We, too, just celebrated 60 yrs! And every Fall we go around and collect 100+ bags of dry leaves which other residents (metro suburban Chicago) have raked up for our City to compost. We then run them through our mulcher and cover our garden beds several inches deep. They are almost gone by Spring planting time so we add more then. Brown GOLD!!!!
Composting worms will also need some form of 'greens' (food). The dried leaves will provide carbon and bedding, and the worms WILL eat those, but to thrive they will need more than just the dried leaves. I have raised worms for close to 20 years.
We use our lawnmower on an elevated height which gathers & mulches the leaves without over cutting the grass. Then it goes into compost bags with holes and put next to our trees and some goes directly into my raised beds. All one step for those that have mowers
That is the first time I have heard worms called cute! I also have had trouble getting worms on my land. I like your method!! I have zero trees but my son brings me bags of his leaves!
We live in CO and it is very dry, even in winter, our leaves also do not break down easily. When we shred our leaves, we put them on the top of the raised beds like yours, and then I cover them with newspaper, paper bags or broken down thin cardboard boxes over the winter. For some reason the worms are attracted to the paper products and it has helped we grow and maintain the worms in my raised beds. In the spring, if the newspaper or cardboard has not broken down, I just dig through it to plant and cover the entire bed in a layer of compost. So far so good!
Kudos to you both on not giving up on worms. I thought with you living out in the desert, that you could grow crops year round. I didnt realize you put your gardens to bed like we do in the northeast. Cant wait to see the results when you go to plant again next growing season. Wishing you the best.
Nice idea. My area of the south is ALWAYS humid, so this time of year I've taken to piling leaves in black plastic bags, wetting and punching holes then leaving them untouched. By Spring, I have compost because the worms and bugs already in ground find the holes and break them down. I've also recently dug and installed an in ground compost bin using a covered black tote that I drilled holes in. I use leaves and dirt to layer the food scraps and am hoping this will work the same as the plastic bags. Can't wait to see your results!
This would have been such a great Halloween episode! Not complaining, just giggling at the idea. Great ideas as always. Excited to see how your garden develops.
I used to have Red Wigglers and the lids had to be tight so they wouldn't try and leave, it takes a while and a little education to get their bedding just right so they don't leave.
Mr and Mrs RoseRed Homestead, I've been following you for the last 3 - 4 years. Thank You both for All your videos filled with the Most valuable Information, Instruction and truly Inspirational lifechanger/savers for all of us seeking the truth and yearning to learn and live a healthy lifestyle. Love to you for helping me be a better healthier Mom and Gamma.
Thank you, Pam and Jim, for sharing about your kitchen garden idea in the other video. It got me inspired. I am busy beautifying our back yard for the holidays and decided to plant vegetables in between my roses and other ornamentals to create a kitchen garden of sorts. So far I have butternut, chinese cabbage, cagbage, chard, potatoes, garlic, and tomaties. Tomorrow, I'll plant the ginger.
Gorgeous property dear 🥰. I have Maple trees and I take, and rake- then I take and rake 😂. I bag them and put them around my place, they get a winter home in a compost pile , on the garden/herb and flower beds and I’m surrounded by woods so the remaining bits gets scattered to the woods line. The Maples are shade through summer, my husky knows Let’s go to the shady maple 🐾🐾 she just rips over the yard and waits for me. It’s so much shade, it’s nice and cool. In the fall, I have one turn blood red, another few turn orangish and most turn yellow with orange. So pretty BUT then the raking of the pretty gets quite tedious 😂. I tap them in spring to do maple syrup 👍 so that pays for the maintenance every fall with clean up. If they’re not enough, I planted yet another on my lawn, setting in with the trees planted for my 3 children , the new one- for my grandson ♥️. Turn over one shovel in my compost pile and it’s all worms I’d gladly share 😊
Worms are my work horse. In winter I keep a tub of soil where I put kitchen scraps. I keep it in garage because ground is frozen. I grow lots of worms in my garage. I transition to the flower bed in the spring. Lots a luck with those hungry worms.
🪱 I have compost worm bins inside. They love shredded leaves and newspaper with kitchen scraps. I use used lumber tarps. I also reuse leaf and garden bags on top of shredded leaves and weigh down with wood chips a local arborist brings me for free. Desert gardening looks challenging. I guess its what you are used to. Zone 5 , boreal belt.
