Archive for year: 2010

I get occasional back-talk from people who think that “silk caterpillars” would be more accurate… typically they’re about twelve years old and learning about phylogeny, but sometimes they’re know-it-all forty-somethings.  Now, I have *real* worms; they live in a bin in the bathroom attached to my studio/office, and they eat our vegetable garbage.

I got the starter worm bin from Vicki at Grand Prairie Worm Farm.  She was great, answered my myriad of tedious questions, and even delivered the bin.  There are lots of different DIY versions, as well as commercial versions, but this was local, and came with great support, and wasn’t very expensive.  It came to $44 with local delivery, and that’s not much more than what a pound of worms in the mail costs from most places.  These aren’t the worms you can dig up in the back yard – they’re a special composting worm, which doesn’t need deep earth tunnels to be happy like a nightcrawler does.

These are red wigglers or manure compost worms – Eisenia foetida.  Because they do well in a moist but not wet environment and can eat a variety of organic matter, they do great in a bin.  We feed them every couple of days – the cut-off ends of peppers and squashes, the peels of apples, jicama, avocado… you get the picture.  They don’t care much for onions or citrus, so those go to the outside compost.  The main charm of the worms, is that they produce a superior fertilizer from all this waste.  Called worm castings, a lot of gardeners swear they’re even better than manure for nourishing plants. They also chew through waste paper – they’re bedded down in a mix of shredded copier waste and junk mail.

A few days ago, I started noticing TINY worms.   Some of them are as small as a quarter of an inch long, and narrower than a piece of sewing thread.

And tonight, I found cocoons – the presence of the baby worms means there have been cocoons for a while, I just hadn’t looked hard enough.

Many sources have said that other organisms will show up in the bin – and as long as they don’t stink, bite, or crawl out, they’re a good thing, as they help break down organic matter.  I’m not sure what these tiny things on this beet slice are (insect?  other arthropod?) but they’re cool.  They look like quarter-size aphids, but they’re a pale off-white.

I have been the proud holder of fifty-three USDA  Animal Plant Health and Inspection Service (APHIS) PPQ526 permits (Permit for interstate movement of pests or noxious weeds) for the past three years.  Permits to send and receive Bombyx mori, to receive Saturniids… even one to import B. mori, but only from WorldWide Butterfly.  It was time to reapply back in January, and the responses have started to come back.

Now, instead of permits, I’m getting this “Letter of No Permit Required.”  Huh?  I read the first one, and was delighted to see:

Here’s a link to the full PDF.

Now, I still have to maintain PPQ permits for transport of the wild type silkmoths, or for importation… but the vast majority of what I have been sending and receiving is Bombyx mori.  With it no longer being regulated for interstate movement… it just takes a lot of paperwork hassle off my shoulders. Yaaay!  This makes my mission of sharing the joy of silkworm raising a LOT easier.

The tomatoes that Chris planted in the little peat starters are looking great!

Their first true leaves are starting to appear – and they’re getting a little crowded.  Soon, they would be to the point where they would compete for light and root space, and they would end up leggy and weak.

So, sad though it is, it’s time to thin the seedlings.   I didn’t actually use a tiny scythe – I used tweezers.

So many tiny lives, wasted…. but, that’s the way it’s  done.  Strongest, healthiest seedling lives, extras have to be culled.  Unfortunately, tomato leaves aren’t edible, or we’d have the world’s cutest little salad.

This one looks odd; is it two plants in there, or three?

No, that one plant really does have THREE cotyledons.  There are two kinds of vascular plants that I know of… monocotyledons have one, dicotyledons have two.  This one has three.  I made sure that it survived, to see what happens with the rest of its development.  I’m assuming that it’s the same kind of divisional error that yields four-leafed clovers (and I’ve found clover leaves with up to seven…) – but I’ve never seen what happens if it begins this early in the plant’s development.  I’m wondering if the true leaves will come in sets of three?

So now we have thirty-six little tomato plants.  Probably still a lot more than we’ll be able to find garden soil for…. but I’m the kind of freak who thinks that home-grown tomato seedlings would make nice gifts.

The Better Boy plants that my Dad started around the first of December, and which we’ve been babying since New Year’s, are doing well.  A little leggy, perhaps, but we’ll just plant them deep and they’ll get extra root growth that way.

These are the peppers – we actually saved seed from a Holland Bell pepper that we enjoyed from the Asian grocery.  If the plants take after their parent, they’ll be huge, sweet, and orange.

One of the things that Chris and I both really like about the new house, is that it has a good space for a big vegetable garden.  We’re at the stage where we’re trying to balance pre-season enthusiasm with the realization of how much labor it can be as things get big.

Tomato and pepper seedlings are taking a sun bath today; it’s sixty degrees and only a light breeze – perfect weather for tiny baby plants.

The big tomato plants are Better Boy that my Dad planted from seed; we have been babying them since Christmas. They sit on the kitchen counter under a high-output full-spectrum light when it’s too cold outside, and they go outside on any sunny day.  They’re almost five inches tall now.

The little seedlings are half peppers, half tomatoes.  The tomatoes are a “heritage cherry tomato mix.”  The peppers are from a beautiful big orange Holland Bell pepper that we both liked from the grocery store.  We will probably get a grape tomato or two – Chris and I both love those.  We’re planning on some spaghetti and zucchini squash, rainbow chard, bush and pole beans, beets, onions… and something I’m sure I’m forgetting.  And lots of herbs in the holes of the cinder blocks.

Tomato seedlings.

The garden will be in these raised beds.  They’re roughly three by nine, and we’re going to lay them out square-foot gardening style.  You can’t really tell from this photo, but they’re already about two-thirds full with a good sandy loam; we’ll top up with peat, vermiculite, and compost.  Back in the corner there, is where my BEES are gonna go!

I finished the ribbon last night.  This is an in-progress picture; I’ll get more once I have it all hemmed up and beaded and finished this evening.

The sunlight through the window was good for the color of the beads, but a little harsh for shadows.  The surface beads over the knotwork on either side of the front don’t normally cast stark shadows like that.

There’s still snow on the ground at our house.  Here’s the view of the creek:

And here’s the back of the house.  See the big pile of snow by the garage door?  Those dark stains flowing down the driveway from it, are puddles of slick ice.  It was nearly fifty yesterday, but 29 again overnight.

and the view down the street.  Notice the piles of broken limbs in front of many of the houses!

I’ve never had snow stay on the ground like this.  I know that for many of my northerly friends, this is just a drop in the bucket – but snow worth shoveling is something that I have never experienced in my life, and snow that stays on the ground more than overnight is something that happens to other people.