My soil less potting and seed starting mix recipe - Plants love it!

Here is how I made my own soil less mix recipe. It's very easy to make and it seems that seeds love to germinate in this mix. It is said you should avoid starting seeds, (or certain seeds anyway), in native dirt/soil because of bacteria etc that can kill the seed - damping off it's called.

You only need a few things to get started:

1.) (4) 5 gallon buckets with lids

2.) Bag of vermiculite

3.) Bag of perlite

4.) Bag of sphagnum moss

5.) 1/2 to 2 pounds worm castings (optional)

Pour each ingredient into it's own 5 gallon bucket.

Use a measuring cup to take equal  parts of each product and pour into the last bucket. (If you choose to add the worm castings do not need a bucketand shoud be stored somewhere else.) This is your completed soil-less mix for starting seeds or using as house plant medium. You can even use this as hydroponic medium if you has a netting to hold it together.

Worm tea is brewing

I now have the worm tea brewing!

Here is how I am  making my worm tea:

- 5 gallon bucket filled with water
- 2 tablespoons of unsulfured molasses
- Air pump for a fish tank
- Drip iirrigation tube for air hose
- 1 drip irrigation "T"
- 2 adjustable drip emitters
- Pantyhose to put worm castings in
- 2-3 clothespins to hold drip irrigation line to pantyhose to keep air blowing from the bottom

I'll let this worm tea brew for about two days. I plan on pouring the finished worm tea into a two gallon pump spray and use on my entire garden and landscape. Pictures to follow...

Worm coposting bin video 3 week update

We will be starting our raised gardens this coming week!

Many people claim that you should have your raised garden beds going by now, however we waited for our extreme Arizona heat to pass. If you've been keeping track on our Arizona weather you will know that we have been setting new record heat temp.'s for quite some time. If Arizona didn't  break a heat record, we tied it or came within a few degrees! This summer has been a very HOT summer without much relief. With this in mind, we decieded to hold off on planting anything in our raised garden beds until the heat broke; next week should be the time to plant.

Here is what I'm going to do with our raised gardn beds as far as the soil:
(I have two raised garden beds about 10' x 4' x 18")

The bottom of the raised garden bed will be covered in 1"-2" of newspaper.
Next layer will be a few inches of alfalfa hay.
I will be adding about 1' of natural soil on top of this with a bunch of earthworms and kitchen scraps mixed in.
After this I will be adding our entire compost pile that we have been building up for a few months.
To top off our raised garden beds I will be filling the rest of the bed with "garden soil" from a local rock supply yard.
(Depending on what is in the "garden soil" from the rock supply yard,  I may be adding in bone meal and blood meal.)

I believe this combination will provide us with great tasting produce. Please comment if you have any suggestions :)

Worm composting, vermiculture - Let's build a worm composting bin!

Now that the summer heat is slowly making way for Fall, we're going to build ourselves a worm composting bin for worm tea and worm castings for our garden.

From everything I've read and been told, they seem really easy to build and are very rewarding. I've made  my worm composting bin already and will buy some red wiggler worms later today. I'll post the images in a little while to show you how I designed my worm composting bin to help you when you build your very own.

The basics I've learned so far are as follows:(I will explain this in more detail when I post the images later today.)

- Worms for composting are called RED WIGGLERS. (You don't need to buy a lot of these red wiggler worms because they will reproduce!)
- Add about 2"-3" of shredded newspaper that needs to stay damp at all times to allow the red wiggler worms to breathe and change the shredded newspaper about every two months.
- The red wigglers need a dark container to live in.
- Feed your red wigglers kitchen scraps such as banana peels, lettuce, apple cores, etc. (I've been told not to use yams or sweet potatoes since they give off a gas when decomposing).
That's pretty much all there is to do! I'll be keeping my worm composter inside the house since our Arizona summers are to extreme as well as our winters will have temps that are too cold for the red wiggler worms to survive. The red wiggler worms need a fairly consistent temperature to thrive. I can't wait for some worm casting tea!