Seems like an odd combo, but they really do go together. I started the worm composting bin as a way to reduce food waste, but also so I could harvest castings from it.
I kicked off my new years by starting some seeds inside the house as well as scattering some seeds outside in the flower bed. Since I have been actually reading the seed packets this year. Shocker… There are a few that tell you that they need cold stratification to grow and direct seeding is the better way to start the plants growing. That is if the seeds come from some of the smaller organic seed companies. Those give you a great deal more information, instead of the usual zone such and such, plant in Mar-May, Full sun and how deep the seeds should be sowed.
I’ve also found a number of blogs on gardening that I really have gotten a huge amount of great information from. Like Epic Gardening, Gardenary, Baker Seed Co, Botanical Interests, Eden Brothers, Kellog Garden, Newman’s, and Reunity Soil. The Epic Gardening garden planner has been so amazing for figuring out how I want to lay out the garden and track what I’ve changed over the past couple of years. By far my favorite online tool.
I couldn’t have been successful with the worm bin if it hadn’t been for the Urban Worm Co blogs!!! I was able to keep it going for 9 months without killing off the worms or figured out how to harvest casting for the seed starts I did while I was off from work. Now I say that like it was easy, it was really was far from that being the case. UWC, has a blog specifically about harvesting castings.. Called: harvesting-worm-castings-break-your-back-or-break-the-bank This really does sum it up. I used two different screen sizes that were smaller than the image below.
I spent >2 hours on the floor of the laundry room picking out worms from the tray, tossing them back into the bag. I was really surprised at how many small worms were at the bottom of the urban worm bag. I used screening to remove a fair number of the worms, but there were a lot of small ones that fell through the screen. To find those I pushed the casting around and watched for movement as they tried to get away from the light. In the end I know there were still worms in the castings and likely cocoons too. I also didn’t take out that much from the bag, the first bit I pulled out I just dump right back in, since it was mostly just plain coco coir bedding. I would venture to say that I pulled out only about ½ a quart of castings.
This made me start thinking about how I was going to harvest more for the next rounds of seed starts. I am going to have get a few more small bins and pull the casting, let it sit a bit and then screen it so I don’t lose loads of worms. I suppose I could just order more, but that doesn’t seem the best way to keep it going. Now when they are going straight out into the garden, I’d be okay with the worms being in the castings, but not for them to sit in trays in the house where they are way more likely to die. That’s just not nice.
After getting that small amount of castings, I mixed it with a seed starting mix, soaked it all so it was like a wrung-out sponge. Packed the mixture into 6 cell seed trays, I picked out some of the seeds I wanted to start. I did have a list that I went from, that kind of outlined the time I should start some of the seeds based on germination time, and time to maturity, based on some of the growing charts that are out there on the www for Zone 7/6b which is where I am in Santa Fe. Zone depends on the website you ask… I got different answers from different sites.. Mostly, I’m sticking with Zone 7. If I lived closer to the mountains I’d have gone with 6b, or maybe 6a. It’s much warmer and drier on my part of town. This means I should be able to plant some things out in the garden plots by the mid to late April. At the latest it would be after May 5th.
It’s only been 6 days since I planted the seeds and I already have a few plants germinating already!!! Much quicker than the 7-21 days the packets indicated. I’m very excited about this, I can barely contain myself!!!! Now to see if I can keep them going until I can plant them all outside.
I’ll have to see if I’m any more effective at screening the castings the next time around. Otherwise, I’ll have to look at some more $$$ ways to get it done. I also have a sneaking suspicion that seed mix I used is not going to drain enough. This may cause me to lose all the new seedlings as time goes on. I did pick up another type, I’ll test it out with the next round of seedlings.