community. They are often out walking their dog, or stopping by to bring me some banana bread, or helping me identify local trees. 

Lately the two have had some health problems, and it's tougher for them to get around. So one of their adult sons and his wife, recently retired, have come to live with them. This particular son is in the process of rebuilding the entire length of fence we share, which was built originally by Wes many, many years ago. The new fence is spectacular, and it's a lot of work. I'm enjoying having periodic open spaces in the fence to talk between houses, when Karl (the son) and I are both out working on our various projects. 

Every so often, Karl and his wife go back up to their property in gold country to take care of things there. When they came home from their last trip, they brought me their worm bin! Karl kept it so he would have worms ready for fishing, but since he's down here most of the time now, that hobby has gone by the wayside. He sees what I'm doing in our yard and knew I would appreciate another way of composting food scraps. So this worm bin is now mine!

He didn't just give me the bin, though. He also gave me all its inhabitants - thousands of worms - and the contents of the bottommost tray - the latest worm castings. Oh my goodness, this is like pure gold. Today I spent a good deal of time cleaning these out of the bin, separating the worms from the castings, filling the trays with bedding and old fruit/veg, and getting the bin all set up. The castings went into the containers that hold my Japanese maple trees - what a boon for those heavy feeders, a solid inch of nutrition as a mulch on top of the soil. The worms went back into the top-most bin along with coffee chaff as bedding, and some kitchen scraps.

There are four trays total. The top tray holds the worms and waste. As they eat, their excrement (castings) drop down through the tray to the trays below. And any liquid waste goes all the way to the bottom most tray, which has a solid bottom. That liquid is great fertilizer, but it can go anaerobic really quickly, so I just went ahead and filled that bottom bin with chaff to absorb the liquid. I'll periodically take it out and use it as mulch around my growing plants, and fill it up with fresh chaff.  If I used the liquid straight, I would dilute it first (way too 'hot' with nitrogen), but this way it is already semi-composted.

As I was going through the sorting/cleaning process, I noticed so many worm egg cocoons. So you know how worms often have that center band around their bodies, looking sort of like a cigar label around a cigar? That is where the eggs develop, and the worm wriggles out of it, allowing it to fold over on itself, and form these lemon-like egg cocoons. The babies hatch and look just like very tiny worms. Worms are both male and female, carrying both eggs and sperm, and they rub against each other to mate and fertilize the eggs in either worm.

By the way? Those big white things in this picture? Crushed eggshells that have never broken down in the worm bin, just as we discussed a week or so ago.

I'm happy to have another way to experiment with vermicomposting. As you know, I've used my 3x3 redwood compost bin as a sort of worm bin for years. This set up is a more streamlined affair. I'll continue to use both, plus my yard-waste compost pile, which is inside the chicken run. I'm finding that I really cannot have enough compost. I try hard to make all that I need, and I always fall short.

Stand for Rain Barrel

There's a lot wrong with this picture: I recently pulled out some spring annuals and the summer flowers are just starting to germinate, so this area isn't as floriferous as I would like it to be; you can see where we desperately need new paint on the side of our house; and our rubbish bins are on full display.

However there is one thing perfectly right with this picture, and that's the new rain barrel stand Tom made for me this past weekend.

My folks gave me this 55-gallon rain barrel several years ago, and I love it. But unlike my other large barrel, the top doesn't come off (they've changed safety laws on rain barrels). That means the only way to access the water is from the spout at the bottom. We have had this barrel on the ground, so the gravity feed wasn't great. I'd hook up my hose and try to move it around to soak certain areas, and if the hose was on any kind of rise at all, even the barest hint of a hill, the water would stop. So now that I've emptied out the barrel for the summer (I just soaked my compost pile with the dregs), I asked Tom to remedy the situation by making me this stand. 

He made it out of redwood, which is naturally rot-resistant, and paid a great deal of attention to the design. A barrel of this size weighs around 400 pounds when it's full of water, which is not insignificant. Stability is also an issue; you don't want this thing to be spindly or rickety, which would be dangerous; hence the splayed legs. Here's where Sketch-Up comes in handy.

