Melon Explosion

Well the melon is really taking over the big metal frame holding other pots.  The vines have climbed up three levels already.  Oh dear, I've run out of space.  I think it's about to crowd out more plants.  And that's just one melon.  Please bear fruit already.   I hope the worms in the container are doing their jobs.  I've put in a lot of organic material to help fertilize this big plant!

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I think it's a Squash!

I have this pot with a strange looking melon.  It has big leaves but no tendrils.  The leaves also seem to have a  veiny pattern, unlike my other melons that are just pure green.  Among the seeds, I've been throwing into the garden, I only had two other candidates: a watermelon or a squash.  However, a watermelon's leaves look more like small Christmas trees, not like this which is a little heart shaped.  I think it's a squash! And it's a big one too.  I better remove the basil and the 101 tomato seedlings sharing the pot.

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Why You Need A Worm Bin...

I recently replenished my supply of African Nightcrawlers because a lot of my bins were bought the past couple of weeks.   That said, I didn't have a lot of bins lying around so I just put my worms in a pail.  They were pretty dense inside that pail.  And so the past two days have been quite challenging.  They've been crawling out like crazy, even with the lights on.  For the past two nights, it's been like an episode of Fear Factor.  But the ones I placed in a few bins didn't attempt to crawl out.  What's in the new bins?  I stole some old bedding from my established worm bins and voila, I had worm friendly bins.   I guess this experience underscores the advantage of getting an established worm bin as against buying worms and waiting for them to get comfortable inside the new bin. 

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Red Hot Chili Peppers Bear Fruit (Siling Labuyo)

It's been almost a year since I planted a load of siling labuyo seeds.    Most of them died because ironically a lot of bugs were eating them.  I guess the leaves weren't hot.  One survived though and it so happens this one wasn't potted.  It just kinda grew out of neglect.  Sometimes too much love kills a plant.  I've proven that to be true many times in the past.  But anyway, look at this one.  It looks lush, healthy and big.  It's almost as big as my biggest mango plant.  It has also started bearing fruit. 

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Swiss Mint - Boom and Bust Cycle

My swiss mint is now a year old!  But it's not any bigger.  In fact, it's now smaller.  Let me explain.  Initially the mint grew really well.  Look how big the leaves were.  I even managed to prune it several times and grow new plants from cuttings.  I think most of those died months later.  The mother plant survived though, but barely.   

I'm not really sure why but the stems became spindly.  The plant started losing it's leaves and the new leaves that grew were small and a little rusty.  Still the plant survived.   Although, it's been sunny the past two months, the swiss mint still didn't recover completely.   So I decided to change the soil completely.  I figured maybe that would help. 

Since I had some extra vermicompost left from my various bins, I replaced the soil with vermicompost.  A few weeks later, my swiss mint looks small but well on its way to recovery.  Once again the stems are fat and the leaves are big.  I even have an accidental melon growing in the middle.  I think this is actually the most dramatic impact of vermicompost that I've seen among the many times I've used themf for my plants. Will the swiss mint recover for good or is it just teasing me?  We'll see in a couple of months.

By the way, my newly recovered chocolate mint is dying again.  I'll talk about that next time.

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Growing Melons in my Flow Through Worm Bin

I've been eating a lot of melons lately since my worms like the rinds.  So now I have more than enough seeds than I'm prepared to deal with.  So a lot of times, I just throw the seeds in with the rinds inside my worm bins.  In my flow through try, I've had dozens of melon seedlings sprouting at the same time.  Since the contents of the bin are almost fully processed anyway, I figured I would just grow the melons.   As you can see though, the tray is quite shallow.  So how can I grow big melon plants from here?  For one, I'm using pure vermicompost so I'm hoping the roots get their nourishment without a problem.  The tray also has holes in the bottom.  You can't see it very clearly, but there's a covered aquarium underneath.  If roots grow through the tray, they can anchor inside the aquarium.  The aquarium is filled with paper and coffee grounds and of course a couple of worms.  You get the idea, right?  In a month or so, I'll see if it works.  But what happened to the worms?  They're still there.  However, I made the materials in the aquarium high enough so that they touch the bottom of the tray.  The tray gets some sunshine so if it gets too hot, the worms can crawl down the aquarium.  So far, the worms are alive.  My problem though is that the contents of the tray keep dipping since worms tend to poop underneath the tray.  To help keep the tray contents up, I just add shredded paper and coffee grounds regularly.   Once the melon plants grow bigger, I'll tie a couple of straws from the gate to the tray for that trellis effect.  Watch out for it!   

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American Idol Update

Okay, I have a slight modification in my prediction.  I maintain that Casey and James are the top picks (reflecting my own preferences for jazz and metal).  I'm getting bored with the gospel and country guys.  And please eliminate the baduy Stefano and the chubby country girl.  But shooting to the top of my list is Haley.  Oh with that sexy growling voice and those purple thigh high boots, how can she not?  She's getting hotter all the time.  A few weeks ago, she also rocked short shorts and stilletos.  Meow!

