We started vermicomposting sometime in July 2022. We ordered our worms from Uncle Jim’s and set up a bin using a Rubbermaid container. I would definitely recommend that method as an entry point for people. It’s low cost—especially if you have spare Rubbermaid containers sitting around—and it’s a great way to recycle kitchen scraps and junk mail. There are plenty of YouTube videos for reference.
Vermicomposting and regular composting use pretty much the same rules on what kitchen scraps can be used.
Eight uses for fall leaves from the Old Farmer’s Almanac. We’re raking ours up, mowing them to shred them, and placing them in areas where we plan to do new planting next spring, in order to both kill the grass in those areas and improve the soil.
We finished the grape arbor. Now it just needs some paint and we’ll be ready to plant grapes next spring. We’ve raked the leaves up there to kill the grass over the winter so we can do more planting in that area.
It’s going to be a beautiful weekend here so one more big push to finish a few projects: finish the grape arbor, fill the final raised bed, put out some Halloween decorations. But first, coffee and The Biggest Little Farm (thanks for the recommendation, Tim).
Monarch on (what we believe to be) Jerusalem artichoke.
We’ve started expanding Green Man’s Grotto. We emptied one of the old raised beds by transplanting some orange butterfly weed, hairy woodmint, and swamp milkweed partly into the existing GMG and partly into a new section. Next we’ll double the depth of that old raised bed and use it for a kitchen garden next year. Then we’ll transplant what remains in the other old raised bed into that expanded section of GMG and then double the depth of that raised bed for the other half of the kitchen garden.
We’ve been hoping for a dragonfly or two to find out little wildlife pond. Well, tonight we have a swarm. I assume they’re feeding on mosquitoes, which are plentiful on a humid evening like tonight. I have no idea if they’ll come back but watching dozens of them swooping and swerving is amazing.
Ridiculously cute frog actually sitting on a lily pad in Green Man’s Grotto. Maybe he’s admiring the hyacinthh bloom.
A reference post. From Toby Hemenway, Gaia’s Garden:
The aim of permaculture is to design ecologically sound, economically prosperous human communities. It is guided by a set of ethics: caring for Earth, caring for people, and reinvesting the surplus that this care will create. From these ethics stem a set of design guidelines or principles, described in many places and in slightly varying forms. The list below is the version I use, compiled with the aid of many permaculture teachers and flowing from the work of Mollison, Holmgren, and their coauthors.