I'm so happy with this new set up. I can attach the hose easily, or I can just open the valve and fill a watering can. I love having rain water (no chemicals, which is better for soil life) and soon hope to have several 5000 gallon tanks attached to the gutter system on the house, which would hook in to our drip system. But until then, this makes a small dent in our water needs.

I still need to figure out a new downspout to run into this barrel, as it is set up for the old way. One rain pretty much fills it, so we have it so that it can be hooked back into the underground drainage system when the barrel is full. We'll shorten the green corregated plastic stuff so it easily be moved to and from the barrel, but we'll have to do some work on the bottom part of the downspout. Anyway, we have many months before the rains come, so we'll get to that in the autumn.

Recent Information and Thoughts on Insects

I have a few thoughts and some new information to share with you regarding bees and other insects, and I figured I'd gather them into this one post. None of them are connected and yet all of them are connected; I'm feeling a little scattered this morning but I'm hoping it will all evolve into a cohesive whole.

Firstly I've been wanting to share with you some new facts about honeybees and pesticides. As you know, I belong to my local beekeeping association (MDBA) and they have monthly meetings with guest speakers covering all sorts of topics. In May, we heard from a research scientist about the recent study he participated in; namely the amount of pesticides making their way into urban beehives. The effects of persistent, continuous use of pesticides in agricultural fields is well studied and known, but until now, no one had studied the effects on urban and suburban hives. 

Perhaps it may surprise you to know that the amount of pesticides used by homeowners is quite high. According to the USGS, the amount of pesticide runoff in urban streams is higher than in agricultural streams. This tends to be due to user error. In agricultural settings, everyone is trained in the proper use of poisons; it is required by law. No such law is required for homeowners, and we tend to think "if a little works, a lot will work even better!" (This is true for herbicides and fertilizers too by the way.) So homeowners tend to go overboard on the amount of chemicals they use. 

Anyway, this particular study was performed over two years in urban areas all over the country: Sacramento, the Bay Area, and San Diego in CA; many also in Texas, Michigan, and Florida. (Side note: This researcher worked for Bayer. You might remember that Bayer and Monsanto merged last year. Bayer/Monsanto, along with Syngenta, are the largest producers of pesticides. You may wonder why a large producer of pesticides underwrote this particular study. I did. But I also trusted that this scientist was on the up and up and reported the findings fairly, despite who paid for it. This didn't stop a general backlash by many in the MDBA community, which I witnessed when I went up to talk to him afterward; he got pretty lambasted for taking money from Bayer to perform this study. A valid concern. But one I don't want to talk about here.)

There were several guidelines regarding the location of the hives, how far apart they were from each other, how many hives each beekeeper had, etc (although all were Langstroth hives). The scientists took fresh nectar from all the hives every month, along with fresh pollen. This was done in an interesting way: The scientists requested the beekeepers to add a new frame to the hive two days before they arrived, and so whatever nectar was in those frames was fresh; and they installed a sort of brush thingy at the entrance of each hive at the same time to collect fresh pollen. Then these two products were tested for about 200 common pesticides, including neonicotinoids (systemic pesticides). Plus, they had one graduate student who, for two years, identified all the different pollens that were coming in and determined what the bees were feeding on depending on the season, which was very interesting (more tree pollens than I would have thought - don't discount trees when you're planting for bees!). 

The results were encouraging, I thought. Michigan had the worst amounts, but they still weren't terrible. California was definitely on the 'low' side. Fresh nectar had almost negligible amounts of pesticides, but the ones that showed up the most were the systemic ones (still negligible though). Pollen had a greater amount, but still in levels well below anything that would harm humans. So of course the next question is, would that amount harm the bees? And the answer is, yes, but in an amount the researchers felt was acceptable. It's a standard ratio used for most testing of these kinds of things, and it's not perfect. They assume a certain amount of loss is okay. As beekeepers, we might assume any amount of loss is not okay. Still, the results were much better than I feared, and we don't have to worry about eating our local honey. At least here, that is.

Agricultural fields are a different story. Remember the post I wrote last week about Iowa and the lack of bees in the gardens on campus? Think about what Iowa mostly consists of - huge amounts of land are given over to agriculture, just like a large portion of the midwest. Those enormous areas (we're talking hundreds of miles) are mostly GMO corn and soy. Those areas don't have any insects at all. So it's no surprise that the local areas that do welcome insects don't have any.

