Gardening

Chickens / Gardening / Here Come the Ritchies — No Comments
15
Jul 10

Say Hello To My Little Friends

Worms… Yeah, I like composting with worms. The downside to the worm – even the 5 tray worm factory I use – is it is pretty darn slow. It can take months to turn food scraps into compost. So I looked for an alternative and found the black soldier fly!

These little black soldier flies – or more specifically their grubs – can break down food scraps in just days! Right now I’m adding a large salad bowl of scraps each day to these little guys and they are eating it all!

The BioPod houses the little guys and makes life a little easier for me. Before my BioPod, I built a house for my little friends and it worked pretty well, but I wasn’t able to catch them when they would make a run for it. See, these little dudes are much like humans. Once they hit puberty, they sneak out of the house to procreate. It is at this time – much like the father of a teenager – that I want to catch ‘em.

Why?

Well… I feed them to my chickens. The little grubs make a perfect protein for the chickens. Besides, at this stage of their life they are ready to morph into a fly, mate, and die. Then, their short little life cycle is compete. As for me, I let some escape to sow their royal oats and keep the life cycle going. And, others become chicken food.

I love these little guys so much I’m thinking of letting my worm factory go completely. The black soldier fly composts so much faster and easier – not to mention my chickens love ‘em. Sorry worms. It was a good run.

Learn more about the black soldier fly at Black Soldier Fly Blog and Wikipedia.

Gardening — No Comments
19
Dec 09

Strength in Numbers

The situation is dire.

Even lettuce and spinach – the easiest plants to grow – have eluded our green thumbs. So we are left with only two choices: (1) walk away from the garden entirely, or (2) bring in some knowledgeble folks.

We chose door number…. 2!

Paul and Julie always have nice produce growing outside their house, so we decided to see if they wanted to join us in our gardening adventure. Which really means, they will grow stuff while we watch. Just kidding. Well, sort of. But, we are hoping that through the combined effort we learn to grow produce as well.

While showing Paul the garden this morning, he already made several observations that should result in better soil. I also noticed a few looks that seemed to say, “What in the world were they thinking!” I guess we deserve that as well.

Gardening — No Comments
28
Oct 09

The $500 Watermelon

Yep.

After $200+ dollars of top grade soil, $100+ worth of lumber, $50+ worth of seeds, and too many hours to count working on the garden, here is our summer crop’s results! One watermelon.

The kids had a lot of fun with it all though… Bring on the Fall crops!

10 23 2009 002

Gardening — No Comments
27
Aug 09

We have melons!

The organic garden has been much more difficult (and expensive) than we would have ever guessed. Given, we did try to start our garden just as summer was about rear its ugly head on the poor thing, but still we had high hopes. We believed. We watered. We waited. We prayed. We watered. And, well…. Nothing.

The best growth we saw this summer was a rather large tree-like weed that reached about 3 feet high to our disgust and embarrassment as other gardens just walked passed shaking their heads.

So you can imagine my surprise last week when I found a couple of cantaloupes and a watermelon taking shape. Yes, there was real growth in the garden. The little-garden-that-could has begun to bear fruit. Real fruit. Now, we wait and, hopefully, soon enjoy the most expensive fruit we’ve ever eaten in our lives.

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