hard to believe it's been five years since i started this project of recharging garden soil using worms, veggie scraps and about anything else i can put in there to see how it breaks down through time.
this past year i've started testing native worm species (that i've found in the gardens when digging) to see how they do in captivity. i already know that our night-crawlers don't do all that well (they may live, but they don't reproduce very quickly) so i've not brought any of those back indoors.
the one bucket of natives was doing very well when i checked it last week so i split that into two buckets. and after emptying my backup worm source (used to restart the buckets i'd emptied) i have set that up to be ready for even more natives. by next year i hope to be able to shift to at least half or so of the worm bins being used to raise natives.
i'll still keep some of the buckets using the mix of worm species i am currently using as they do a great job, but they don't survive our cold or hot spells when put outside.
tomatoes planted, onions planted, peppers planted, tomorrow i hope to get the rest of the small stuff planted and then on to starting the peas and beans (a bit late on the peas - got sidetracked by doing a few other projects, silly me, but they do look nice now that they're done). better put in most of the lima beans first.
we've had a few cold nights, close to frost, i was surprised that the peppers and tomatoes were not affected, but each area is surrounded by rocks and elevated a bit so that would help.
strawberries are coming in faster than i expected. no shortage of them this year... chippies are feasting away.
songbird