Making Worm Food

I’m warning you right now, this post has a bit of an elevated yuck! factor. It’s not the prettiest of postings, but it is one of the most interesting to me. Read on at your own discretion. You have been warned.

Earthworms are the most industrious animals I know of. They work constantly to improve our soils and increase their viability and plant sustainability. Specifically, red worms or Eisenia Foetida, the manure worms or compost worms are the ones I am referring to. These guys come up out of the soil or bedding and eat organic materials and produce wonderful castings that are the best natural, organic and cost-effective fertilizing agent I’ve ever heard of. Plus, they produce worm tea which is a fabulous liquid fertilizer that I personally swear by.

I have a bin of worms, thanks to my son-in-law who happened to buy a couple of half-pound tubs at a bait store one day. We cut a 55-gallon barrel in half top to bottom and put in them bedding made of straw, shredded paper, a little manure and some ground up kitchen waste and the worms.

Over the next several weeks, we have fed them much more kitchen waste as well as coffee grounds from the office where I work and these guys have eaten it all. Not only that, they have begun reproducing at a phenomenal rate. I estimate that there are two to three pounds of worms in this bin right now and I’m feeding them three times a week.  It’s the food that I’m feeding them that this post is about.

It’s a proven fact that worms will eat just about any garbage you can give them. Since I don’t currently have access to a steady supply of horse or cow manure, that’s out. But what I do have access to is a steady stream of kitchen wastes, stuff that would either go down the garbage disposal in the sink or in the trash can to the landfill. Both of these choices are less than desirable.

My choice is to feed it to my worms, so that is what I’m doing. This post shows how I prepare these wastes and store them for later feedings.

First, worms will eat about any organic material. If their basic needs of temperature, moisture and organic bedding are met, they will eat and consume everything you give them. A worm will eat up to four times its own weight in food every week. That’s actually a lot of food. Think how much that would be if you ate four times your own weight in food every week. They don’t want meat, bones, pet or human manure or greasy or oily foods, so put those in the landfill container. They love watermelon and other melons, so I try to give them as much of that as possible. Avoid citrus peels in large concentrations as they have the tendency to make the bedding too acidic for the worms. And they don’t have teeth so worms need to have some grit to put into their gizzards (just like chickens) to grind the food. I use dried and powdered eggshells and they seem to like it. In a future post, I'll show you how I prepare the eggshell gizzard fodder, too.

You can put this stuff directly into the bedding if you want, but that can take a while to break down. I like to speed things up a bit, and my worms seem to like it. I make use of a food blender to grind the food wastes into a puree.

I save my food scraps for a week or until I have enough to process. I keep them in plastic tubs with tight-fitting lids. I don’t worry about mold growing or other fuzzy stuff happening or if they start to rot. I want that because that’s what the worms want.

A small selection of the next batch of worm food. Any non-greasy, non-meat kitchen scraps will do nicely. If it came from a garden, it can go back into the garden.

I start by cutting up the scraps into blender-capable sized pieces. Then I add them to the blender with the blades set on high speed. I keep adding food and juices from the tubs until the blender is full and it is all liquefied. Then I pour the liquid into forms made from the bottoms of gallon milk jugs. I cut the bottom two inches off of milk jugs for this.

Don't let your wife see you using her blender for this project.

Then I CAREFULLY place the food filled forms into the freezer compartment of my refrigerator and let it freeze thoroughly. I give it at least a full day to freeze. I don’t worry about covering it because I’m not too concerned if it dries out a bit. It’s usually pretty runny anyway.

Here you can see the scrap bucket, the blended food and the milk jug bottoms into which I will pour and in which I will freeze the food.

Once it is frozen, I flex the forms a bit a pop out the solid block of food. I store these in a cardboard box in the freezer until I need them. I wash the forms out because they would begin to stink really quickly if I didn’t and store them to use next time.

Ready to be popped into the freezer.

When it’s time to feed the worms, I simply take a block or two out of the box and place them a couple of inches deep in the bedding. I make sure that the new ones are not directly over where the last ones were because I don’t want to place a block of ice on top of some worms eating the last of the previous feeding. It takes a few hours for it to thaw and by the next day, it’s all liquid again and is covered with worms.

