Vermicomposting, aerated compost tea brewing and more

Vermicompost Bin

The red wigglers that we bought last year from Uncle Jim's Worm Farm were gathered on the left side of the bin so that we could harvest the finished castings on the right. We know they were on the left because we last placed the food on that side. We made a long trench and added the pulp from our green juices from the garden. That's all we give them. The way we started the bin is for a different blog!

We used the right side castings to amend our SW raised garden beds. We filled those beds a year ago with Baby Bu's Potting Soil and composted seasonally with Bu's Blend Biodynamic Compost prior to planting. We also added compost tea drenches three times in this past year to those beds, using Compost Tea for Fruits, Vegetables & Tomatoes.

Now, a year later, we wanted to add back to this soil, to complete a cycle: Harvesting crops from here - Juicing the crops - Adding pulp from crops to worm bin - Harvesting castings - Adding back to soil.

We made small holes around the plants in the beds, added a golf-ball size of castings to the holes, then covered the holes and watered the beds.

Speaking of soil, we wanted to brew up a large compost tea so that we could tea drench all of our stone fruit trees. The weather has only just recently started cooling where we are. So we gave all of the stone fruit trees one final watering, then a compost tea drench, prior to shutting off the irrigation until the spring.

We made an aerated compost tea brew since we have a 55 gallon brewer that could handle the amount we need for all the trees.

Here is the compost tea recipe we used:

2 quarts of Bu's Blend Biodynamic Compost

1/2 quart of our vermicompost

2 cups Down to Earth Kelp Meal

1 cup Down to Earth Fish Bone Meal

We brewed this aerated compost tea for 24 hours, then gave 5 gallons of aerated tea to each stone fruit tree, after watering the dry soil.

Aerated Compost Tea Drenching of Almond Tree

Next, there is something that had been bothering me in the garden every time I looked at it. The trunk of the pineapple guava tree. It had never been pruned and today was the day!

Pineapple Guava Tree (BEFORE)

Here is a closeup of the tree trunk base. Do you notice that the right branch is massively branching off to the right? If that continues to grow, one day it will carry a lot of weight and may break off, damaging the entire trunk's ability to take up nutrients:

So we wanted to prune first the little water sprouts, then the larger right branch:

That made me a LOT happier! Now the branches on the right from the main trunk will start to grow outward and balance the tree properly.

Time for some breakfast!

Thank you for joining us. Next time we'll be preparing and planting our potatoes, composting before the rain and much more. God Bless!