Pam: You should get Jim one of those battery powered leaf blowers it is much less work than the raking. My husband got one as a bonus when we purchased a battery powered weedeater and he loves the blower. He says its much easier on his back and arms than raking them. He uses the blower much more than he ever uses the grass trimmer/weedeater. His is a bright florescent green color not sure of the brand. So if he sets it down it is easy to spot from across the yard. We sometimes put a combo of the cheapest soda pop you can find usually from the dollar store and yeast. Mix it together and it sugar in the pop sort of super charges the yeast and makes it decompose more quickly.
Being that you are in a dry climate maybe you should do the double dig system. Dig a hole and put the soil aside. Then add your mulch, then dig next to the first hole, taking that soil and placing it on your mulch. Continue this process through out the bed,at the end placing that first shovel of soil in the last hole. Your mulch will be exposed to the worms and bacteria that help brake down the leaves. And having the soil on top would keep the mulch moist. Plus your putting black plastic over the top will keep in the heat. I've used this method and come spring your mulch will be well on the way to braking down. Hope this will help your garden.
Just a thought. Could I use landscape fabric instead of the black plastic? That would allow oxygen and rain to pass through to keep the soil moist and oxygenated. Also, if you needed to add water to the beds you wouldn't have to remove the plastic to spray the beds down.
We added chopped leaves on top of my garden beds and on a few of them I covered with landscape fabric and weighted down to keep from blowing off. On my garden beds, we did not cover them. Once wet from rain and eventually covered with snow, they will not blow. I do find that they really don’t break down by spring and I have to pull much of it off before planting.
I live in Oregon, and my garden gets cardboard, then mulch. The worms adore the cardboard for some reason. I have so many worms. Things don't dry out here like they do in Utah, so if I were you, I would do a hand check every week to ensure it's not too dry under the plastic.
Congratulations on your anniversary! Your home reminds me of when I lived in St. George in the early 90's, I ran the Chevron market in Ivins and they were building that Kayenta community, love those home styles :)
Did the worm farm recommend black plastic? Black plastic will make the top inches of soil so hot that it will “ solarize” the soil, sterilizing the soil, killing off everything in the top inches of topsoil. The worms will burrow deep down in the soil to escape the high temperatures but may not have enough food to survive.
I'm not sure if I missed a video of your garden setup? I like the arhes. I know you're not a garden channel but would love to see how, what and why you use them in your garden. 😊 Thank you both!
I have been raising red wigglers and making worm castings to use as fertilizer for several years. Mostly my worms consume my kitchen scraps. I have experimented with many kinds of food and bedding. It takes them a LONG time to consume leaves. I didn't chop mine though so you may get better results. I hope so.
Hahaha hopefully these worms won’t run away from home like those earlier ones! Crossing all my fingers and toes for you with this. I’d like to try my hand at growing some worms in where I live in NW Florida but need more research and to keep it as cheap as possible. Thanks for sharing this and everything else with us!
I used landscaping fabric to allow our snow to melt through to the leaves and the soil. I will let you know how it goes for me, in Colorado, just outside Denver. Good luck!!
Pam: Be sure not to overwater. When we get too much rain here where I live the worms come out of the ground and attempt to crawl away. We usually just pick them up and toss them into a different bed that is dryer. But we have night crawlers not the tiny little red worms like you were showing. Do you know how deep your freeze line is there in your location. If it is deeper than the depth of your beds you may want to add black plastic around the lower edges of the beds to moderate the temperature in the beds so it does not freeze solid in the worst part of winter. Our freeze line here in the Midwest is a little over 3 ft deep so those worms have to go really deep in the winter time in order to survive the winter temperatures here. Just a though, I hope this may be helpful to you. I always enjoy your videos.
@ I’m thinking about the sides, actually. I don’t know what your winter low temperatures are, but the mass of the raised bed might not be enough to keep the whole thing from freezing if they are pretty low.
I miss my worms. I had worms on the truck for 18 months... Fed them coffee everyday :) could never figure out how to eliminate the fruit flies. Tried separating them one by one (twice)... Too much work for indoor worm farming
So food debris like vegetable discard and even bits of leftover food that are not too high in carbs and coffee, grinds, and things like that will feed those worms.
Good job! You should watch Angela Judd’s growing in the garden on UA-cam. She is in Mesa,AZ & shows how to do worms in the garden. Also, visit Ali’s organic’s in La Verkin. She has a small homestead & store there. Keep up the good work!
I do not know how hot your temperatures get but that black plastic may cook your worms….. or they will go too deep to do your raised bed any good. Don’t forget to feed your worms, they need food scraps, vegetation to eat.
