Composting is a foundation for your garden. Every gardener should make compost.

Whether a worm bin is your method or just a pile of leaves, kitchen scraps in the corner of the yard the result will be compost. Some methond are faster and some are slower but in the end a gardener who fancy tumbler, a worm bin or just a pile in the corner of the yard will eventually have compost to add to the garden.

My Favorite Form of Composting

I have found that my favorite composting method is a worm bin or vermiculture. The worm bin is made from some old plastic storage containers that a neighbor gave me. It looks pretty much like the example in the directions on how to make a worm bin from Washington State University. The red wriggler composting earthworms purchased online are doing well. The worm bin is in my BFPC greenhouse under my aquaponics grow bed where it is nice and shady. I elevated the bin slightly and placed some foam insulation around it to moderate the temperature..

The two things I really like about the worm bin are that compost is made relatively fast and that the earthworms multiply rapidly and provide a nice source of food for the bluegill fish in my aquaponics tank. I have lots of tiny worms in the bin and I hope I find an equilibrium between feeding my fish and reproduction of worms. Yes, those are my red wrigglers...aren't they cute...maybe not but they are tasty...or they seem to be based on how quickly the blue gills eat them!

I feed the worms kitchen scraps, water hyacinths and manure residue from my chicken manure tea production. They seem to like everything I give them and I like giving wet items like those I just mentioned to help keep the worm bed very moist.

Other Forms of Composting

From Mother Earth News..."In most regions just a half-inch of fresh clippings each spring—that’s about six 5-gallon buckets per 100 square feet—mixed into the soil, or a 1- to 2-inch layer used as a surface mulch, will provide all the nutrients most crops need for a full season of growth." Full article at http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organic- ... spx?page=2

I used this technique last summer to produce a bumper crop of peas. Below are the peas in the spring mulched with grass clippings.