Comments on: Vermicomposting Trenches – 2009 – Update

By: Andrew

Andrew — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 23:03:38 +0000

Bentley, I know I’m late in joining this discussion, but I thought I’d let you know that this blog post inspired me to dig a small worm trench for my first attempt at winter gardening. My climate is much milder than yours, so starting arugula & Chinese broccoli from seeds is still possible even in October. Thanks for the idea & inspiration!

By: Bentley

Bentley — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 19:35:49 +0000

Hey Janine,
I thought I’d be ok with only using cages, but they’ve all fallen over! Next year I’ll be spacing the plants out well and using much better support! I read a LOT more about proper veggie gardening earlier this year and there seems to be a fair amount of support for the idea of not pruning determinate plants at all, so I kinda took that advice and ran with it. What’s funny is that last year when I didn’t really know what I was doing, I ended up creating serious supports for each plant and really hacking everything back towards the time when the fruit were starting to ripen. I ended up with a super crop of tomatoes! haha
Anyway, not sure what all I can do at this point – I started to try and get the plants up and supported but I could tell that it was going to take hours to do all of them so I ended up just leaving them be. I will try and cut back a fair amount of leaves though to help the green tomatoes ripen.
Next year I will be switching the locations of the corn and tomatoes for sure. This way I’ll end up with a nice corn privacy fence along one side of the yard, and the tomatoes will be in a zone where they’ve never been grown before so hopefully no serious disease issues.
8)

By: Janine

Janine — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 14:04:59 +0000

Very interesting thread ! I am grateful for the tea as antifungal tip – Thank you ! thought I would share some of my lessons in growing tomatoes.

Cages are so important to support the branches and protect the plant. Second is allowing the plant to grow until it reaches some good size and fertilizing – just once even, with a bloom boost (organic of course) and then when the flowers start to set fruit start snapping off leaves until there is good air flow through the plant and no canopy shading the fruit. The fruit tastes best when sun-ripened, the plant puts it’s energy into fruit rather than sustaining all that foliage and very importantly it greatly reduces the likelihood of disease.
The other huge thing is NEVER ever water in the evening, I cringe when I see people do this as they clearly have no idea the trouble they invite by doing so. I strictly water in the morning. This may be why the squash fruit are falling off. That and squash don’t like water from above, I try not to get the plant wet but hand water straight to where the root ball is located.
And the last thing is, do not compost your sick tomato plants, but burn them or send them to the dump. You may even find these nasty blights will live in the soil and whatever you do don’t plant tomatoes in the same spots for the next couple seasons. Technically we should always rotate all garden crops to prevent build-up of the various nasties.
Bentley I agree with you corn is so easy to dismiss – until you grow it and witness the process of it’s growth, see the pollen showers and the tassels popping ! I am growing it for the first time this year too, I am growing an ancient corn with striped kernels, some of the plants have stripes and one is even quite red with red pollen too. These seeds had been stored for 10 years and had 90 some percent germination anyway. I am going to grow much more next year. It’s been a lovely summer here in Montana, one of the very best in memory – in the garden anyway.

By: Bentley

Bentley — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:21:22 +0000

Haha – I was really only joking around, Catherine. But you are definitely right about that. I’ve actually been meaning to set up my ‘ultimate’ Red Worm system at some point – it would basically be a grow bed (with gravel and some organic matter) that would receive water (slowly) from some sort of fish holding tank or pond. The worms would keep the bed free of gunk and would contribute to the fertility of the plants (as would the fish of course), and they would love to soaking wet – yet highly oxygenated – environment.
8)

By: catherine

catherine — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:13:14 +0000

If you oxygenate your worm tea while you’re making it, you don’t have to worry about your worms drowning. Compost worms have been reported living quite happily in the filters of actively oxygenated ponds where they happily munch up all the fish poop collected in the filter medium!

By: Bentley

Bentley — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:07:48 +0000

Hi Heather,
Good points – I will definitely use both. The batch I made up today was created with some nice rich vermicompost from the bottom of a big outdoor worm bin. It actually had quite a few worms in it – poor guys! haha
I dumped out the wet material from my ‘tea bag’ into one of the trenches, so I’m sure they will be fine. (it was a pretty quick brew session)
8)

By: Bentley

Bentley — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:03:42 +0000

ROBYN – I’m still learning about this gardening stuff myself. I have dabbled for many years, but this is really the first year I have focused on learning proper techniques etc (most of the learning started AFTER I planted the zucchinis and tomatoes – haha). The worms have certainly help me to avoid major distasters and to grow some pretty awesome looking plants – BUT, I now know I can’t let that go to my head.
🙂

DUFF – sorry to hear about your crop! That sounds terrible.
Luckily ‘early blight’ isn’t quite as devastating (different disease organism) as the ‘late blight’, and it typically doesn’t affect the fruit (thankfully), so I may end up not doing as badly with my crop.

By: Heather

Heather — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:52:36 +0000

Remember, the vermicompost has more living organisms than the castings, so it will be better as an anti-fungal. Good luck.

Sorry, Duff…it would have been like losing a family member to see all my hard work turn black in the tomato patch!

By: Bentley

Bentley — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:39:48 +0000

HEATHER – it’s funny you should mention this. I was very recently reading an article about this guy who grows world record vegetables up in Alaska. His attributes much of his success to compost tea. It reminded me of the fact that I am LONG overdue for getting into ‘tea’ making/using. While I would harvest compost from my trenches (since it is being invaded by plant roots and is full of composting worms), I do have lots of great vermicompost and even some really nice worm castings (more refined stuff).
Based on what I’ve read, I am probably too late as far as completely rescuing my plants goes, but I’m sure an extra little boost of beneficial microbes won’t hurt! I actually made up a very simple batch of tea this morning (nothing fancy – no additional microbe food etc) and used it all through the garden. I will more than likely make some really good stuff next week, using those nice worm castings I mentioned. (will be writing about all this fairly soon as well – thanks for reminding me about this, Heather!)
I also wanted to mention that I removed my most sickly looking zucchini plant to allow some more air flow and reduce the crowding in general. I’m amazed how quickly the remaining plants have responded. They looked positively perky (haha) this morning and have all kinds of new flowers emerging! Really cool.
I have also been working with the tomato plants to see if I can clean them up (and straighten them up) a bit to get more air flow and light shining in the lower zones. This should help the fruit to ripen as well.
Anyway – I’m feeling better already!
Thanks again
🙂

By: Duff in VT

Duff in VT — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:23:32 +0000

Bentley, I feel your pain re: tomatoes. I hand-raised my 24 seedlings, took them from sunny window to sunny window all Spring. Planted them carefully, staked them and covered through several frosts. They were amazing, tall and jungle-like with loads of fruit setting. We went away overnight and came back to find them hit by the late blight. The fruit is black and the plants are all dead. This is the blight that caused the Irish Potato Famine in the 1800’s. While we won’t starve, I am sure going to miss my favorite from the garden…. fresh tomaotes.