Sustainability

2008 Compost



Tomatoes and cucumbers that were started in early April made it to the fertile soil of Karen's garden. After practicing the gardening basics of preparing a potting soil, sewing the seeds and planting the plants, we have now reached a sense of sustainability. Our sustainable program started last year when we planted heirloom tomatoes from Growing Power. We learned the basics of this practice from them and have grown and modified as we have tried new things. In November of last year, I saved several of the tomatoes from last year's garden, teased out the seeds from the pulp and dried them. I left them in an envelope until April of this year (2008). We had the seeds from last year's tomatoes, now all we needed was potting soil. Instead of buying soil, we decided to make our own. Here is what we did. in the fall of 2007 we took rough compost from January of that year and fed it to red wriggler worms - vermicomposting. You can read about this in other blog posts on this website. The worms use the rough compost for food and leave behind castings. The soil that is left is rich and dark. We then added sifted coconut hulls "coir" to this soil to add texture and hold water. This is the mixture we used as a potting soil. We planed our seeds (tomato and cucumber) in this medium and allowed them to germinate and grow in USM's green house. The result was a total success. The tomatoes were transplanted a could of times to larger pots and this encouraged lateral growth. So here is our cycle - tomatoes-veggie scraps-compost-worms-soil-sprouts-planting in garden!