Monster Worms now has a Master Gardener in the family. On Saturday, May 15th, Dave and 29 of his classmates received their Master Gardener Certificates. He had been taking classes and studying since January. 
We are very proud of him. While in class, he was also able to pass on his knowledge of vermiculture and of our red worms. Specifically the red wigglers, European nightcrawlers and African nightcrawlers. All great composting and fishing worms.
Posts Tagged ‘organic garden’
Master Gardeners, Red Wiggler Worms and Monster Worms
Tuesday, May 18th, 2010Happy Mother’s Day from Monster Worms!
Sunday, May 9th, 2010
We enjoyed Mother’s Day one day early because I had to be out of town on May 9th. I woke up to find two cute, excited girls, a wonderful breakfast and presents. My favorite present was a T-shirt that they drew on for the occasion. Each girl drew on one side and put on things that were special to them. In the evening, we went to a Mother, Daughter dance and I wore that shirt. I received a lot of compliments about it.
After breakfast, we went outside and did one of my favorite things…..worked in the garden. We normally start our garden earlier, but we were a little behind this year. In the past, I used to rototill the garden, but I feel that this is not good for the soil. What I do now is I dig out a trench where I want to plant. I then put in compost from our Dual Drum compost tumbler or from our homemade compost bin. This not only provides nutrients for the roots but needed 
air too because the soil is not compacted. We then put some of the soil that we dug out on top of the compost and plant our seeds or plants. Everything in our garden is from seed except for the tomato plants.
The girls helped me with all of this. They love to put seeds in the ground and watch them grow. We all enjoy eating the vegetables that come out of our garden. I had a wonderful day with my girls. What did you do for Mother’s Day?
Having Fun With Compost
Saturday, April 17th, 2010At Monster Worms, not only do we enjoy vermiculture, but we enjoy hot composting too. Ever since our daughters could walk, they have been involved with all of our projects. They know that spent flowers and leaves can turn into “dirt” because they have seen it happen first hand. I remember one time when my oldest daughter, who was about four at the time, talked to a wilting flower in a vase and said, “It’s okay, you’ll go into the compost and make more flowers.”
The other day the girls and I put some of our compost, that I got out of our dual drum compost tumbler, into our brick planter boxes and half wine barrels. We then planted flowers that we bought at a local nursery. Every year we do this. It’s like a tradition. The girls get to pick out which flowers that they want to plant. When they were younger, I had to dig the holes and help them plant. Now, they can do it on their own. They love it and they enjoy seeing the fruits of their labor.
The Mason Bee….The Perfect Pollinator
Friday, February 26th, 2010Have you noticed that in the Spring and Summer there are not very many honey bees around? Have you had trouble in the past getting your fruits and vegetables to set because of lack of pollination?
Then you need to get a Mason Bee box! Why? Well…..to attract the excellent pollinating Mason Bees!
Mason Bees pollinate our spring fruit trees, flowers and vegetables. They are named from their habit of making compartments of mud in their nests, which are made in hollow reeds or holes in wood made by wood boring insects or woodpeckers. If they can’t find these types of holes in which to build their nests, they will go elsewhere. That is why providing a bee box with ready made nesting holes for them is such a great idea!
Mason bees are very effective spring pollinators. Two or three females can pollinate the equivalent of a mature apple tree in one season! They fly in cool or rainy weather and can supplement or replace honey bees as commercial pollinators in some situations.
Unlike honey bees, they are solitary and produce neither honey nor beeswax. Since they have no honey to defend, they will only sting if squeezed or stepped on. They make excellent garden “pets” since they both pollinate the plants and are safe for children and pets.
What could be more perfect for your garden? The Mason Bee is an excellent pollinator and doesn’t sting unless it gets squished. I think that I would fight back then too!
Red Worms in the White House?
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010I recently read an article about First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign which was designed to help parents deal with and eliminate childhood obesity. In this article she talked about the organic garden she set up on the White House lawn and how important fresh fruits and vegetables are in our diets.
Back in August, actually on President Obama’s birthday, I happened to be in Washington, DC and I had the opportunity to visit the White House. (I didn’t get past the black wrought iron fence though. 
) I walked all the way around the grounds and I got a glimpse of this organic garden.
All of this got me to thinkin’ though, do they do any composting? If the garden is organic, what do they use for fertilizer? And what about all of their food scraps? Do you think that they throw them out?