Which brings me to my next little tidbit. I've been reading a great book called Bringing Nature Home by Doug Tallamy. I'm learning all sorts of things that are really no-brainers, I don't know why I never thought of them before. Or maybe I did, but I didn't truly absorb it. Like, native insects have evolved to eat and feed from native plants. Many things we plant in our gardens come from completely different countries; our native insects cannot utilize those plants. Some have adapted to eat from those 'aliens' as long as they are in the same family as their native food. But many of our plants don't have any native cousin, so when bugs encounter them, they don't know what to do with them. For instance, crepe myrtle trees (Lagerstroemia indica), which are all over the Bay Area, hail from Asia, and don't have any closely related species that are native to our area. So our native creatures cannot feed from their beautiful leaves or bark, and cannot eat any nectar or pollen it produces. Now, European honeybees can be found on these trees, but they don't love it, and it's not a first-choice food. You will not find a native bumble bee or caterpillars on crepe myrtle. 

What this tells me is that a large percentage of our suburban plants should be native. As a beekeeper of European bees, I have to provide both native and alien species, so that I'm feeding everyone. I've always tried to plant 50/50, grouping things mainly by community rather than by country of origin, and now I'm glad I've done it this way. It's important to plant native species for native wildlife. Habitat loss is one of the biggest factors contributing to insect loss, and make no mistake - insect loss is HUGE right now.

Which brings me to my third 'musing.' A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine came by and we were talking about her plantings of passionflower vine for the Gulf Fritillary butterflies. She mentioned that the foliage is a little sparse on the passionflower vine, and the caterpillars decimate it, leaving none for the next batch. We both decided it's important to plant a lot of one thing if you're planting for a particular insect, because if you want the insect to eat the plant, they might eventually eat themselves out of a habitat. So don't just plant one of something, particularly if you're doing it for insects. Plant a few.

Bringing it back to the my last point, what about an interplanting of a native species in the same place? Like why not have a native clematis, say, twining up the same area as the passionflower? You'll get two kinds of blooms at two different times, and attract two (or more!) different pollinators to those flowers. Diversity is really, I think, the key. We need more species diversity in our suburban gardens, not less.

Which brings me to my last thought, which is trophic levels. This is something I have learned about recently, but maybe you learned this in junior high. Plants are autotrophs, because they can produce their own food. The rest of us are heterotrophs, which means we all rely on plants in one way or another for our food. It all begins with plants. From insects up to apex predators, if we didn't have plants to produce food for us, we wouldn't have food. Every layer is of vital importance, and insects are part of this. Think about how many creatures eat insects for food, and on and on up the trophic levels, creating what we eat every day. 

I think a lot of people don't particularly like insects, and that's ok. You don't have to like them to appreciate them, and the role they play in our ecosystems. I still get a little shivery when I come across some bug I've never seen before in my garden. And even now, I have to shake myself a little and give myself a little talking to, and remember to just wait. Go look it up, figure out what it is, what it does, where its place is in the larger ecological picture. I've gotten to the point though where I welcome prey insects like aphids, because they bring in the higher levels, the predators. Remember your predator/prey ratios: There's always a lot more prey. But predators do come. And largely, my garden ecosystem takes care of itself.

Now, squirrels, that's another matter all together. I'm not sure I can ever appreciate squirrels. 

So, food for thought. While you're out enjoying your garden today, spare a little time to truly think out your garden's ecosystem. Where are you helping nature? And where could you do a little more to bring nature in?

June wreath

This month's wreath is made out of fresh fennel. I have several large plants growing right at our fence-line; they tend to grow out over the sidewalk, so I need to prune them every so often. Today I cut them very far back (they'll have no trouble growing again) and used some of that to make this wreath.

Fennel is a versatile plant to have in the garden. We love to cook with it (for some of our recipes, click here). But even if it's just grown for beauty, it's worth it. The flowers are those great umbel shapes that pollinators love; and Anise Swallowtails use this for their larval food source. I also learned recently that aphids adore fennel, which makes it a perfect trap crop. The idea is that the aphids will go to the fennel rather than your more delicate crops. And fennel can stand quite a bit of predation and still have plenty left over for your dinner plate!

