I just could not resist

Don't wrinkle your nose at worm compost because it is sweet smelling and a wonderful additive to starting seeds or keeping plants growing. Worms are accommodating little fellows who eat stuff that would normally end up in the garbage or down the disposal. If they are fed what they like to eat, they double their numbers every month.

That being said, I could not resist aggravating the woman who has the "organic grower" boyfriend. A year and a half ago, he had about two pounds of red wrigglers. That would be the equivalent of about two thousand worms. These two nuts thought a banana peel would fed the whole bucket of worms for a week and boy were they wrong.

To start with, worms are strict vegetarians who do not eat meat, fowl, citrus, onion or other root crops, or subtropical fruits like bananas. If their worms had been handled properly, there should at this time be about 262,144,000 worms. The woman's whole double garage would be full of containers with worms and bags of worm castings (compost).

Now I am nobody's fool and I know someone who absolutely knows nothing about a subject. When I had active worm bins before, I could not keep up with the growth. I finally got tired of sifting compost and decided to dump them in the garden of that time. I haven't had the inclination nor the back to do the sifting, but my new worm composter does it for me and I am sure it is the first of many containers to come.

Worm compost, vermicompost, worm castings or Super Soil (as it was sold)is a marvelous thing. Worm compost by any name will make your veggies happy and the soil more viable.

A rose by any other name is still a rose, and worm compost is black gold.

Chewing the fat

I have known the man who runs several of the local farm stands near my home for a good many years and I have gotten friendly with Rick and his sister, Pam. We were talking about how stupid some of the "gardeners" are that do not hale from this area. Rick said that if you didn't include lime as a necessary element you "weren't gonna grow nothing" here.

Truer words were never said. I know that I am not the greatest organic gardener, but I also know that I am a pretty fair gardener with a fair amount of knowledge of gardening methods, fertilizers,and bug treatments. I experiment and keep track of what grows best in my area of the country and I am aware of how the seasons affect the vegetables we grow and when.

Rick and I laughed about my acquaintance's "organic grower" boyfriend who knows nothing about when we grow different vegetables and how we grow them. We also laughed about how stupid this man is that he does not understand that you don't plant over the septic tank and how you have to be intimate with lime, epsom salts, eggshells, and the other things Southern growers know from the years we have been taught these things by older Southern gardeners.

Little things like not putting vegetables out before the last frost in the spring, getting things covered before the first fall frost, when to put lime in the soil and when to harvest. Rick was telling me the current thinking for the farmers is to put the slow acting lime in the soil in the fall and it will be better than fast acting in the spring.

Now the dolomite lime is something I plan to do to my boxes this fall when the plantings are all done and it is time to plan next season's crops. Because I will be starting in February with sugar snap peas, cabbage family crops, like broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage. I plan to plant radishes, lettuces and whatever else I think I can grow.

Eventually, I hope to have a thirty or forty acre farm with some small amount of acreage for horses, a full fledged mushroom farm, a ten acre orchard of pecans, Hicans (this is a hybrid nut that is half hickory and half pecan) that taste like black walnuts, an experimentation for white truffles, and a ten to twenty acre farm with Grow Boxes and self watering facilities.

If that occurs in Georgia or South Carolina, you have to be certified as an organic gardener. If you sell more than $5,000 in Georgia, you have to be approved by the Department of Agriculture and your facility has to meet state standards. You are not allowed to sell without the approval and the Agriculture Department can make your farm off limits if you do funky things like the stupid boyfriend who pees in his compost pile.

I know I can get the farm and the certification in South Carolina, because I want to sell to the restaurants in the greater Charleston area. I want to be able to retire and practice my avocation of growing and not my vocation of being a CPA.

I sincerely hope I can make my dream a reality then I can spend my days meditating in the garden.

Worm composting

I got one of the best birthday present I have ever gotten. I got a worm composter and now I have to find a source for about a pound of red wiggler worms.

Those of us who have experienced vermicomposting (worm composting)know that worms are not the culprits who eat crops. Generally the bug we are looking for is a caterpillar or beetle.

