Gardening and my worms

Gardening

I have been doing some gardening. I planted some butternut squash, tomatoes, lettuce and carrots on our porch. Everything is really starting to grow and it is pretty fun.

However, I am most proud of my compost. When we moved in, I decided we had to have a compost. I ordered a compost container, but it never came, so I decided to turn one of my pots into a make shift compost bin...and it has worked brilliantly. I keep it uncovered. I started it with some cardboard, scraps and a small amount of potting soil that came from some fresh herbs I bought at the store. After a couple of weeks I had 3 permanent resident worms that came out of nowhere (I wish I could mark them to keep track that they are the same ones). I was so excited and made it my duty to keep those worms happy. I love having a worm bin, but I wasn't about to go buy worms...and these are real worms, big, thick earthworms...I always think they look good to eat, but I don't think I will be trying that.

I turn the compost every couple of days and when it gets dry I water it. Every couple of weeks I add some cardboard to it to keep things going, and I only add non-cooked food to ensure we don't get any pests (although I don't think it is possible to have any pests because of the 20 cats in the back yard).

As I turn my compost, I happily count my worms, and there is never less than three...sometimes more, but never less than three. Today, to my surprise, I counted 15!!! I have never had that many before! And they are all big and healthy worms...I have had spurts of smaller thinner worms, but they didn't stick around, these are other earthworms!! I was so excited that I upgraded the bin to the biggest pot I had and I will have to add more scraps. It has been rainy the past couple of days and I kind of think that is why so many worms found my compost, but by-golly, I am gonna see how long I can keep them around!