A good batch of vermi-entrees. 

I don’t add my coffee grounds to these block, I simply dump them in and bury them a couple of inches in the bedding. As the worms eat the stuff I feed them and their bedding, I add more straw and shredded paper. I make sure that it is kept moist by watering my worms when I water my garden. Keeping it out of the direct sun helps, too, as does the cover.

Frozen and ready for storage and/or feeding time. 

In spite of what you might be thinking, my worm beds don’t stink. They don’t have any odor at all. When I had a problem with drainage at first there was a smell to it, but once I put large enough holes to drain the leachate, there was no smell at all.

I store the completed food bricks in a bag in a box. I don't worry about freezer burn since they aren't in there long enough for it to be a problem.

In the two months that we’ve had these worms, I have fed them about 20 pounds of food. As the population grows, I’m sure that the volume of food will increase, too. Think about how much garbage is not going to the landfill now from my home. Think about how much junk the water treatment plant doesn’t have to take out of the water (and haul to the landfill) by not putting this stuff down the garbage disposal. Think about how much my garden is going to like to have these worm castings and how well it will grow once it does.

See, when you think about all of the good of this project, the yuck! factor just sort of fades away, doesn’t it?

In a future posting, I'll show you how I use these and how the worms are doing.

5 Questions Answered by an Urban Farmer

While I was dreaming up some reasons for doing what I do, I began to wonder why other people do the same thing. There isn’t anything new to what I’m doing. It’s all been done before. I read recently that about every 30 years or so, cultures go through a revamping of sorts where there is a movement both back to the comfortable and a surge into the new.

With all the current discussion about the quality and safety of our food, the current surge in urban farming is a movement back to the comfortable. It’s not unusual. Even the sub-irrigated planters were patented at the turn of the century, the 20^th century not the 21^st so that technology is at least 100+ years old.

And as far as producing food in the city, it has only been within my lifetime that it has become the exception rather than the rule. People always gardened, raised chickens and hung their clothes out to dry on a line. (Some homeowners’ associations have even banned clotheslines. How un-green is that?)

So I thought it would be nice to ask somebody who is fairly new to this business what her motivations are and what she has learned. I sent my daughter Rachel (mother of 2 of the cutest grandkids ever!) 5 questions about her gardening. Here is what she reported.

Question #1 “How long have you been growing in the city and what was your reason to get started?”

I started my garden at the beginning of spring this year- about March/April. I didn't start from seeds this year, so I guess I had a head start from Lowe's.

There were a lot of reasons for me to start the garden, but the main 2 are because my courtyard was really ugly with just the clay-type dirt and all of the pigeon poop that covered the ground. The second reason was so I could force myself to go outside everyday. I spend so much time indoors being a stay-at-home mom, they should call me the stay-in-home mom.

Question #2 “What is your main goal for growing food in the city.”

The main reason I wanted to grow my own food was so that I would have healthy, organic fruits and vegetables readily available to aid me in my quest to lose weight and become healthy. A plethora of reasons emerged after that, but that's the main reason I started the garden.

Question #3 “How important is the concept of urban farming to you and why?”

My sanity depends on this garden I have. So, yeah, personally, it's important. However, the concept of urban farming is pretty inspirational to me. I think the more we cultivate locally, the more independent our entire society becomes. When that happens, we open the door to all kinds of growth and advancement.

Question #4 “What kind of community involvement do you participate in and what kind would you like to see available in your area?”

I don't really have much to do with my community. I guess I do participate in a co-op program that supports local farms. But all in all, I don't really do much in the way of community activities. I don't really have a lot of time to invest into anything outside my own home just yet. In the future, as the baby gets a little less dependent on me, I will start to branch out. At that time, I suppose I would be interested in more of a farmer's market forum here. We don't have much by way of farmer's markets, and I have always wanted to go to one. I would be thrilled if we had something like that close by so I could get all my fruits and vegetables fresh, pick them out myself, and support local farms (which is entirely possible since we actually have farms here in Phoenix).

