A New Activity For The Family - Worm Composting

  Gardening can be a fun activity, if you start out small, and take time to learn the ins and outs of it. It is enjoyable to watch a plant grow from a tiny seed, then produce food. Also, it is more nourishing than the store bought vegetables, because you can control what you use to feed the plant, and you won't have to worry about the produce having been around for too long either in traveling from farm to the store (which could take many days) or if it has been on the shelves for more than a couple of days. (Produce has the most nourishment when it is picked.)

  Organic gardening is even more fun! It can be an expensive hobby, or, it can be a simple activity if you want to grow one or two plants. Always start out small (I know, I never follow this directive, but I will tell others to, simply because I get in over my head when I do things like this)! If you start out small, you can manage your garden more easily, and as time goes on, you can add more plants.

    Gardening can be a fun family activity as well. If you have a large enough yard, you can build a few garden beds and give each child the responsibility for one of the garden beds. I know this could be a challenge if you have 10 kids! Start out small, and as you learn the ropes, add more garden beds.

    There are different ways of gardening. Some of the methods can be used together as well. I have used the Square Foot Gardening method most of my gardening life. It produces a raised bed, which helps with drainage. You add the specific ingredients the book calls for (Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew). You build the soil and add compost and other ingredients.

 

 I don't recommend using chemical fertilizers or pesticides, as those are toxins and are harmful for use to ingest. I remember one time, I watched a television show on the wheat the the big flour companies grow on their big farms. They showed pictures of people who were spraying the wheat with pesticides using their machinery. After that, every time I would buy flour from the store, I remembered that show. There were no alternatives back then (no one had ever heard of organic gardening) so I reluctantly bought the tainted flour. Of course, we always prayed over our food and trusted that God would protect us from any harm in it. Is it any wonder that so many people in America today cannot eat wheat products?

    There is also another gardening method that is fantastic. You can find videos on this type of gardening on Youtube. It is called, 'Back to Eden' Gardening. It involves using layers of newspapers, compost, leaves, and wood chips. You put those in several layers. I use the black and white newspapers (Omit the colored parts of the newspapers as they may have toxins). The man who invented this way of gardening, Paul Gautschi, is very successful at growing most everything he plants.


 

 Back to the worm composting. Whatever methods you use in gardening, your plants will need food. You need to choose a good, natural food for your plants. Miracle Gro, a chemical fertilizer,  is much like synthetic vitamins that we can buy at the store. You have really good growth for a while, but then it doesn't work well. Making compost is the best way to make plant food. Anything that ends up valuable, takes time to make.

   Years ago, we lived next door to a family who gardened. I also was learning how to garden. I tried to grow pea plants, but nothing happened, until one day, I got some cow manure and put some around the plants. Then they took off. But we moved away before I could get anything from them. But the man next door would take his food scraps and place them around his plants in his gardens. I thought that was interesting and had been doing that ever since, that is, until the raccoons and squirrels misunderstood and thought I was providing them with a midnight snack!

   I have a couple of composting bins in the house. I also have some probiotic stuff to put in them that contains microbes which will eat the food scraps and turn them into compost, if I do it right (and not make it too wet).

    But, I do have a worm compost factory (I think that is what mine was called). It is black, and has three trays. You have to put in some type of medium for the worms to live in, so I used coconut coir. I put my food scraps in the top tray and let the worms enjoy them. In turn, they make compost for me. The compost ends up on the bottom tray, and you scoop it out as you need it. (You have to remove the top trays to get to the bottom one!)

  Here is the url to the worm composting page that I made: http://gardens4all.blogspot.com/p/vermiculture-aka-worm-composting.html

  My grandson enjoys looking at the worms when I lift up the top tray. Worms do not like light, so they will scurry down into the medium to get away from it.

   The worms will multiply and there will be a lot of them, if they are fed right. What they produce that is so valuable is called 'worm castings'. In the video on the worm composting page, Uncle Jim shows a picture of what the worm casting looks like. That is what the food is that is so good for the plants.

   If you are homeschooling, this is a good project to work on. It teaches science to the children, and they get to see what happens with their own eyes. But even if you are not homeschooling, your children will enjoy watching the worms do their thing. Who knows. Maybe they will take the worms up as pets. And that would make it all worth it.

  And if you get really good at it and have a productive worm farm, you could even sell your worms. People use them for gardening, and also for fishing bait. You could have a family business as well!