I have a couple of great ideas for them…..they could buy a bunch of our Dual Drum or Original Compost tumblers and compost all of the garden waste, shrub prunings, grass clippings and fallen leaves. Then inside they could put a whole row of our Gusanito worm farm bins next to the bowling alley. All of their food scraps could be put in them for the red worms to eat.
If they did this, they would have all the organic compost and worms castings that they would need for their garden. They would also be diverting a bunch of “garbage” from going into a landfill.
So what do you think First Lady Obama? Red worms in the White House?
Running “A-Fowl” in Brentwood, CA
Sunday, January 31st, 2010Chickens were present at a recent city council meeting in Brentwood, CA. Why were they there? To help themselves and others like them from getting evicted out of the city. Apparently, there is a rule that states that these fowl creatures can’t be on a residential lot smaller than 20,000 square feet. They were there to try to persuade the council members to relax this rule.
The hens’ owner, Kimberly Kennedy, insists that she wants to be more sustainable. She also feels that tending to her feathered friends and collecting their eggs will help to teach her children about responsibility.
Her neighbors think that they just stink and draw flies.
I bet these chickens would love to eat some of our red worms! Hopefully our worms won’t find out that I wrote this! Shhh……don’t tell them. They might stop working for us.
Does anyone out there have any chickens? Do they really stink and draw flies?
To read the article written in the Contra Costa Times, go to www.CCTimes.com.
Photo credit: Sherry LaVars/BayAreaNewsGroup
Please Recycle Your Christmas Tree
Saturday, January 16th, 2010If you still have your Christmas tree, are you wondering what to do with it? Recycle it!
Every year we buy a live Christmas tree to put into our house. We all love to decorate and look at it. It also smells so nice. But what do you do with it when the holidays are over?
Unfortunately, many people put their used trees in the trash or burn them. This just adds to the stuff piling up at our landfills or adds to the air pollution. Many communities now offer tree recycling and provide drop off locations. They take these trees, grind them up and then compost them. Perfect! Also, the Boy Scouts of America offer to pick up trees right at your curb in many communities. All they ask for is a small donation. Most of these options are now not available due to the time of year, but there is always next year.
So, if you still have your tree, what do you do? Compost it. We cut up our tree and put it into either our homemade compost bin or our dual drum compost tumbler. The branches take a little while to break down, but they eventually do. It will all one day turn into nutrient-rich compost that you can put back into the earth.
Turning and Restarting a Compost Pile
Monday, October 5th, 2009
A few weeks ago I decided to harvest some of our “black gold” from our homemade compost bin. This bin is made out of wire fencing material and two pieces of 2 x 4. For instructions on how to make it go to: How to Make a Compost Bin.
I have this sitting in our garden area and I just move the bin to a spot right next to where it was. That way I don’t have far to go to put back in the unfinished compost. Once I have relocated the bin, I start to restock it with materials that I want to turn into compost. These materials consist of brown leaves and dead plants, yard trimmings and spent garden crops and soil from the garden.
The first thing that I do is remove the layer of uncomposted material from the top of the old pile and put it in the empty bin. Then I start layering my brown and green materials. I put in a few inches of each and top it off with a few shovelfuls of dirt. Then I add enough water so that it is damp even at the bottom of the pile. I continue this layering until I reach the top of the bin or I run out of materials to put in.
With this type of compost bin, there will always be a 3-4 inch layer of “wall” and “ceiling” that will remain uncomposted. Just remove this layer from the old pile and put it into the new bin. Underneath this layer is where all of the beautiful, nutrient rich compost will be. You’ll be amazed…..what was once leaves and old flowers is now black compost! You can apply this to your garden, plants, or lawn. Free organic fertilizer!
“Our Garden” Update #3
Thursday, September 24th, 2009Every Friday Dave helps out at the CC Times community garden in Walnut Creek, CA. The food grown at the garden is donated to the Solano County food bank. To date more than 100 pounds of fresh produce have been donated! Donations of home grown food from gardeners is also greatly appreciated. Each week a different topic about gardening is presented. This week the presentation was about “Winter Gardening” and what crops grow best in cool weather.
We enjoy gardening and we are fortunate to live in a climate where we can garden all year. Soon, we will be pulling out our spring and summer crops and putting in our fall and winter ones. The winter crops for this year will be lettuce, beets, carrots, broccoli, and peas.
We plan on using our “bean teepee” for the peas. In this photo you can see our girls surrounded by pole beans that they planted from seeds. They help me plant most of the garden and everything is planted from seeds except for our tomato plants. The girls love seeing the plants grow and harvesting the vegetables!
