Note: Part 1 published February 12, 2016.
Vermicomposting, Bin Set Up
Washington State University Whatcom County Extension ”Cheap and Easy Worm Bin.” See references for the website. I spent sixteen dollars on these two bins. They are super easy to create by drilling holes for air in the two bins and one of the lids. Many other containers will work, just keep in mind that the worms need air, and darkness; don't pick clear containers.
Compost worms live in leaf litter, as opposed to earthworms that burrow in the soil. There are many suppliers of compost worms (see references) and to start, about 1000 worms, roughly a pound will work fine in this size bin. The worms will reproduce to the capacity of the bin. If you've tried the bait shops, likely you found only night crawlers for sale. Night crawlers cannot survive on vegetable waste and will not thrive in your bin.
To create good conditions for the worms, shredded newspaper, or other paper will work as the bedding for compost worms. Follow these steps to set up your bin:
Rinse bin, to ensure the bin is clean.
Tear newspaper into strips about 1” wide. Avoid colored print, which may have ink that is toxic to the worms.
Dampen newspaper strips by placing in a large plastic bag and adding water until the bedding feels like a wrung out damp sponge. If the strips get too wet, add more paper.
Add the paper strips to the bin and fluff up. Do not pack down; you want to provide air for the worms to live in the bedding. Add enough fluffed up paper to fill the bin up to 3/4 full.
Sprinkle about 2 cups of soil into the bin. Worms use the soil grit to grind up their food, and the soil adds useful micro organisms.
Add compost worms: put in under the paper shreds.
Bury food scraps under the bedding. See food list. Smaller pieces are more readily eaten by the worms.
Start slow, generally worms can consume about 3 times their weight, per week. If you start with a pound of worms, then you can feed about 3 pounds of food scraps per week.
Cover the bin with the lid that has air holes.
The other lid can be used under the bin to catch any drips.
Place bin away from windows and heaters. Temperatures around 55 to 70 degrees work well. If the temperature is ok for you, it's ok for the compost worms. If outside, secure from animals digging in the bin.
Feeding: feed compost worms scraps from your food preparation; vegetable scraps, rinds, non-greasy leftovers.
Do feed:
Vegetable scraps
Fruit scraps, and peels. Apple cores, skins etc.
Tea & teabags, if paper.
Coffee grounds and filters.
Crushed egg shells.
Paper napkins and towels
Bread and grains, careful not to bury grains they may heat up if covered.
Do not feed:
Be careful of too much citrus, no more than 1/5 th of feed.
Onions, garlic, both considered too pungent for compost worms.
Meats, fish.
Dairy foods.
Bin maintenance:
Compost worms also consume the paper bedding. After the initial set up, keep a 1” layer of bedding on top, adding more as needed.
If the contents seem too wet, add more dry paper.
If the contents seem too dry, mist with water.
Fluff up the bedding once a week to keep the bedding from becoming dense.
If the bin begins to have a bad odor, you may be adding too much food. Fluff up again, and stop feeding for a while to let the worms catch up on their eating.
Check each week to see how well the worms are going through the amount of food you are giving and adjust accordingly.
Worm composting is a wonderful environmentally friendly way to dispose of garbage; it is especially suited to processing kitchen scraps. Worm compost is rich in nutrients and is an excellent soil conditioner. Offices and schools may also use worm bins to reduce paper waste and turn garbage into garden gold.
For further information, check the next article on Harvesting Worm Compost.
References:
Cheap & Easy Worm bin. http://whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/compost/Easywormbin.htm.
Cornell Composting http://compost.css.cornell.edu/worms/steps.html
To get an idea of worm suppliers check:
http://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/organics/worms/WormSupply.htm
We have all fought the squash bug and lost the battle. This bug is the most serious enemy of our growing successful squash and pumpkin in the USA. The squash bug is only found from Canada to South America. Both adults and nymphs damage plants by sucking juices out of the leaves. The leaves then lose nutrients and water, become speckled, then yellow, then brown, and finally, the plant totally wilts. The squash bug also injects a toxin that expedites the plant's withering and death.