Back in the late 60's, I was hired to write the franchise rules for the "Wiggle Worm Factory ". The worms were from China! I didn't like the worms because they were brittle. 🥴
Good luck with the worm ranch! I’ve been vermicomposting about 18 months now. My worms are in my basement because we get a lot of snow where I live. I harvest the castings and add to my vego raised beds. May I suggest two informative worm farming UA-cam channels? Vermicomposting Learn by Doing, and Plant Obsessed have been extremely helpful for me. 🪱🪱🪱
Congrats on 26 years of marriage you sweet amateurs. ( we just celebrated 60 years)
We, too, just celebrated 60 yrs! And every Fall we go around and collect 100+ bags of dry leaves which other residents (metro suburban Chicago) have raked up for our City to compost. We then run them through our mulcher and cover our garden beds several inches deep. They are almost gone by Spring planting time so we add more then. Brown GOLD!!!!
Composting worms will also need some form of 'greens' (food). The dried leaves will provide carbon and bedding, and the worms WILL eat those, but to thrive they will need more than just the dried leaves. I have raised worms for close to 20 years.
I put my food scraps in the bed for food for worms, the make quick compost/fertilizer of my kitchen scraps.
Good luck with your new soil aeration specialists! I hope they enjoy their new home!
We use our lawnmower on an elevated height which gathers & mulches the leaves without over cutting the grass. Then it goes into compost bags with holes and put next to our trees and some goes directly into my raised beds. All one step for those that have mowers
I love these stories like the worm story. You should make a video here or there just about one of these stories that make us smile 😊
Prof Pam ⚘️
Prof Jim----
Beautiful sunny day you had.
Thank you for your informative video...I did not know much about worms.
Always #teamcantrell❤
Good luck this time with the worms. My dear daughter in law wound up putting them in a newly made compost pile and cooked hers. So don’t feel bad
We have worms in our garden from ArizonaWormfarm. We even took a class. We feed them weekly veggies, paper, and cardboard, all cut small.
Potatoes grow great in leaves ❤
Do they need to be shredded?
That is the first time I have heard worms called cute! I also have had trouble getting worms on my land. I like your method!! I have zero trees but my son brings me bags of his leaves!
We live in CO and it is very dry, even in winter, our leaves also do not break down easily. When we shred our leaves, we put them on the top of the raised beds like yours, and then I cover them with newspaper, paper bags or broken down thin cardboard boxes over the winter. For some reason the worms are attracted to the paper products and it has helped we grow and maintain the worms in my raised beds. In the spring, if the newspaper or cardboard has not broken down, I just dig through it to plant and cover the entire bed in a layer of compost. So far so good!
Kudos to you both on not giving up on worms. I thought with you living out in the desert, that you could grow crops year round. I didnt realize you put your gardens to bed like we do in the northeast. Cant wait to see the results when you go to plant again next growing season. Wishing you the best.
Thank you, great ideas. I have an Agri-Fab Lawn Sweeper to gather my leaves after mulching with the riding mower and dump them on the garden.
I may have to buy a bag/mulcher lawn mower. Jim
Nice idea. My area of the south is ALWAYS humid, so this time of year I've taken to piling leaves in black plastic bags, wetting and punching holes then leaving them untouched. By Spring, I have compost because the worms and bugs already in ground find the holes and break them down. I've also recently dug and installed an in ground compost bin using a covered black tote that I drilled holes in. I use leaves and dirt to layer the food scraps and am hoping this will work the same as the plastic bags. Can't wait to see your results!
Thanks
This would have been such a great Halloween episode! Not complaining, just giggling at the idea. Great ideas as always. Excited to see how your garden develops.
I used to have Red Wigglers and the lids had to be tight so they wouldn't try and leave, it takes a while and a little education to get their bedding just right so they don't leave.
Happy Anniversary!
Thank you! Jim
Mr and Mrs RoseRed Homestead, I've been following you for the last 3 - 4 years. Thank You both for All your videos filled with the Most valuable Information, Instruction and truly Inspirational lifechanger/savers for all of us seeking the truth and yearning to learn and live a healthy lifestyle.
Love to you for helping me be a better healthier Mom and Gamma.
Great video Pam and Jim. I love that leaf shredder, I may need to get one. Good luck with your worms, I hope they flourish for you. 🌷🇨🇦
Thanks for your comments. Jim
Thank you, Pam and Jim, for sharing about your kitchen garden idea in the other video. It got me inspired. I am busy beautifying our back yard for the holidays and decided to plant vegetables in between my roses and other ornamentals to create a kitchen garden of sorts. So far I have butternut, chinese cabbage, cagbage, chard, potatoes, garlic, and tomaties. Tomorrow, I'll plant the ginger.
