Adventures In Vermiculture

   I finally jumped on the vermiculture (worm farming) band wagon recently and thought that some people might be interested in my experiment.  Worm castings make fantastic fertilizer!  It can either be applied whole as a top dressing/soil amendment or brewed, put in cheesecloth and soaked, with water to make compost tea. After doing a little online research, including watching a few videos on youtube, I decided to get 250 European red night crawlers, for the castings and fishing bait, from Uncle Jim's Worm Farm.  http://unclejimswormfarm.com/  Although there are many other worm suppliers. Two days after placing the order I got an email notification that my worms had shipped.  After a full week of waiting for the package to arrive, I began to get really worried that they were stuck in a frozen warehouse somewhere between Michigan and Pennsylvania.  I called Uncle Jim's and it turns out that the email was generated by computer and my crawlers hadn't actually shipped out yet.  They were scheduled to go out two days from then.  Anyway, after they were actually shipped, they arrived in a timely fashion.  I had set their habitat up the previous week so all I needed to do was add them to it.  

   I started with my plastic 18 gallon tote.  They're cheap and readily available.  It's best to use to darker, opaque colors to decrease the amount of light that permeates the tub.

     Next, I drilled a row of holes along the top edges the longest sides and then drilled holes in the lid to make sure there was plenty of airflow as there would be in nature.  I also drilled several small holes in the bottom of the tub for drainage.  You don't want want your worms and media sitting in water and becoming stagnant.

   You'll want to make sure you have something to catch any water that drains from the bottom of the tub, I used an extra tote lid that I happened to have laying around.  You'll also want to have something to raise the tub up off the floor for increased air flow.  I started out using a small stack of recycled yogurt containers, but those proved to not be strong enough.  I switched to recycled aluminum cans instead, but you can use bricks or chunks of left over 2x4's.  The tub only needs to be raised a couple of inches.

   It's time to decide what media to use for the little guys.  It being January when I decided to do this really limited my choices.  I definitely suggest doing it in the spring or fall.  My choice of media was a 1:1:1 ratio of composted sphagnum peat, garden soil (mostly sand) and shredded paper.  After getting it all mixed up well, I added enough water to moisten the media, but not drench it.  When you squeeze a handful in your fist, it should clump together but no moisture should escape.  It'll take a lot more water than you might think to get the peat moist.  It's extremely hydrophobic (won't absorb water), but holds water very well once damp.

   If you find that the peat won't take in any water, you can add a few drops of dish soap to the media/water mix.  The soap helps the water molecules bond to the peat.  Just a heads up, this can also be done with potting soil in your house plants that won't take water.

   Time to add the worms.  It's not really a scientific method, just dump them on top of the soil and spread them out.  Leaving a light on above the tote will encourage them to dig down into the media.  I checked on them after about an hour and noticed that there were a few of them kept trying to escape no matter how many times I put them back.  I think I lost 10 of them total.  The worms need to be kept in a dark place with an even temperature, my tub is in the basement in the darkest corner.  45-70 degrees fahrenheit is the ideal temperature range.
   After about a week I noticed that the worms were piling up on the edges of the tub.  After some quick research I figured out that the peat made the media waaaay to acidic.  The fastest way to fix the problem would be to add a little lime to some water and pour it over the soil.  Since I have no lime right now, I had to use the next best thing, wood ash.  I built a small fire in the BBQ with a pie tin under the grating so catch the ash.  Once it was cool, I added it to a small pitcher of water and poured it in and mixed it around really well.  Problem solved after about 24 hours.

  After about a week to let them settle and to make sure you pH is correct, it's time to feed the worms.  You can give them pretty much anything that you compost such as dry leaves, grass clippings, kitchen scraps, etc.  Avoid putting meat scraps in the tub, these will rot and stink.  If you put your scraps into a food processor or chop it up really fine, the worms will be able to compost it much faster.  Keep in mind that you need to put in an even ratio of green compost to brown to avoid drastically changing the pH and that items like coffee grounds are highly acidic.  Dig down into one corner of your tub, about two inches from the bottom and pour your worm food there.  A good rule of thumb is not to feed any more than the size of your fist.  Your worms will compost at different rates, depending on how many worms, what type of compost and what size the pieces are.  I find that mine go through their food in about ten day to two weeks.  The next time you feed, repeat the process, but put the food in the opposite corner of the tub to encourage the worms to move around.
   I'll keep updating my vermiculture adventures as they progress.  Hopefully you're inspired to attempt this for your garden.  I have plans to start four more of these worm farm tubs once the weather improves here in Michigan.  If you decide to dismantle your worm bins, please don't release them into your gardens as they won't stay there.  These non-native worms are more voracious than our native earth worms and will quickly over take available resources.