The squash bug has an ongoing life cycle. The adults we failed to eliminate last season will pass the winter under whatever shelter they can find - leaves, boards, stones, or debris. They will re-emerge as soon as the weather warms up (yes, just about the time those vulnerable baby squash plants are emerging). The adults mate soon after re-emerging and begin laying eggs in groups of a dozen or more. These eggs hatch in 10-14 days, and it only takes these new nymphs 4-6 weeks to reach maturity. So, all stages can be observed simultaneously throughout the season. How in the world do we control these multiplying monsters?
Let's just say that planning for control begins way before you plant the first seed. The very first line of defense includes several Systemic Strategies. Sanitation is a key measure. If adults over-winter under debris, get rid of all those hiding places. Next, plan to plant this year's crop where no squash or pumpkin grew last year; rotate your crops. While the bugs are quite capable of traveling, rotating and planting a little later will delay a bug population build-up. Companion planting is also worth a try, using repellent plants that deter the squash bug. They include catnip, tansy, radishes, nasturtiums, marigolds, bee balm and mint.
The second line of defense is Mechanical and Physical Strategies. The use of tightly secured barriers, such as floating row covers physically exclude the pests and prevent them from reaching the squash plants in large numbers. The covers can stay on until just before the female flowers appear. This is not labor intensive, and starts you out ahead of the war games. Another physical strategy is the use of kaolin clay products. Sprayed on the plants regularly at least every two weeks it forms a light-colored protective coating believed to deter the squash bug. Last season, I gave it a try. I sprayed half of my squash crop (both summer and winter) with kaolin and left the other half unsprayed. The results were measured daily by inspecting all leaves and counting (and removing) the number of squash bugs found in each area. While the method is definitely labor intensive (mixing and spraying every two weeks to cover new growth), I found 2/3 less squash bugs inhabiting the Kaolin covered plants. However, if I hadn't found and removed them by vigilant inspections, how much would they have multiplied?
The third line of defense is the Material Strategy. This includes biologicals and botanicals, such as sabodella, insecticide soaps and neem oil. Success with these is most effective on the nymphs. Once the adult bug emerges, this line of defense is not very effective.
Let me add my own suggestion to what all the experts have suggested: Vigilance. Checking under all the leaves each day will reward you with finding and removing the first line of adults, busily mating. Get rid of these, and their life's production cycle is interrupted,. With all these defense options to be tried, I wish you a great squash growing season!
- Author: Alison Collin
Some of the most rewarding plants that I have grown in recent years came from a packet of “Cottage Pink” seeds (Parks Seed Co.) which I ordered for no other reason than I needed a small purchase to get free shipping on a vegetable order!
These pinks, Dianthus plumarius, are traditional cottage garden flowers from Europe where they have been cultivated for hundreds of years. They belong to the Dianthus genus which contains over 300 species together with numerous hybrids including such favorites as carnations and Sweet Williams.
I planted the seeds in late winter and had an exceptionally high germination rate. I was careful not to overwater the seedlings, and they grew well and transplanted easily. Although perennials, they all flowered in their first year.
Cottage pinks are characterized by perennial mats of gray needle-like foliage up to 12 inches wide, although the growth habits of individual plants are not completely consistent, some being very tightly growing while others are more lax. Strongly perfumed single flowers in shades of pink or white with varying petal structure and flower patterns are held upright on 6”-8” stems. These are long lasting, and each flower has a couple of dormant buds immediately beneath it which provides a long flowering season which lasts, with regular deadheading, from April to September in the Owens Valley. They don't flop, and so far I have never had any pests or diseases bother them.
All my plants have now survived several winters in Bishop (USDA Zone 7b), but just one of the plants goes extremely brown in winter and looks as though it has died, only to come back very vigorously when the temperatures rise, although that particular one blooms later than the rest.