The worm is a poor soul who is always accused and never guilty. If a worm is eating the vegetable or fruit, it is rotten and unfit to eat. Worms are the best barometer for what is edible and what is not.

Now, it is time to plan for the next year's garden and I plan to order the worms soon. My husband reminded me that I need to get the worm composter started because he knows that worms love coffee grinds, tea bags, watermelon rind, cantaloupe rind, honeydew rind, apple and pear cores, etc. and fall is coming.

The worm composter will be kept in the garage and we also use shredded paper from the office as part of the bedding. This is recycling at its best.

My thought process is to mix the organic potting mix with some worm compost in the winter to aid the water retention in the Grow Boxes. Water retention is not a big problem with the Grow Boxes but worm compost holds six times more water than dirt or regular compost and it is a supplemental fertilizer that is also organic.

Worms are wonderful garden helpers and I proved that to my sister about fifteen years ago. Our mother had bestowed on my sister the Christmas cactus that was about 45 years old. Poor thing was sick and dying and my sister wanted to toss it in the trash.

Instead, I administered a worm repair kit (some worm compost and a few worms) and fed the plant a used tea bag. The plant revived and now sixteen years later, the plant has been split into two healthy plants.

What my intentions are is to get one of those beautiful plants and see if we can again subdivide it. It will be beautiful this winter and it will be a reflection of what the coming gardens will be.

A little piece of the beauty of the coming spring in the dead of winter. What a wonderful cycle we have been given.

Peppers, peppers, peppers

For years I have attempted every kind of sweet pepper and every kind of growing method, but I had no real luck with peppers. My friend Scott also had similar problems with all kinds of hot peppers. Frustration was the name of the game.

Now, I have tried a good many methods and the closest I came to getting a good pepper was the 3 foot square garden with 9 plants in it. That was a very unique method where the plants were three to a row, one foot apart, and three rows to the 3 foot by 3 foot square garden. The idea behind it is to allow the peppers to shield each other from the sun. It worked pretty well but nothing like my Grow Boxes.

The peppers felt the heat in June and July, and now in August the foliage is lush and the peppers are able to ripen to their bright red or yellow or orange. We have regular bell peppers and the little sweet peppers that usually come from Mexico. I have picked more peppers from these two boxes of peppers than all of my gardens' production added together. Scott has such an abundance of hot peppers he will have to can them to keep them.

I know for next year I will make some modifications for these boxes, like a piece of sunshield fabric or screening to protect from the super hot sun of June and July.
Scott and I have compared notes and he plans to add more boxes next year.

The amazing thing about my Grow Boxes is that I have been able to produce about 3/10s of a pound per square foot of garden space and that is actual production with roughly 2 1/2 months to go. If I had an acre of these boxes I could produce approximately 15,000 pounds of vegetables. That is a lot if you are not a commercial grower.

My love of sharing the goodies keeps me from selling the veggies. I just want everybody to taste and enjoy my garden.

Planting seeds

My daughter called tonight to tell me something good was happening for her and my heart was so full because I knew I had helped in a small way. Children and seeds need careful tending. They have to be watched and tended and urged to grow.

It all sounds so simple, and yet it is not. It takes a careful touch and it takes tender loving words to make both grow. It may not seem important to tell a grown child that you think that they are doing something good, but a compliment makes everybody feel good.

I was not a person who had a mother who really loved me. I could not do anything right and it was unheard of to get an attaboy from her. My mother only loved one person in her life and she looked at her everyday in the mirror.

I love to tell my children that they are special. I don't care if they are human, animal or plants.

We are back in business

Last night, Bill and I cleaned up some of the containers. We administered two cups of lime and two cups of diatomaceous earth. I mixed the two boxes and removed everything that needed to be thrown out so that I can replant in the boxes.

I planted one of the boxes with bush Blue Lake string beans. I have so longed for home grown beans this summer and I want to share them with Landon. He has my heart and I understand why grandparents feel the way that they do.