Meet Helen Yoest; Garden Writer

   Helen is a highly creative and energetic woman with an infectious enthusiasm for plants that you can't possibly be immune to...if you can keep up with her that is.  She is the author of two fantastic books on gardening (so far); Gardening With Confidence: 50 Ways to add style for personal creativity (2012 GWC Press)  and the newly released Plants With Benefits: An Uninhibited Guide to the Aphrodisiac Herbs, Fruits, Flowers, & Veggies in Your Garden (2014, St. Lynn's Press).  She also maintains a blog where she gives gardening and lifestyle advice as well profiles some of the up and coming young professionals in the horticulture industry.

   She has an advanced degree in environmental engineering and spent 20 years as an environmental air pollution field engineer, a profession she loved until she and her husband adopted their first child.  After a brief  3 year stint as an office engineer, that hat was hung up and she went back to her gardening roots.  "I didn't wait that long for children only to be separated from them while I was on the road," said Helen.  She spent the first four years of her horticultural career in garden maintenance and then garden coaching for people who wanted to learn more about plants and gardening.  Gradually, Helen began to get a few writing assignments and got to realize her dream of being a full time writer.  She recently celebrated her 12th year in business and divides her time between gardening, writing about gardening and spending time with her husband and three teenage children.  Even though she has no formal horticultural training, Helen is an honorary member of the national horticulture society, Pi Alpha Xi.  http://gardeningwithconfidence.com/blog/2012/03/14/pi-alpha-xi/

   Helen chose garden writing because she's a gardener and likes to write (simple enough explanation).  "If I were a lawyer, I'd write about the law."  Her writing style is inspirational and unexpected, saying "I don't like being typical."  She writes about whatever happens to inspire her,s ometimes it's wildlife or design or a garden/er. With the new book Plants with Benefits, she began to write about sex.  Specifically, plants with aphrodisiac effects.  She writes for the new gardener and hopes that when they're looking for a little guidance or inspiration, they'll turn to her writings.

   Helen would rather be outside digging in the dirt than sitting in an office and credits her father with being her biggest gardening influence. She loves garden maintenance in general, whether it be pulling weeds, planting or pruning.  She says propagation is her least favorite aspect of the gardening experience, other than starting a few seeds, stating she just doesn't have the patience for it.  With the mild winters they experience in her home state of North Carolina, she can spend more time in the garden, even if it's just building a fire and settling in to read a new book.  Her personal garden style is highly eclectic including; organic and sustainable practices, xeriscaping (gardening with little water use), a wildlife haven and food production...all done in the confines of formal, straight lined borders.  Her favorite plants to work with are the ones that attract bees, birds and butterflies or plants with an interesting architecture such as Taxodium distichum “Cascade Falls”(Weeping Bald Cypress).  Any plant in a Helen's garden has to be one tough cookie and able to survive fairly harsh conditions like wet winters, dry summers and acidic soils.

   She believes that the future of horticulture is gardening with purpose, whether it be for wildlife, food or as private art installments.  "I see [the future of] garden writing diluted to how-to's with whole books trying to paraphrase how to plant tree, shrub, or perennial by saying, dig a hole the same depth as the nursery container and twice as wide."  She offers this advice to new authors "Stay true to yourself. Write about what you know, and write every chance you get."