My only problem was that until they flowered I did not know which would produce the most interesting flowers, and since I had run out of space in the borders I was forced to plant them out in the vegetable garden!
Some nurseries carry named varieties, often heavily marked or with stronger colors e.g. 'Firewitch', or related species such as Dianthus gratianopolitanus, and D. Alwoodii both of which perform well.
Cottage Pinks are hard to beat – long bloom season, perfume, good cut flowers, neat foliage and not prone to pests and diseases. I highly recommend them!
- Author: Jan Rhoades
Well this rainy spring weather makes indoor gardening very attractive! And, I have been reminded that I promised some updates – mainly on trees with fire blight, sweet onions that overwintered and finding a microclimate for canna lilies. So, here are my promises kept, complete with photos.
The canna lilies did great! I cut them back and mulched them heavily with straw to protect them against the harshness of winter. As you can see, they are well established and promise to give a fine flower show, as they did last summer – a bit of Bali in my backyard.
http://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=19289
The sweet onions (Walla Walla) were planted from seed at the same time as I put in garlic to overwinter – about the middle of October. I mulched them with hay, though not too heavily, and they sprouted strongly, though they stayed small and managed to survive through the winter – even under a bit of snow, as you recall. They are now about a foot in height and I am thinning them – the green onions are lovely. I know that my garlic will be ready by June, and I am hoping that the onions will follow suit, as I plant sweet corn in that bed once the soil has warmed up and the winter crops have been harvested.
http://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=19933
So, that is the update on previous posts – in hopes that you will find inspiration for your gardening quests. Look for the microclimates in your yard, try out interesting ideas, and don't give up!
One parting tip – if you are looking for some easy gardening with big payoffs you might want to try berries. I have been busily picking strawberries daily for the last week, my boysenberries are blooming, my blackberries are budding and the raspberries are looking happy. I still have some of the bumper crop of berries from last summer in the freezer and it looks as though this year's grazing will be just as good. Just plant, add water and do a bit of pruning in the fall. Oh, come to think of it, same with grapes!
Happy gardening to you all!
- Author: Dustin Blakey
One of the interesting things that you can observe in the garden is a colorful disease that affects roses called rose mosaic. It is caused by viruses that infect roses.
There a number of "mosaic" diseases caused by viruses that affect plants. In general, they cause parts ot the leaf to turn color—usually yellow. To someone with an artful eye, the pattern can sometimes resemble a tile mosaic, but this is highly variable. (See some pics on Google here.)
In roses the symptom is usually angular, splotchy yellowing on the leaves, but sometimes it can take on a pale yellow band on a leaf that zig-zags around. It's not so much the shape of the symptom that alerts you to its presence, but more that in spring the whole plant will have a similar yellow pattern on most of the leaves of the same age and sun exposure.
In roses there are 2 primary viruses that cause mosaic: Rose Necrotic Ringspot Virus and Apple Mosaic Virus. In addition there are many unknown causes and at least another virus that can cause these symptoms. Often there are multiple causes.
Most grafted roses in the Eastern Sierra that are about 20 years or older show mosaic symptoms. I usually see symptoms in spring, but once the weather warms up, the mosaic pattern vanishes. April and May seem to be most pronounced in effect.
Why do we have this so commonly here? This is a disease that is usually spread through propagation. I suspect most of our roses ultimately came from 1 or 2 wholesale nurseries that had the virus in their stock plants used to bud or graft onto the ubiquitous Dr. Huey rootstock. Today this virus is less common in the trade. Nurseries have means to remove virus from their stock plants through tissue culture, if they so choose.
The virus doesn't do much harm in the landscape other than making early season leaves look weird. It may also reduce vigor and stem length. I don't lose much sleep about it, and there really aren't any control measures if I did! If mosaic bothers you, the best course of action is to remove the plant and start anew.
For more information: The UC IPM program has a page on rose diseases. This old article (1977) from California Agriculture also has information and some pictures about rose viruses. The Marin county Master Gardeners also have some information on mosaic diseases in general in the garden.