It's time to get the raised beds ready for the winter
We change to daylight savings time (Link to daylight savings history) this Sunday morning at 2 am, I still like military time, 0200 for the morning and 1400 for the afternoon, but that's just me. It's also the first rain of the year, we did have a bit in July and a day in October but it didn't amount to much. This rain doesn't look like it will be much as well, but it is supposed to hang over us for a few days. The dripping rain is enough to get everything wet, cleans up the air and inspires me to prepare for the winter. The first task I take on is to prepare the garden, it's a judgment call, some years I have tomatoes and peppers almost up to December 1st, I have used Jalapeno' plants with the red and green peppers on them as Christmas decorations. I have 9 raised beds that I garden in, I have used them for about 3 years, time goes so fast it may be longer than that. One of my grandson's and I built them from reclaimed lumber that our youngest son salvaged from a deck around a construction trailer on a site he was working on. He called and told me he had a trailer full of 2x6's and he was bringing them to me, I have used the entire bunch. We built a new stoop, and part of a deck, raised beds, compost bins, and a worm farm.
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| My big outdoor worm farm/compost bin, a small amount of organic material is on the bottom, under it is a 1/2" thick piece of cardboard. |
The worm farm is an unknown entity, I have two others going great guns, the big bin, however, is a horse of a different color. We built it 4-foot x 4-foot x 3-foot with a wire front to allow air to circulate. We laid 1/2" of cardboard on the ground and built the bin on top of it, worms love cardboard, and it will stop them from leaving the enclosure. I then put leaves on top of the cardboard, next to a layer of newspaper, more leaves and so on. When the bin was full of leaves, vegetation, paper, and cardboard I added 2,000 red wiggler worms. It's hard to gauge how they are doing, I cannot find them without digging deep into the pile, I am avoiding doing that. I did however come across a big ball of them about 18 inches from the top when I was adding food to the center. They appeared at that time to be doing well, there are signs they send out when they are in poor shape, the biggest is when they try to leave, if they are not in the correct environment they will leave. When they start to go, that's when it's time to figure out why it does take a while to know how to control the environment but once I caught on the worms are healthy and appear to be happy. The first task I perform is to secure the garden and outside boxes for the rain and wind. There's not much to do with the large worm farm, I will place a basket of lawn trimmings 8" deep on the top of the back of the box. I found the grass will warm the worm bed in that area radiating the heat through the leaves, I theorize the worms will be attracted to the correct temperature in the bed, they must be kept between 40 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit. I then have to make sure due to it being outside, that it does not get too wet, I cover it with an old shower door I scavenged from somewhere.
For a look into raising worms check out this link.
The second task I perform is to prepare the raised beds for the spring planting,
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| Growing during the summer, it's now time to prepare them for the winter rains. |
or if I want I can plant some winter vegetables. I prepare the beds by first cutting the plants at the soil level, leaving the roots in the soil, I lay the stems, leaves and leftover vegetables on the exposed top of the soil. I then chop the vegetation into about 4-8" lengths, I save some
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| A raised bed with the plants ready for the card- board to be placed on top. |
of the leaves for my worm farm. I like to have a layer of organic material 6" deep, when it's green and first laid down, it will reduce itself to 1/3 of that. I let the leaves and plants alone for 3 days in order for it to start to break down into compost, it doesn't take long for it to begin. I then go back over the covering and even it out making sure I am covering the entire top of the box. I then take all of the cardboard boxes I have been saving all summer out to the garden and take them apart. I only use cardboard that is "plain", that is brown unmarked cardboard, a small amount of printing is OK. The tape and labels must be removed and no cardboard with the "shiny" exterior printing should be used, especially if like mine the raised beds are also worm farms. I have put together a set of knives, scissors, and clippers just for working with the garden, cardboard, and vermiculture. I lay the cardboard on top of the box and trim it to fit, making sure all of the top is covered, it doesn't have to be perfect. The cardboard has a number of functions:
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| Large cardboard boxes work well, fold them cut them, whatever it takes for them to fit. |
1) The worms love it as a food source, they literally eat their way through their environment, they eat through the cardboard and also lay their eggs in it. That is one way to gauge how healthy your worms are, the more eggs the better they are doing.
