General update the vertical ponic plants and nutrients, the worm crate, bucket and worm- challenges

The star collard greens

I think it is time for a new update about my indoor gardening endeavor.

Worm challenge - update 1

The bedding has compacted

It's the end of the first week of the worm challenge, so I could'nt help myself that opening the container, spread things around and look for the worms to see if they survived there first few days.

 And the answer is : (drum roll) 

Look what I found sticking out of the worm bucket for the school !

2 leaves stretching for light!

And actually more seed have germinated in there :
 2 other tiny seedlings

 Sadly, I've broken the leave when I closed the bucket back ..

The 2 worm challenge

See my little helper checking my work.

Around 3 weeks ago, the redwormcomposting.com guy posted a new experiment. The experiment consists in setting a small container with 2- only 2 - immature worms. The goal is to see how fast can the worm population expand from these 2 founders.

The worms have to be immature, as mature worms can carry fertilized eggs, which may skew the experiment. 

Vertical farm and compost update

This week, the tower farm is continuing to grow. I had to add about half a gallon of water to top of, the green onions are growing like crazy in the bottom of the tower. the rest keeps growing at its rate, except the parsley that is kind of stagnant.
On the nutrient side, I have just brewed some compost tea using 2 cups and 1/4 of worm compost in 1 quart of water, and nitrite and nitrate still read below the detection level in the compost tea , however, in the system, the level of nitrate is increasing. I did add 4 mL of ammonia last week, and again this week, but I think next week I will not add any, and see what happens. I recall that during December, I was adding 1 mL everyday of ammonia and it didn't seem to increase nitrates at all, I am starting to think that the compost tea brings some nitrogen in the system, but not in the form of ammonia, nitrite or nitrate, but that the system processes it into nitrate. Also, there is a little pick of nitrite.

The ponic system, 3 months in!

Collard green BIIG

Tomato and pepper seedlings

It has now been 3 months that the ponic system has been build. In these first 3 months I have lost a few plants, but also harvested a few parsley leaves. This all time the system has run on compost tea and ammonia. The plants seem fine, but a few are not as green as one would expect, but it is indoor, in the middle of the winter, with some artificial lighting that may not be sufficient.

First year of indoor composting (ok not year, just 4 months)

The compost

Worm crate

One day, my beloved lady suggested I'd start a worm composting bin. After coming back from my utter surprise, I quickly started the bin. That was back in august. After a modest start with 2 packs of worms form a fish bait shop, I got a half pound or red wigglers from the Lower East Side Ecology Center. I applied the basic principles gleaned from the Internet experts and a dose of common sense (or so I hope). So there is the results from the first "year":

Input: 1 pound and 3ounces of worms (the bait shop worms included)

           5 kg (11 pounds) - dry weigh - of paper, cardboard, wood dust, dried leaves (actually more than that since i started to record this only later)

           20 kg (45 pounds) of diverse food scraps, including supposed no-noes like onion peel, lemon, garlic ... in moderation, there is no problem really, and anything else vegetable based, and used coffee grounds

           Unknown amount of water - as I almost always put the scraps in the blender, I add some water for the blender to be able to do its job

Output: 3.18 kg (7 pounds) of dark moist earthy smelling dirt!

The crate is fairly small (~1 x 1.5 x 1 ft, or 11 gallons, or 31 x 48 x 31 cm, or 46 L); and because it is indoor, I have been prudent in adding too much food (~140 g a day or 0.3 lbs in average) . If I can, I'd like to experiment with a larger system, maybe 2 x 3 x 2 feet and see how much can be put in it while following a similar feeding rate (I guess per surface unit).

The compost was used for a couple of house plants, to start seeds, and to brew compost tea. With the solids left from making compost tea -which contains some small worms and cocoons - I just started a composting bucket for the school project.

Happy New year and update

Happy new year! Agoucha, Toon, Neko [pronounce N- e (like the first e of there) ko (like in in loCO)] and I wish everyone a healthy and happy new year!

The tower farm keeps growing slowly and surely! Some plants seems that they are really liking it there, especially  the collard greens. I Also am pretty sure that I need to add more light to the system. Also the compost tea "experiment" is continuing, and so far it does not seem to provide significant amount of nitrates. Here is a breakdown of the state of things from top to bottom.