Gorgeous property dear 🥰. I have Maple trees and I take, and rake- then I take and rake 😂. I bag them and put them around my place, they get a winter home in a compost pile , on the garden/herb and flower beds and I’m surrounded by woods so the remaining bits gets scattered to the woods line. The Maples are shade through summer, my husky knows Let’s go to the shady maple 🐾🐾 she just rips over the yard and waits for me. It’s so much shade, it’s nice and cool. In the fall, I have one turn blood red, another few turn orangish and most turn yellow with orange. So pretty BUT then the raking of the pretty gets quite tedious 😂. I tap them in spring to do maple syrup 👍 so that pays for the maintenance every fall with clean up. If they’re not enough, I planted yet another on my lawn, setting in with the trees planted for my 3 children , the new one- for my grandson ♥️. Turn over one shovel in my compost pile and it’s all worms I’d gladly share 😊
Good luck with your worms! Thank you for sharing all you do.
Worms are my work horse. In winter I keep a tub of soil where I put kitchen scraps. I keep it in garage because ground is frozen. I grow lots of worms in my garage. I transition to the flower bed in the spring. Lots a luck with those hungry worms.
Can you tell us about the leaf shredder you’re using? I like the look and seemingly ease of us!
It is a WORX WG430. Jim
The process is exactly what I have been doing for the last 3 years. The soil is excellent come spring time.
Love the worm story.
🪱 I have compost worm bins inside. They love shredded leaves and newspaper with kitchen scraps. I use used lumber tarps. I also reuse leaf and garden bags on top of shredded leaves and weigh down with wood chips a local arborist brings me for free. Desert gardening looks challenging. I guess its what you are used to. Zone 5 , boreal belt.
Pam: You should get Jim one of those battery powered leaf blowers it is much less work than the raking. My husband got one as a bonus when we purchased a battery powered weedeater and he loves the blower. He says its much easier on his back and arms than raking them. He uses the blower much more than he ever uses the grass trimmer/weedeater. His is a bright florescent green color not sure of the brand. So if he sets it down it is easy to spot from across the yard. We sometimes put a combo of the cheapest soda pop you can find usually from the dollar store and yeast. Mix it together and it sugar in the pop sort of super charges the yeast and makes it decompose more quickly.
Pam you're an admirable homesteader
One question: about the oxygen. When you cover the beds with black tarp, won't this diminish the oxygen availability?
Being that you are in a dry climate maybe you should do the double dig system. Dig a hole and put the soil aside. Then add your mulch, then dig next to the first hole, taking that soil and placing it on your mulch. Continue this process through out the bed,at the end placing that first shovel of soil in the last hole. Your mulch will be exposed to the worms and bacteria that help brake down the leaves. And having the soil on top would keep the mulch moist. Plus your putting black plastic over the top will keep in the heat. I've used this method and come spring your mulch will be well on the way to braking down. Hope this will help your garden.
Nice. We get such high winds, holding plastics down with little clips would last about a week. 😂
Just a thought. Could I use landscape fabric instead of the black plastic? That would allow oxygen and rain to pass through to keep the soil moist and oxygenated. Also, if you needed to add water to the beds you wouldn't have to remove the plastic to spray the beds down.
We added chopped leaves on top of my garden beds and on a few of them I covered with landscape fabric and weighted down to keep from blowing off. On my garden beds, we did not cover them. Once wet from rain and eventually covered with snow, they will not blow. I do find that they really don’t break down by spring and I have to pull much of it off before planting.
Yes
Yes, good idea to do that.
@@arvellataratuta2150you could just move it over to plant and leave it on the bed.
I live in Oregon, and my garden gets cardboard, then mulch. The worms adore the cardboard for some reason. I have so many worms. Things don't dry out here like they do in Utah, so if I were you, I would do a hand check every week to ensure it's not too dry under the plastic.
Great video! Thank You for sharing.
I have a leaf blower that vacuums the leaves and mulches them so I don't have to rake lol
Congratulations on your anniversary! Your home reminds me of when I lived in St. George in the early 90's, I ran the Chevron market in Ivins and they were building that Kayenta community, love those home styles :)
Thanks for your comments and your memories in St George. Jim
I added leaves and some dying annual flowers donated from a local business to my raised bed. I need to get some worms. Thank You for the link!!
Be careful to disconnect the soaker hose from your facet. It could cause your pipe to bust.
I’m rooting for y’all
I love worms! I also put grass clippings in my garden.
Did the worm farm recommend black plastic? Black plastic will make the top inches of soil so hot that it will “ solarize” the soil, sterilizing the soil, killing off everything in the top inches of topsoil.
The worms will burrow deep down in the soil to escape the high temperatures but may not have enough food to survive.