2) Cardboard keeps the winter weeds out, shutting out the sunlight they won't emerge through the covering.
3) It makes great compost, cardboard and paper are made of wood pulp, it renders down well into the soil, the worms turn it into castings as they eat their way through it.
When the cardboard is in place, I generally do one bin at a time, (that is just the way I do things being a unitasker and all). I then take the organic material and place a thick layer on top of the cardboard. My material of choice is leaves, a mixture of leaves and newspaper works very well. Leaves are everywhere, I remove all of the sticks, bulbs and any wire or plastic I may find in them, after all, they are on the ground. It's not as important in the outside bins as with the indoor worm farms but the leaves provide "grit" for the worms. They have gizzards, just like a bird and they must have minerals (sand) to process the organic material that makes up their diet. This Link will tell you all you ever wanted to know about earthworms, it's short and easy to read.
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| Straw is very good to use to cover the cardboard, those tomatoes won't hurt a thing where they are. |
I use straw as well (in the photos as an example), straw is OK, it's excellent to add nutrients into the soil, if there is something wrong with using it it's only that it takes longer to break down into compost and it takes the worms a long time to turn it into castings (any hard organics are difficult for them, they have no teeth). I like to get straw that is rotting in the fields, I will stop and ask the rancher if I can have some rotted straw, they have never refused, most are happy to be rid of it.
After the organic material is spread over the top of the cardboard, the amount on top is like a "heaping" teaspoon as the recipes tell us, I fluff it up to make sure air can circulate through the covering. The leaves are generally brown and dry when the wind comes up they have a tendency to be blown all over the place, so I wet them down. I soak the leaves or straw, making sure I add enough water to soak the cardboard below as well, during the winter I generally wet it down at this time and maybe once more depending on the amount of rain we get. The beds are now ready for the winter, I won't disturb them until the end of March when I start to plant, they are essentially ready for planting now. A combination of the cardboard, leaves and water copies the environment of the worms, they live in a very specific spot. They live in the layer between the fresh leaves and the partially decomposed material below, it's normally a thin layer about 6" below the surface. It also depends on moisture, temperature and what the covering is, they do not like dried weeds for example. Link to composting.
I don't use any kind of fertilizer, In the past, I used "Miracle grow", it's almost all synthetic nitrogen, making it easy to "burn" the plants if too much is used. By covering the garden like I do it adds nutrients to the soil, with the thousands of worms in each bin working to break down the material it is very effective. I make "worm tea" from the castings, I am going to make a youtube video of the process, it's straightforward and not complicated at all. I conducted an experiment with my zucchini this past summer, one plant I saturated the seeds with worm tea, the other I didn't add any to. Over the summer the plant with worm tea grew to be three times the size of the other plant, it was also a deeper green than the smaller plant. There are two critical aspects when using worm tea:
1) When it is purchased pre-made, this is especially important when ordering on the internet, it must be used within 4 days of when it is made. It must be used in that time period because if not it will spoil, killing all the good microbes and good germs it creates.
2) The tea can go "Anaerobic", (without oxygen) it may introduce pathogens, bad actors we do not want on our vegetables. It depends on how the worms are fed as to how likely they are to have "pathogens", meat, feces, and bones should not be fed to worms if the tea is being used in a vegetable garden. This tea is fine on flowers, trees, and the lawn, this stuff is mostly organic nitrogen. The tea can be diluted 10x, it doesn't take much for fertilizer and the best part is no matter how much is used the plants won't get burned. Link to making your own worm tea.
Now that my raised beds are "winterized" and it's time to start planning what I will plant in the beds, I will move on to preparing other items for the wet months. The next item is to trim the fruit trees, rose bushes and grapevine.
Thanks for reading, what do you think of this method I use? Have you ever thought of raising worms and working them into your self-reliant lifestyle?
jacquesandkate emergencykitsplus.com
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