June feels like the true beginning of summer: School lets out, cherry tomatoes come in, sunflowers rule the garden, and berries make their way into every breakfast. Time to start reaping the bounty of the garden, hooray!

Eggshells and Coffee Grounds

As you all know, I took a Plant Nutrition class last semester. It was really interesting and I learned a lot about the biology of how plants take up nutrients, and the chemistry of the soil solution. Each of us had to choose two forms of fertilizer to research and speak about to the rest of the class. It was a fascinating couple of weeks as folks talked about everything from worm castings to mined phosphorus from Florida.

I wanted to research two things I have in abundance (and I'm guessing you do, too): Coffee grounds and eggshells. There are a lot of myths surrounding both, and in the course of my research, I was able to determine the truth of these two products and how they work in the soil.

Let's start with coffee grounds. When you google "how to use coffee grounds in your garden," you will see fantastical claims: They improve disease resistance, repel ants and slugs, acidify your soil (lower the pH), add nutrients, earthworms love them, and they add tilth to your soil texture. 

Here's the truth of it: 

Coffee grounds DO have a nice nutrient profile, with an NPK of 2-.06-.6. That's a nice, low amount of nutrients, with a good hit of nitrogen, some of it soluble. So they are definitely good for your soil in this regard. It's still best to add them to your compost first, so that they can be broken down before adding to your soil. However, you can sprinkle them around your plants. Just don't add a thick layer, because that will form a mat that air and water cannot penetrate.

Coffee grounds are acidic, but they don't lower your pH. You would need an enormous volume of coffee grounds to change the pH of your soil. I remember adding them to my blueberries to acidify the soil; but that doesn't work.

It is also a myth that snails or ants will be repelled by grounds. There is some evidence that they help to repel fire ants, but not Argentine ants, which is the variety most of us have in our yards. Grounds do not cause any barrier to snails or slugs at all.

Worms will process coffee grounds just as they do any other food.

And finally, grounds do nothing for disease resistance.

So, to conclude: Definitely add your coffee grounds (and filters!) to your compost pile, where they will improve the nutrient content of your finished compost.

Eggshells are a bit more complicated, because they are less well studied. But I was able to find pretty decisive research papers to help us figure out how to use them.

One of the biggest claims is that slugs don't like to travel over the sharp edges, so the shells can protect your plants if sprinkled around them. This one has been debunked quite thoroughly. In fact I found a study where the conclusion was the slugs were actually attracted to the eggshells and decimated the plants even more readily. So don't use them for this purpose!

The other big claim is that eggshells add lots of calcium to the soil. I can't tell you how many posts I've sen about adding eggshells to prevent blossom end rot in tomatoes. I assumed that was true and have used them myself for this purpose.

Well, each eggshell does contain about 2000 mg of calcium, so if there was a way to put this back into the soil, that would be terrific. However, they don't readily break down. In fact, studies show that it takes many hundreds of years before they break down completely.

So then you might ask, do they break down in water? That's been studied, and it's been found that they do not. So don't bother boiling your eggshells first.

So then you might ask, do worms eat them? They do not; they don't have teeth and can't bite.

So then you might ask, what about other microbes? Bacteria? Fungi? Protozoa? Well, there is very little research on this, surprisingly, but I did find a study where differing amounts of eggshells were composted, and the calcium content of the finished compost was higher in the piles that had greater amounts of eggshells. So that makes me think that something breaks them down. Eventually. Here's the deal: You won't reap the benefits, but your descendants might. 

HOWEVER. There is one way to get calcium from eggshells, and that's to pulverize them. Once pulverized, the shells can break down into soil solution and become available to the plants. Plus, worms can eat them in this form, and add them to their gizzards (worms digest food like chickens do, in the gizzard). 

So here's what we need to do: Put your eggshells on a baking sheet to dry. (DO NOT RINSE THEM. Eggshells have two layers - one hard, one thin and soft. This inner layer is full of organic matter that you want in your soil. ) When dry, run them through your blender, or pound them with a mortar and pestle. Then sprinkle on your soil or add to your compost.

That's if you want an immediate calcium hit. If that's not a concern to you, you can just continue to add them to your compost in chunks. They do help to aggregate the soil, making nice channels for air and water, and eventually, they do become a part of the soil. It'll just take a long, long, long time.