Question #5 “What is the best lesson you have learned by your involvement in growing food for yourself?”

This is by far the most loaded question yet. There isn't a lesson that carries any more weight than another. I have learned patience. I have learned to stop and take a minute to think. I have learned that not everything will turn out as I imagine, but that it's okay. I have learned more about spirituality and the makeup of this earth and more about its purpose. And by extension, I have learned more about my own purpose. I've also learned to let go a little bit and let nature do what it was put here to do. I have learned that God is the only one who can MAKE a plant bear fruit and I should quit trying to force it. And ultimately, I have learned to enjoy more that which was put here to sustain man (including the bugs).

So there you have it. Answers straight from a new urban farmer. Her reasons are a bit different than mine, but there is now right or wrong answer in this. There are as many good reasons for doing this as there are people involved in it.

Stealth Farming has at its core the fundament philosophy that we need to be actively engaged in doing as much for ourselves as possible. The more we rely on ourselves, the less we have to rely on the government, big corporations or on anything else. It puts us more in control of our lives and allows us to make appropriate decisions for ourselves, decisions which no person or committee in Washington or anywhere else can make for us. Stealth Farming is really taking back the right to do for ourselves what we want to have done to us. It’s the very personal realization of the Golden Rule.

Food Security

There needs to be some degree of food security and reliance in every country or their sovereignty is seriously threatened. Think about it for a moment: If a country must import the majority of its food, it is at the mercy of those countries from whom it obtains its food. Does that sound very conducive to a stable, friendly environment between nations? History is filled with stories of nations being overthrown or conquered simply because they could not feed their people. Hungry soldiers don’t fight well. That’s why General Patton in WWII was famous for his comment that an army travels on its stomach. It’s true.

The concept is the same for families and communities as well. When you don’t have to worry about where your food is coming from, you can focus on those things that could make your life better, like your work or your family or your hobbies. Having a supply of food is a wonderful way of removing that layer of worry and concern from your life. Having the ability to produce your own food provides a level of freedom that few people actually enjoy today.

On the internet, I see advertisements for companies that want to sell me all the food I will need to have for a year or two or three. It’s all packages neatly in #10 cans, sorted into boxes of 6 cans and stacked in nice, neat and convenient piles. Add to these highly processed (dehydrated, freeze-dried, powdered, etc.) products the bulk grains and legumes and things that you would need for the same time frame, and you have quite a pile. These bulk foods come in 5- or 6-gallon pails, gas-charged with nitrogen to keep out bugs and ensure a good storage life and lined with mylar bags. They seem almost bomb-proof.

Although I agree with the philosophy of storing a year’s supply of food and fuel, I disagree with the attitude that most of these companies take when they are hawking their wares. It is one of fear and doomsday and end-of-civilization-as-we-know-it. That’s a bunch of crap. I cannot stand fear-mongering whether it is done by left-wing political hacks or right-wing food storage purveyors. And the worst of these that I have seen are the ones that are selling the “garden in a can” or the “grow an acre of food” deals where people are selling seeds. I hope all of them go out of business if that’s the best they can do.

I love seed companies. I get their catalogs every year and read them cover to cover. I have learned more about growing food from a theoretical standpoint by reading seed catalogs than any course I took or textbook I’ve read. These are not only an intellectual treasure trove; some of them are nearly works of art in themselves.

The difference in the way seed companies market their products, which are not fundamentally different from the end-of-civilization folks is the fact that they are marketing their seeds and plants with a feeling of “you can do it!” They talk about success. They focus on what you need to do to make it happen. They preach possibility rather than disaster. They make you feel hopeful rather than all is lost (or just about to be). I hope the seed companies who do this make fortunes for themselves and their families.

The other day I was visiting a friend of mine who is an attorney. He’s not the most, well, hands-on kind of guy I know but he’s trying. He’s really smart and I admire what he has accomplished but he struggles with things I consider basic.

