Want to grow your own food?

Enamored by sustainability?

Dream of going outside and harvesting your dinner?

I wanted all of those things, and I wanted to share how you too can make it happen on a tiny or grand scale.
Being an urban farmer wasn’t as easy or intuitive as I thought. I started with what I have, a kitchen and a small patio and that opened a can of worms!

Eating plants:
I eat and encourage the world to eat organic plant foods. This has been helpful as I create a lot of vegetable scraps.
I also juice which creates a lot of dry vegetable pulp.
If I don’t re-purpose the pulp, that and the scraps can become compost or worm food.

Dirt Don’t Hurt
My soil here is hard as a rock and while cactus thrive, it’s a lot of work to create or bring in soil. I was able to think small and start at the beginning.

Most of us who garden know we want to collect anything that will help our soil, as commercial organic fertilizer can be expensive!

I wanted to farm worms in order to support worm farming but also to create an entire ecosystem.

I literally bought a can of worms
I purchased Uncle Jim’s Can of Worms for my worm farm and I really like it. You feed the worms through the top and its handy spout helps you collect Worm Tea, which makes feeding the worm gold to your garden plants that produce your food so easy!

Now the veggie waste and juicer pulp feeds the worms

Everyone can learn many ways to re-purpose veggie pulp from the juicer, the recipe list is endless including breads, muffins and veggie burgers and loaves as my favorite.
But if I don’t have time, I use that and my smaller veggie scraps to feed the worms.

Now my system goes from
Kitchen --->TO Feed Worms---> TO Garden---> TO Back to Kitchen

Larger veggie scraps go into a different compost bin.
I started my garden in containers
My first vegetables in the garden were tomatoes grown in containers and I also grow cucumbers and eggplant in containers.
This helped me with my space, and also solved my soil issues. Smaller is easier.
I have a lot of wild animals around, and I enjoy them, but the larger birds, squirrels and rabbits will all eat things like strawberries and dig in the garden.
Container gardening allows me to protect my plants. I can move the containers or easily fence around them.
Containers also allow us to really see the benefits of using the worm poop as fertilizer.
All year I enjoy herbs and greens such as chard and arugula that I fertilize with my kitchen TO worm system.
Every now and then I “water” the garden vegetable growing containers with the worm tea
I don’t have to purchase fertilizer because I’m using the worm tea from my can of worms to fertilize.
SO EASY!

Shredder trash?
I can also use shredding trash to feed the worms, if the shreds are paper only. I can use my own or ask anyone I know if they’ve cleaned the shredder. This makes perfect worm bedding and is another great way to save money.

How does the worm thing really work?
Worm farming is a layered approach.
Inside the can of worms, each level is like a sieve on the bottom of each layer.
The worms need moisture, bedding and food, and the balance of those things change.
      • Too much moisture will create mold.
      • Too dry a farm is bad.
      • Too little food will make the worms disappear (ok yes they do eat each       other I think)
      • An excellent bin will create Soldier Flies, which is optimal, but        admittedly sort of freaked me out when I first saw them and their babies.        They compost much faster and create awesome fertilizer. Don’t worry it’s        a gift that doesn’t happen often :). They come and go on their own. For       example right now my bin hasn’t seen them in years. We want their work! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermetia_illucens)
      • All these things can be corrected with balance and time.

You can learn over time how to add this or that to again achieve balance.

You will be able to tell the difference in your plants, fruits and vegetables. Remember you can fertilize everything, including trees, with the worm gold!

If you have any questions you can let me know, I’d love to hear from you!

Connect with Michele the Trainer today and get a free garden fresh recipe!
(https://michelethetrainer.leadpages.co/gardeningwithmtt/)

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