I don't have a high resolution camera.So it doesn't do any good to try and film small worm bin creatures.But today while checking on an experiment,i moved a plastic bag that was sitting on some broad leaves in my bin.What did i see? A large colony of Psuedo Scorpions,feeding on mites! They were all over.I just had to sit there and watch them a while.Even though they are extremely small.Luckily they are a little bigger than mites! (Unless you are a mite that is)

 Not sure how many…

I've been using vermicastings (i.e. castings from worms) in my deep water culture bubbler system for a couple of weeks on an experimental basis. The 2 lbs of castings are stored in a paint strainer bag and submerged in 9 gallons of water. The castings are generated by 1 lb of European Nightcrawler worms that compost my kitchen scraps and a large amount of coconut coir used as bedding material. The "bubbling" comes from aquarium air stones and an inexpensive aquarium air pump that aerates the…

Eisenia fetida, known under various common names such as redworm, and red wigglers, Tiger worms. Theses species of compostworm worm are adapted to decaying organic material. These worms thrive in rotting vegetation, compost, and manure and cannot live in the earth without a good layer of rotten vegetation. A recent study by the North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, South Africa has found that a large percentage of what we thought were…

I have already seen my bin rebound quite well from lots of fungal activity when it was too wet. So I decided to experiment. I saved a bunch of worm food, mostly my tea leaf left overs along with the bread. That bread was so moldy that when I shook up the sealed bag, a cloud of spores was released. So I added all of it to my worm bin. I've seen either the worms and/or microbes eat lots of fungus before, so I'm not that worried. This should be fun to see if I get a mold bloom before things…

It's time for an update based on my experience with the EH's.  I'll be honest, I'm disappointed.

I have been composting with worms for almost 3 years in my home.  I started with 1 lb of eisenia foetida and in a two year period I grew that amount to more than 19 lbs. I supplemented my composting efforts with rabbit manure purchased locally from a rabbit farmer to help multiply my worm population faster. If you have lots of worms you also need lots of food for them :-)



After…

Who can teach me..tanks

Was looking for a filter bag for Homemade soymilk and ran across this site  McMaster-Carr The mesh filter bags would be perfect for VC Tea making.  They come in many different Mircron particle sizes and are quite inexpensive.  

After reading Carol Deppe's The Resilient  Gardener, I felt a need to defend the tomato, because it didn't make her short-list of must-grow vegetables (She liked squash, corn, beans, and potatoes; she is allergic to wheat products, but why she neglects tomatoes I do not know.)

So. Best ever tomato is Lemon Boy, translucent yellow, very high in sugars, does can safely (the idea of "low-acid" tomatoes is disproven; they taste low-acid b/c they have more sugar).…

That is, these are sources for seeds you can save from year to year, provided in the cases of corn and squash, that you haven't got other varieties right close by. (Peas, beans, and tomatoes are the easiest to save, because they mostly self-pollinate and thus don't trade genetic info with nearby alternate species.) Generally, pick several of your best, earliest fruits to save seed from. Separate seeds from pulp, rinse in a strainer, and lay out on a dry paper towel, labeling it in permanent…

OK, so this is only about a year late....

Last winter was amazingly tough in Illinois. Super cold and tons of snow. For as long as I could, I fed the outside pile, mostly right next to one of three warm spots that kept melting through the pile. 

Because I was feeding the pile, the warm spots traveled…