We were looking at his garden on my visit and discussing the possibilities of his yard. His fruit trees have some borers in them and he’s probably going to lose them. He’s had difficulties with his tomato plants but he’s probably going to save those. He’s struggling with his irrigation system and I’m sure he’ll either solve the problem or hire someone to do it. Either way, he is determined.

While we were talking, he mentioned his discouragement to me in the middle of discussing his plans for grape arbors, improved garden beds and the like. He mentioned that if he gets one cucumber from his plants (and he had a nice one growing) that his wife said it would probably be the most expensive cucumber in history. We laughed at that but it’s probably true.

I told him my philosophy that gardening wasn’t all about yields and success and outcomes but that it was mostly about the process. Getting better, overcoming challenges, improving practices, applying new ideas, learning from others and growing personally were all benefits of gardening that cannot be quantified by dollars and cents. My philosophy about Stealth Farming is that it’s more about developing the ability to provide that food security that we need than it is about the size of your beefsteak tomato or the yield of your grape vine. It’s the journey that’s the most important.

There is no such thing as security. It doesn’t exist. Think of all the planning and preparation that folks do just to have their homes wiped out by a tornado, flood, earthquake, political upheaval or other calamity. Didn’t they think they were secure? Could those things happen to you? Of course they can.

But what we need to have is the experience, the training, the practice of producing and providing for our needs. That is where the value of Stealth Farming comes in. That is what we produce in our backyard gardens. That can’t be taken from us. As long as we can think, we can duplicate our efforts, no matter the calamity which befalls us.

You can never market that product in a can. You can never scare someone into developing it. You can only help, encourage, inspire and lift someone to that point. You have to be positive. You have to see the possibilities or your effort will be in vain. You have to believe in yourself.

Believing in yourself. That’s the Stealth Farming way.

Tomato Bucket Update

My tomatoes have been growing in their sub-irrigated buckets for several weeks now. When I transplanted them, they were smallish, still very young and looked like this:

I had grown these guys from seed, a first for me. Up until now I have been a nursery gardener, buying my seedlings at the nursery. I always figured that I would get good stock, healthy plants and a fair selection if I did that. I’m over that now. I don’t know how good the stock it, I don’t know the growing methods they use and I can’t be certain that they don’t use synthetic hormones, growth additives, chemical fertilizers and the like. The only way I can know that stuff, and it is important to me, is if I buy my seed from reputable certified organic seed companies (and there are some great ones out there!) and grow the plants myself. Which is what I have done.

So, with only the regular waterings these guys have received, here is what they look like now:

I have them on the east side of my house. They are in a semi-protected area between two closely-spaced two-story houses. They get about 4 hours of direct sun each day, from 9:00 am to about 1:00 pm. The rest of the day they get reflected light off the two white houses. Our houses are about 25 feet apart, and I have access to about 15 of those feet.

 This picture shows the space that they are in. This area opens to the south so in the winter it still gets a good amount of sunshine. Just to the right, outside of view, my neighbor has a plum tree and an apricot tree. The back wall is blocked off so we don't get full force winds through there.

Some of the varieties are more spread out than others. This one has decided that it doesn't want to stay inside the tomato cage, no matter what I tried.

Some of them are broad leaf varieties, which I have never grown in the desert before. I'm really pleased at how much foliage there is. As you can see, there are quite a number of good looking fruit, too.

And when they start taking on that wonderful red color that shows their ripeness, I can almost not wait to bit into the fresh, juicy fruit. I've been looking forward to this for several months.

It's now the first of June and I will be picking the first tomatoes of the season this evening when I get home from work. At last count, there were more than 75 tomatoes growing on these plants with literally hundreds of flowers waiting to be fertilized. I don't want to count chickens instead of eggs here, but it looks like this is going to be a good year for tomatoes.

The whole sub-irrigated bucket concept was new to me before this year. I had never heard of it let alone tried it but now, as you can imagine, I'm a big fan and am recommending it to everyone I get to talk to about my garden. I know there are some folks here in the desert who will see the benefits of this system and some who won't. But with results like these, it's hard to see how anyone could argue that it won't work.