Meet Cindy Dye of Homeplace Gardens

‘In passionate pursuit of the best’ is the motto of Ken and Cindy Dye of Homeplace Gardens, located in zone 7 Gastonia, North Carolina. Cindy’s mother and grandmother were both avid gardeners and that helped to encourage her love of all things green and growing. Ken’s mother was a collector of cactus and Cindy often jokes that she married Ken for his mothers greenhouse. Cindy married Ken at the age of twenty and spent fifteen years managing a retail pharmacy. The couple have now been married for 35 years and have two children, both sons and two granddaughters. Her first daylily was gifted to her in 1983, when she was 29, by one of the pharmacists she worked with. She soon joined a local daylily society where she met Van Sellers and Red Nolan. After returning to home after the first meeting she jokingly told Ken that she had joined a ‘Senior Citizen’ club. As with many of us with extensive collections, Cindy started with the cheaper, easily attainable hybrids, filling her new landscape with the myriad of colors available. A few years later, she began to dab a bit of pollen, eventually registering her first daylily in 1994. Four years later, in 1998, she hosted her first Regional Meeting and a National Convention in 2003. Cindy was eventually joined in hybridizing by Ken in 2000.
 

All Eyes On Me

  Cindy considers herself an ‘intuitive’ hybridizer, listening to others with more knowledge and experience and then using her own instincts to pursue her goals. These goals have changed as many times as daylilies themselves have. Currently she’s breeding for full sized, extra large flowers with patterned eyes and edges with teeth. Cindy prefers to use her own seedlings for line breeding and sibling crosses, only out crossing when another hybridizer creates an outstanding cultivar that she feels she needs in her lines. “No trade secrets here - just persistence and passion.” Cindy lists Van Sellers as one of the biggest influences on her daylily career lending his experience and advice. “How great to be mentored by a Stout winnter, says Cindy, Van was always “honest without being discouraging.” 
 

Betty Smith

 1000 seeds are planted every year, this number is down from the usual 2000. “I like to think I am making smarter crosses and need less seed. Sometimes we will get 6 intros from those and sometimes 2. Its takes a lot to impress us now.” Seedlings take up residence in the gardens for three years before being culled since space isn’t an issue in the Dye garden. Seedlings to be used as bridge plants must exhibit at least one of the traits currently being bred for. As of right now She’s working on an eight inch, edge no eye diploid conversion, hoping to get it ready for registration soon. “ My best cultivar so far is the one that will bloom NEXT year!”
 

Carolines Kiss

 Past favorites are the ones that people write to her about and send pictures of. Homeplace Cherry Face won Cindy her first Honorable Mention. All Creation Sings seems to be a customer favorite and is the one most often mentioned in customer emails. It has superb hardiness with a chicken fat edge that never seems to hang up and it won the Hybridizers Award for Region 15 in 2009. Another favorite is an unusual brown miniature with a green throat call Chaco Taco, Cindy says it’s a love it or hate it flower. To be considered registration worthy at Homeplace Gardens a seedling must exhibit good foliage, and a big helping of ‘pizazz‘. “It certainly does not hurt if visitors shed tears upon seeing it for the first time and ask to take their photograph standing beside it . But seriously, I ask myself, would I buy that and would I mind feeding, watering, mulching, deadheading, and dividing it in 100 degree heat? Its amazing how discriminating one can be in southern humidity.”
 

Kens Gone Green

  Downsizing is the name of the game at Homeplace these days. At age 55, Cindy feels her energy would be better spent on hybridizing than on regular perennial borders. Only favorite cultivars and those used specifically designated for use in hybridizing are being kept. Less favorite daylilies are being replaced by low maintainence trees, shrubs and hardscaping. Both Sons used to help in the gardens and showed daylilies in the youth division, until they both grew to old to participate. While they’re both quite knowlegable about plants, they prefer fishing to daylilies. Her granddaughters have taken over the youth showings and have small collections of their own. Their names appear in several of the Dye’s registrations. Ken is the main garden helper these days and is a very good hybridizer himself. Along with daylilies the couple collects evergreen trees, sedums and unusual perennials, pushing the limits of their zone 7 garden by creating microclimates. Container gardens are placed throughout the borders, in direct line with the irrigation systems so they don’t have to be hand watered.
 

Mitchell Hagler

 When asked about how she would like to see the AHS proceed in the future, she said “I think the AHS should spend more resources on promoting daylilies in magazines,etc by advertising National Conventions the same way other flower shows advertise to the gardening public.” Cindy won the Region 15 Jeffcoat Hybridizers Award in 2009 and Ken later won it in 2010. The state inspected garden is open to the public in June by appointment only, since the couple attend so many national and regional conventions. The Website for Homeplace Gardens can be found here http://daylily.net/gardens/homeplace/index.htm