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How to Build a Worm Tower
HOW TO BUILD A WORM TOWER
Earth—the stuff on the ground, not the planet—is essential for life. Anyone who has a garden (or even a house plant!) has seen a microcosm of this in action. Soil isn’t just something we walk on or that plants anchor in. It’s something that nurtures us and every other form of life on the planet in some sense. Plants need rich, fertile, living soil to truly thrive.
A worm tower is, essentially, a mini worm farm that you plant in your garden, that continually feeds your garden and provides you with a rich, ongoing source of fertilizer. They’re extremely low cost to get started, exceptionally simple to make, and nearly effortless to maintain. The only real question to ask yourself is Why don’t I already have one?
Well, here’s how you remedy that:
• A two to four foot PVC (food grade only) or concrete pipe, five or more inches in diameter
• A shovel
• A drill (optional)
• Compost worms (at least fifty)
• A bag of manure (any type)
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Mulching With Purpose and Precision
MULCHING WITH PURPOSE AND PRECISION
To be completely honest, I have been a crazy advocate of mulching, especially when people with modern gardens invariably ask what I think they should do to improve their plots, but I am not always the most productive of mulchers…mulchsmiths…mulchmen. I’m lazy, simply throwing down whatever organic matter is on hand, and perhaps, in my defense, this has been because I’m doing my best to use what’s on site. Despite having had success with my devil may care method of mulching, I know it’s not actually the best way, that just as different plants require different inputs, different mulches deliver different goodies. So, while I know my mulchful ways are a good practice, I’ve decided it’s time to start practicing them better.
A GENERAL RULE OF GREEN THUMB
For me, and I think many fellow permaculturists, the idea of mulching with inorganic materials—those popular plastic sheets particularly—is simply not part of my MO. I’ve also come across the idea of using shredded car tires, which I, of course, appreciate in its repurposing but ultimately would not choose for my gardens.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
6 Useful Ends for Spent Tea and Coffee
6 Useful Ends for Spent Tea and Coffee
Coffee is just divine. I’ve woken up other ways and have even taken to drinking a glass of water first thing every morning, before coffee happens, but nothing makes the world feel so right as the sun coming up over a steaming mug, even in—especially in—the muggy climates of Central America, where I spend most of my time.
My wife, on the other hand, comes from proper British roots and often fancies a cup of tea as opposed to the more jolting Guatemalan roast. So, for her, it’s tea that makes the day, and in nearly a decade of living abroad, it’s one of only two things—the other being Marmite—that she requests when family visits from the Isles.
Without a doubt, this love of tea and coffee is nothing exclusive to us, and so it feels fairly safe to assume there are a lot of old tea bags and spent coffee grounds making the rounds out there. Thus, many of us permie-, enviro- types could be making good use of our beverage leftovers, cycling our garbage into a advantageous resource
Here are some of the things we do, and some of the things in store for the future.
1. COMPOST:
The obvious destination for anything organic is the compost bin. Coffee is a powerful nitrogen element to compost heaps, and despite popular belief, it isn’t nearly as acidic as people think. The acid found in roasted coffee is water-soluble so that, by the time the coffee has been brewed, the grounds have a nearly neutral pH-balance. Coffee is also thought to attract worms. Tea is respected for its antifungal qualities, as well as pest repelling, and more importantly, it attracts good bacteria and speeds up the decomposition process. In fact, the old bags can be brewed together in a pitcher one last time to be poured onto the heap.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Food Sovereignty
Food Sovereignty
‘Food sovereignty’ is fast becoming a lost concept; the right to have the knowledge and resources to grow our own food is an essential right. If we don’t have access to nutrient dense organic food, then where do we get the essential energy to heal our body, mind and spirit certainly not from the supermarket where the average ‘fresh food’, in Australia food often travels more than 1000klms from farm to plate? The value of the ‘sprout jar’, the home garden, or locally grown organics is vastly underrated, these are some of the rare places where we get not just food that fills but food that heals.
Organics combined with living soils works to redefine ‘sustainable agriculture’ as: ‘Our ability to build fertility as we improve production and reduce input costs’
One of the major global demands we face today is the heavily depleted state of our soil. The past few decades have seen an unprecedented demand on natural resources from modern agriculture, and this demand has proven to be unsustainable. Modern agriculture is artificially stripping the soil of its long-term nutrients to such extremes that we are essentially eating our grandchildren’s food and leaving behind an agricultural wasteland as a primary burden for future generations.
Current modern agricultural practice is based on a military approach where the first response to imbalance in the productive system is to kill something. In a biological system our first response is to add life, so that ‘Nature can do what Nature does best’, create balance in our productive systems.
One of the primary ways to do this is through the production of specialist compost that is rich in plant nutrient and has a high diversity of beneficial soil microorganisms. This diversity and richness supports the balance and vitality of the growing system by empowering the natural processes rather than overriding them.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