Probably not in the winter.
I'm not sure if I missed a video of your garden setup? I like the arhes. I know you're not a garden channel but would love to see how, what and why you use them in your garden. 😊 Thank you both!
They help drainage and soil health. Jim
Gorgeous property, when I see all the land all I can think about is planting squash and pumpkins ALL over! I wish I had that much open land.
You also have to have enough water to keep them healthy, that isn’t always possible in a desert.
@ I know, we live in CO and it never rains here so everything is on a drip system. We are pretty dry up here!
I have been raising red wigglers and making worm castings to use as fertilizer for several years. Mostly my worms consume my kitchen scraps. I have experimented with many kinds of food and bedding. It takes them a LONG time to consume leaves. I didn't chop mine though so you may get better results. I hope so.
I heard they like oatmeal???
Feed them cornmeal
Hahaha hopefully these worms won’t run away from home like those earlier ones! Crossing all my fingers and toes for you with this. I’d like to try my hand at growing some worms in where I live in NW Florida but need more research and to keep it as cheap as possible. Thanks for sharing this and everything else with us!
I have to start raking mine up. Central kentucky here.
Happy Anniversary! 🎉
We appreciate it! Jim
I used landscaping fabric to allow our snow to melt through to the leaves and the soil. I will let you know how it goes for me, in Colorado, just outside Denver. Good luck!!
Interesting! Jim
Pam: Be sure not to overwater. When we get too much rain here where I live the worms come out of the ground and attempt to crawl away. We usually just pick them up and toss them into a different bed that is dryer. But we have night crawlers not the tiny little red worms like you were showing. Do you know how deep your freeze line is there in your location. If it is deeper than the depth of your beds you may want to add black plastic around the lower edges of the beds to moderate the temperature in the beds so it does not freeze solid in the worst part of winter. Our freeze line here in the Midwest is a little over 3 ft deep so those worms have to go really deep in the winter time in order to survive the winter temperatures here. Just a though, I hope this may be helpful to you. I always enjoy your videos.
I hope your worm experiment works! I wonder if the beds will be too cold for the worms during the coldest time of winter?
So do we. We hope not. They should be fine with all of the "covers" we have put over them. Jim
@ I’m thinking about the sides, actually. I don’t know what your winter low temperatures are, but the mass of the raised bed might not be enough to keep the whole thing from freezing if they are pretty low.
Good scissor skills. Not sure about the clothes pins.
Could you also please link the leaf shredder? Thank you.
I miss my worms. I had worms on the truck for 18 months... Fed them coffee everyday :) could never figure out how to eliminate the fruit flies. Tried separating them one by one (twice)... Too much work for indoor worm farming
❤
So food debris like vegetable discard and even bits of leftover food that are not too high in carbs and coffee, grinds, and things like that will feed those worms.
Good job! You should watch Angela Judd’s growing in the garden on UA-cam. She is in Mesa,AZ & shows how to do worms in the garden. Also, visit Ali’s organic’s in La Verkin. She has a small homestead & store there. Keep up the good work!
Thanks, we will look at them. Jim
Be aware that composting worms will not live in the 'soil'. They will only live in composting type materials.
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY❤ Silly question: could you use clear plastic instead? What would be the difference?
Thanks! I am not sure what the heat differential would be. Jim
How about us folks in the frozen north? What changes do we need to make to keep the worms alive in the winter?
I live in the frozen north. My worms are in my basement year round.
Keep mine in a large tote in the house. Red Wigglers will die if temp gets down to 40°F. Or above 90°F.
No carcasses 😂 they were worm-raptured.
😂🤣😂🤣
I thought the same, lol 😊
I do not know how hot your temperatures get but that black plastic may cook your worms….. or they will go too deep to do your raised bed any good. Don’t forget to feed your worms, they need food scraps, vegetation to eat.
Back in the late 60's, I was hired to write the franchise rules for the "Wiggle Worm Factory ".
The worms were from China! I didn't like the worms because they were brittle. 🥴
Is that just regular 6 mil black plastic?
Is there a concern of the black plastic causing the micro organisms in the soil to die?
We had not thought of that. Jim
I think I would have watered it before the plastic
They love scraps of veg peelings and cardboard
The heat caused in die bed from the black plastic hopefully dont kill the worms.
Good luck with the worm ranch! I’ve been vermicomposting about 18 months now. My worms are in my basement because we get a lot of snow where I live. I harvest the castings and add to my vego raised beds.
May I suggest two informative worm farming UA-cam channels? Vermicomposting Learn by Doing, and Plant Obsessed have been extremely helpful for me. 🪱🪱🪱