For more information about the Contra Costa Times community garden go to www.contracostatimes.com/home-garden.
Worm Castings aka Worm Poop!
Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009WOW!!. Look at this lovely organic fertilizer that Dave pulled out of our bins the other day. Worm Castings!!! The best fertilizer there is. Why do I say that? Because it’s true. Worm castings are rich in water-soluble plant nutrients. They are packed with minerals essential for plant growth that can be used by the plant immediately, unlike chemical fertilizers.
Earlier this year, we applied worm castings to our tomato plant that had leaves with yellow in them. That plant made a turn around and ended up looking better than the other tomato plants.
Castings can be used as a seed starter….it won’t burn the plants, as a fertilizer by top dressing or working into the soil surface, or it can be made into “worm tea” and sprayed onto plants or on the surface near their roots.
The Bees are Back in Town!
Wednesday, September 9th, 2009
We heard a wonderful sound in our backyard today! The buzzing of hundreds of bees collecting pollen from the flowers of our fruitless Pepper tree. Now most of you are probably saying…..what..are you nuts? That makes you happy? Well, yes it does…along with other things of course. Many years ago, you would always hear the loud humming of the bees in that tree. Then year after year, it got quieter and quieter.
The plight of the bee in recent years has been a difficult one. Their numbers have been diminishing dramatically. This has been blamed on a variety of different factors. Honey bees are susceptible to the same chemicals that are sprayed on many crops for insect control. These pesticides are known to be toxic to bees. Parasitic mites and Colony Collapse Disorder have also reduced their populations.
Bees along with some other insects are responsible for pollinating many of our crops. We need them and I hope that the buzzing sound in our tree keeps getting louder and louder.
Monster Garden at Monster Worms
Sunday, September 6th, 2009
The garden at Monster Worms is 100% organic. We do not use any pesticides or any chemicals in our garden. The only thing that is put in there is compost from our compost tumbler and homemade compost bin. Occasionally we will have a plant that 
has a problem and we will top dress the soil at the base of the plant with our worm castings. This always seems to make a big difference. Within a few weeks, the problem plant looks much better.
When I first bought this house 18 years ago the soil was lousy. It was hard and lifeless. About 16 years ago, I started to amend the soil with compost that I made. What a difference! We added old deck 
boards to make the garden beds raised and we kept on adding our compost inside these beds. We now have rich, crumbly black soil where there was once tan clay soil with no drainage.
When it is time to plant something in the garden, I 
normally only dig out the area where the roots will be. In this area, I put in the compost mixed with some crushed oyster shells to add in some extra calcium. This seems to work really well. These photos are of our cucumbers, beans, zucchini, and sunflowers. Look at how large the leaves of the plants are!!
“Our Garden” update #2
Friday, July 31st, 2009Every Friday Dave goes to Walnut Creek, CA to help with the Contra Costa Times community garden. He is recognized now as “The Worm Guy” and quite often spends time answering questions about red worms and vermiculture. This week he also brought along about 15 pounds of worm castings to be used on the garden. A few Master Gardeners very happily took the castings and top dressed plants with them.
This week the discussion was about having plants and flowers in your garden that attract beneficial insects and pollinators. We have been doing this in our own garden for quite some time. Not only does it look pretty, but it works! It was mentioned that Heirloom flowers and plants do a better job of attracting these insects. I hadn’t heard that before and I plan to find out more about it. If you have any information on that I would love to learn about it. You can comment here or you can email me at info@MonsterWorms.com. I love to learn!!
To learn more about the community garden go to www.contracostatimes.com/home-garden.
Worm Castings help our tomato plant.
Thursday, July 16th, 2009
Our entire garden except for our tomato plants are planted by seeds. Our oldest child has always loved tomatoes. I remember one time when she was just a toddler standing next to a cherry tomato plant eating tomatoes. She had seeds and tomato juice all over her face and shirt. Our youngest has only recently started to like them. Finally, after all of the times we put them on her plate, she eats them and likes them!
This year we picked out three plants, one of which was an “early girl”. This plant never looked as good as the other two, but we thought that once it got into our soil, that is amended with compost, it would be fine. Well, we were wrong. It needed more help than that. Worm castings to the rescue!!!!
I applied worm castings around the base of the plant and worked a little into the soil. After a couple of weeks, the 
leaves started to get a darker, richer green color and they got larger too!
Look at some of our harvest! They taste great too.