My sister, Ellen, has been so sweet to share that tow headed little boy with the sparkling eyes. His love of the garden only doubles my pleasure and the fact that he talks about me tells me that he loves me too.

I will be planting some more cucumber plants in the next few days and more bush beans. The sugar snap peas have started to make their appearance and we have lettuce seeds that have shown their tiny little bodies.

Whether it is children or plants, I love to watch them grow. When you do a good job, they reward you well. To date, we have harvested over 180 pounds of veggies and our replanting is starting to really show growth.

The seedlings

Well, there is nothing like learning you are wrong, and I have been given a lesson. The seeds I planted a couple of days ago are already coming up and I have realized that I too can make a mistake. My haste to get the seeds going and setting them in the sun definitely cooked them rather than giving them a boost.

The seedlings that are coming up are bush Blue Lake beans, cucumbers, lettuce, sugar snap peas and a few other Blue Lake pole beans. It is heartwarming to know I can get over a mistake with a replant.

After having my great nephew. Landon, over this past weekend, I think I will have his mama bring him over so that we can plant together. He is a great little boy and he loves vegetables. His mama and daddy don't spoil him and he is an absolute delight to be with. He eats like an adult and I am so in love with him.

To watch his delight at picking tomatoes and peppers was incredible. He loves coming to the garden and I love having him. We looked at the flowers on the tomato plants and I explained how they become the tomatoes he loves so much.

A garden like mine has produced about 180 pounds of vegetables this summer and we have months to go. If I had the 4 acre plot that someone I know has, this would equate to 50,000 pounds plus if the whole acreage was planted in these boxes.

That would make me a real farmer and I am debating the idea. It might not be as much fine if it was real work.

Old things have new uses

I had to replant the bean seeds today because the last planting just rotted the seeds. We all make mistakes and setting the seed container outside in 90+ temps was just too hot and too much moisture for starting seeds.

While I was working with the peat pellets I needed a small tool to help better position the seeds. They say that necessity is the mother of invention. I now have a few garden tools that started their useful life with a different purpose.

A brand new clean nail file has become my seed rasp. It works very well to take the edge off of the squash seeds, in order to let more liquid get into the seed. I have found that the seedlings usually show grow within the first few days after planting.

The other great tool is a crab pick. With two small tines and the larger scoop end, it works great to get the bean and pea seeds down deep into the peat pellet. It also helped pick up the tiny lettuce seeds that I started for fall planting.

Another terrific item with additional uses is a torn stocking. Tying a knot in the stocking lets you know that once it is clean it can be cut into strips and used to tie tomato plants to supports. It recycles something that will end up in a landfill.

I am a practical gardener and whatever fits works well with me. The best part of something like the crab pick is that a dishwasher cycle will make it useful for garlic crabs when I come back from Charleston next month.

Don't worry seeds, worry crabs. Worry a lot.

Planting time again

Georgia gives us three distinct planting times each year. We are now in the third part of our planting and it should go to frost. That is if it is a normal fall and the spiders are wrong.

You see G-d has instilled in spiders, bugs, and animals the ability to prepare their homes for the coming season. This year, the spiders have been building extensive webs like they did last summer. The only difference is that they started earlier, which could very well mean that our fall and winter will be colder than last year's.

The hot summer follows a cold winter many times. When you have lived in an area for a long time, you experience seasons differently than people who have recently come to our state.

That being said, we should still have three months to grow more vegetables and I have harvested over 165 pounds of veggies this summer. That is a good amount for any gardener and I am extremely happy. I will probably break 200 pounds of fruit and hopefully closer to 300.

I have replanted beans, squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, and I still want to add sugar snap peas, broccoli, some more tomatoes, nasturtiums, and a few other things. I have found peat pellets work enormously well and a way better method to start a transplant than the peat pots I paid so dearly for. A peat pellet cost about five cents and the seeds as much as ten or twenty cents a piece. That makes a transplant a total of thirty cents tops and that beats the fool out of three and a half dollars a piece from the local Home Depot or Lowes.

