My friend Catherine will be so pleased to hear me use the word “resilience”.
Really this post is just an update on the garden and a shout-out to my new friends over at Transition Albany. Since learning about things like Peak Oil and the Transition movement, my desire to create a homestead in my new (little) backyard has grown even more. I’m even thinking about bees, and bees scare the beejeesus out of me. The pics above are of the new boxes I’ve been building for my winter veggies. I’m trying to use as much space as I can for food production while still allowing pathways so that the kids can play. The lower left corner is being left open for an incoming trampoline (shhh! It’s a surprise!). The cement area to the left of the (useless) tree is where the chickens will go.
Worms are being integrated into the entire garden in one way or another. I’m using a hefty amount of my own worm castings, which are a mix of manure and finished castings and which are also full of small worms and cocoons (available for local pickup, BTW). Already I’m seeing worms all over the place, which will help to break down the mulch buried underneath the beds even faster and turn it into rich compost for the plants right at the roots.
Since we moved we haven’t gotten our own worm composting box up and running yet (I’ve been concentrating on the garden); we now have green waste pickup so it’s easy to be lazy in this arena. However, stay tuned for pics of our new worm composting system. It is widely touted that worm castings are a far superior compost to use than traditionally produced compost. Stay tuned for my own growing experiments this spring using different mixtures.
Good worming!