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Big Melons One More Time

As I mentioned in one of my recent posts, I'm trying to grow melons again.   To increase my chances, I am growing from four different pots. I have a couple of seedlings growing in my worm tray.  From a week and a half ago, the seedlings have actually dwindled as expected.  I would expect a few more to die out.  I am thinking I'll be able to grow three full sized melons from that tray.  Too small?  I'll show you next time why I don't think it's too small. 

Then there's the melon that's growing from one of my plant boxes.   The cool thing is that it's bigger now and that it's starting to climb.  I repositioned the box so that the melon plant is nearer the metal bars.  I also put part of the box in the shade since I put a couple of worms there, along with some organic material.  I figure that should help the melon in it's growth spurt.

I also have a couple of melons bunched with other plants.  In this pot, you'd see dozens of seedlings along with the growing melon.  Those are tomatoes.  I also throw their seeds around a lot.  Like melons, I've had no luck growing tomatoes.  Always so close, yet so far.

Finally, here's another picture.  I think it's growing solo in a pot.  It's also starting to climb the metal bars.  To compensate for the relatively small containers, I'll just try to water and feed the plants more.  I hope that's a logical solution.  We'll see in a few weeks.

And if you're wondering why I have so many melons seeds (I do), that's because my diet is now partially dictated by my worms.    Worms love melons!  Therefore I love big melons!

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Herb Garden Updates 2

Let me welcome my new Purple Basil!  Actually, this is my second one, but my first purple basil was just purple on the underside of the leaves. The first one's still alive and I'm still waiting for the plant to turn purple.  This second one has a more obvious purple shade.  I recently repotted it in a container with some worm castings and coffee grounds.  Hopefully that would be enough to finance my plant's growth.

Then there's the Habanero which I've been talking about a lot lately.  You've got to love it for recovering and bearing fruit the past few months.   On almost a daily basis, I add all sorts of yard trimmings to the pot since the soil level keeps going down.  Those worms have been working faster it seems.

Finally, let me show you my mophead hydrangea again.  They've been flowering lately, but both plants are giving me pink blooms.  I'm not sure why when I've been adding supposedly acidic coffee grounds to turn the blooms blue.  Oh well.  Maybe next year.  These plants have been wilting several times a week due to the summer heat.   Several times during the week, I even put an upside down umbrella hanging by the window just above the plants to give them some shade.  It helps.

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Outdoor "Container" Vermicomposting Adventures

You would often read that composting worms thrive best in a contained environment, away from the elements.  Since my back porch is really small, I am limited in terms of the number of containers I can use.  So today, I'll show you a couple of outdoor experiments (outside my mom's house without her knowledge...hehe).  Well more accurately, I'll show you the containers I've been using.  I checked each one earlier so I'm sure worms are alive and working in all of those "containers".

A couple of months ago, I was repotting a plant and I inadvertently cracked the pot.  To keep using the pot, I buried it under the soil and tried growing a couple of herbs there.  Unfortunately, I think the spot was too shaded and whatever I planted kept dying.  So I just used it as a vermicomposting pot.   If you look at the picture, you can even see the crack.  The pot has no real cover.  I just use some pieces of plastic and a smaller pot as paperweight.  I've put most of my nastier waste there (from a vermicomposting standpoint), including onions and garlic.    As of last check, the 6-8 worms I put in have survived.  A few new ones have even hatched although I must say population has not exploded.

Herb Garden Updates

Summer is a great time for plants!  Most of my herbs are doing a lot better than they did 6 months ago.   Of course I have to be more dutiful in terms of watering (sometimes twice a day) but it's worth it.  Let me show you a couple of my favorite plants. 

Look at the before and after photos of my chocolate mint.  There's a two month difference between these photos but look how lush the plant has become.  I added vermicompost into this pot and moved it to the sunniest location in the garden.  What did the trick?  I'm honestly not sure.  All I know is that I've been nursing this plant since November and I'm glad it looks like the day I bought it (lush and vibrant).  Oh dear I have to greet my mint happy birthday.  It's over a year old now.    And for those would be gardeners, don't believe everything that you read.  My mints have shown no inclination in taking over the garden counter to what I frequently read back then.   I tried planting the mints on the ground several times, but they never thrived. 

Vermicompost Flow Through Tray Update: Vermicomposting in the Philippines

Today I want to provide an update on my vermicomposting flow through trays.   The tray is pretty full and the contents I would guess are about 80% processed.  In my case, that's good enough to use.   So what did I do?  Well, I wanted to remove the worms from the tray but I don't want to sort through the contents since there's a lot of material there.  What I did instead was to put another tray on top of it with a good number of wet cardboard and paper.  At the bottom of the upper tray, I also put in a watermelon rind and a couple of banana peels just to entice the worms. 

Two days later, I found worms already hanging at the bottom of the upper tray.  Migration has begun.  Earlier when I was looking, I also found lots of worms on the upper part of the lower tray.  Yey!  At least I know vertical migration works.

A couple of entries ago, I also talked about seeds germinating in my worm bin.  I took this picture earlier.  It's just getting silly.  There must be dozens of seedlings in my tray.  They're probably mostly melons.   I'm not sure what to do with the tray.  Should I harvest the vermicompost or should I just let the worms migrate for another day or two and then use the tray as a seedling bed?  Never mind that I'll leave a couple of worms there.  That should be good for the seedlings

right?

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