We have been extremely unhappy with the plants getting root bound in peat pots. I was amazed that the peat pots did not break down when they were planted and realized that the peat pot formula to make them has been changed so that they hold up longer for sale. My oldest daughter always says she prefers the old and inferior to the new and superior. Boy do I agree.

This is another one of those things that have to be watched and it will hit our list of changes that need to be made. Experimentation and change are the rule of thumb when you have a garden.

No GRITS, no glory

I am an organic gardener, and I have spent 36 years learning the ropes of growing vegetables organically. There are some very specific things that you will never find a true organic gardener or grower do.

With so many people jumping on the "organic" bandwagon, I sometimes marvel at what is put over on the public. An organic grower who thinks that peeing on his compost pile adds nitrogen is absolutely crazy. Organics never use human manure or humanure as we call it. Not to mention unsanitary, it certainly makes the man a certifiable lunatic and definitely ready for a straight jacket and a gag. I doubt anybody who eats his vegetables knows what his practices are.

If you are one of those people who purchase vegetables at roadside stands or weekend markets, you should always question where the vegetables came from and how they were grown. Commercial growers answer to the department of agriculture in their respective states, but these roadside or weekend market cowboys can definitely make you sick.

Worms are the answer to an organic fertilizer that is perfect. Some of my children gave me the very best birthday present I could have imagined. It is a worm compost hotel and it is just what the doctor ordered.

Now, do not wrinkle your nose and think that worms are slimy. They can take absolute trash and make it into the most beautiful, fragrant soil. They are truly G-d's perfect plan for man.

What my husband and I realize is that on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 the highest, my grow boxes are probably a 7 or 8. That does not mean that they can not be a 10, it only means that they need some tweaking.

We have already established a new routine as we replant. We add two cups of good, expensive fast acting lime, one cup of diatomaceous earth, a couple of teaspoons of epsom salts for the tomatoes, and when I have some good worm castings (poop), I will add that to the other items.

My friend, Scott, tried the Grow Boxes for his hot peppers and he has been amply rewarded with some of the best he has ever grown. He is absolutely so happy he has been all aglow. Maybe his glow is a reaction to the heat of his peppers, but whatever the reason, he is a convert.

Not only is Scott a convert, but his number of boxes will certainly continue to grow next summer and he is now on the bandwagon too. Our mutual friend, Mike, is our next victim.

Fruit or vegetable?

I have been asked if the vegetables are considered fruit or vegetable. Here is the down and dirty, if the item in question is a root crop, it is definitely a vegetable because it is a thickening of the roots of the plant. If the item is first a flower followed by a squash, cucumber, okra, tomato, bean or pea then it is a fruit.

We call a lot of things from the garden a vegetable, but in reality they are really fruits. Fruits can be savory or sweet and that tends to make the difference in a person's mind.

I really do not care what you call them, I call them vegetables for the ease of description. People are not really very educated about produce and the result is less questions.

The biggest question in my house is "where are the squash"? Beanie and Jimmy want their new found delicious veggie on a more regular basis. I am trying to comply with their wishes (and mine).

On Sunday night, I planted squash and cucumber seeds in peat pellets, covered them with a lid and left town Monday morning. I went to Savannah on Monday afternoon and forgot about the seeds.

On Wednesday, we packed up our youngest son and brought him home from his internship in Savannah. My husband looked at my newly planted seeds and could not believe his eyes. Everything had already sprouted.

Much to my dogs' delight, on Sunday morning, I replanted one of my squash buckets with new squash plants and Nasturtium seeds. The flowers really fight the bugs and that is a big help.

For my sanity and for the sake of my dogs, I sincerely hope the squash continue on their rapid growth. If they don't, I will be sneaking into gardens at night to procure squash.

My old dog has always had the philosophy of "bite off the leg and then ask friend or foe?". You can ask the air conditioner repairman about that, he has a beaut of a bruise from Beanie on his ankle (where he was bit).

I just don't want to be used for target practice for Beanie.