hard to believe it's been five years since i
started this project of recharging garden soil
using worms, veggie scraps and about anything
else i can put in there to see how it breaks
down through time.

this past year i've started testing native
worm species (that i've found in the gardens
when digging) to see how they do in captivity.
i already know that our night-crawlers don't do
all that well (they may live, but they don't
reproduce very quickly) so i've not brought any
of those back indoors.

the one bucket of natives was doing very well
when i checked it last week so i split that into
two buckets. and after emptying my backup worm
source (used to restart the buckets i'd emptied)
i have set that up to be ready for even more
natives. by next year i hope to be able to shift
to at least half or so of the worm bins being
used to raise natives.

i'll still keep some of the buckets using the mix
of worm species i am currently using as they do a
great job, but they don't survive our cold or hot
spells when put outside.

tomatoes planted, onions planted, peppers planted,
tomorrow i hope to get the rest of the small stuff
planted and then on to starting the peas and beans
(a bit late on the peas - got sidetracked by doing a
few other projects, silly me, but they do look nice
now that they're done). better put in most of the
lima beans first.

we've had a few cold nights, close to frost, i was
surprised that the peppers and tomatoes were not
affected, but each area is surrounded by rocks and
elevated a bit so that would help.

strawberries are coming in faster than i expected.
no shortage of them this year... chippies are
feasting away.


songbird