Archive for February 21st, 2009

Worms

21 February 2009

We started a small worm bin in the kitchen a couple of months ago with 100 very expensive redworms from PetsMart. We fed them again this morning and they’re looking big and fat and happy. We used newspaper bedding with some coils of corrugated cardboard on edge on the bottom of the plastic bin for drainage.

I’ve been intentionally under-feeding them to make sure they got off to a good start and didn’t get overwhelmed, and they looked really good this morning. I go by the smell quite a bit. When I opened the bin, it smelled moldy and musty, not garbagey, and that’s good. If it smells like garbage, you’re probably overfeeding them. I want to start feeding them a bit more so they can begin to fulfill their purpose in life of reducing my snowy trips to the compost bin.

Anyway, they should start making more worms real soon now.

Yes, we’ll have to get the worms going earlier next year.

This Spring I plan to move the worms outside sometime in May, feed them all summer in an outdoor bin, then move them back inside in the Fall. We hope to avoid the fruitfly problems we’ve had before that way.

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Butternut

21 February 2009

Today I’m baking a couple of the last Butternut squash from last summer. They are, in my mind, the biggest success story from last year’s garden. It’s been about 4 months since we harvested them. We’ve been keeping them in the basement with the other stored food, just on shelves. It’s about 45 degrees F down there, and they’ve done quite well. Excellent flavor also.

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