You Bet your Garden Ep. 12 Worm Bins

- From the wormy studios of Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, PA, it is time for another composting episode if chemical free horticultural hijinks You Bet Your Garden.

I'm your host, Mike McGrath.

Are you shredding all those fabulous fall leaves?

Are you feeding your kitchen waste to red wigglers in a worm bin?

On today's show, I'll reveal some cool ways to make the most of these vital organic ingredients.

Otherwise, it's a fabulous phone call show, cats and kittens.

Yes, potential guests are busy sucking and shredding.

So we will take that heaping helping of your telecommunicated questions, comments, tips, suggestions and ridiculously robust recriminations.

So keep your eyes and your ears right here, true believers, because it's all coming up faster than garden gold for your raised beds... ...right after this.

Right, Ducky?

Right after this.

Support for You Bet Your Garden is provided by the Espoma company, offering a complete selection of natural organic plant foods and potting soils.

More information about Espoma and the Espoma natural gardening community can be found at espoma.com.

Welcome to another thrilling episode of You Bet Your Garden from the studios of Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, the Christmas City at this time of year, PA.

I am your host, Jolly Mike McGrath.

And coming up later in the show, we will have a treatise on composting and worm bins that will cover many topics.

I'm sure you will learn something... Well, maybe sure is the wrong word.

But before that, lots of your fabulous phone calls at 888 492 9444.

Elizabeth, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Oh, thank you so very much.

- Well, thank you, Elizabeth.

How are you?

- Well, actually, it's a beautiful day up here in north central Pennsylvania.

- OK, so what can we do for Elizabeth in Clinton County?

- Well, I have Googled and Googled and I have been growing Mexican sunflowers, the annual, for years and I've had great success.

Different soil types, I've put them in different times of the year, I grow them from seeds.

- Good.

- It's all organic.

And every year, whether I have lots of rain, no rain, the bottom branches, the stems on the sides, they just keep... they break off.

It's like it's really brittle.

And I don't know if there's anything I can do to make these branches stronger next year.

I don't know.

Is there something I'm missing?

- Is there any discoloration of the branches?

- Well, that's the odd thing.

The plants are seeming very vigorous.

- Mm hmm.

- Now, when I have my sandier soil mix, they are a little more not quite as deep green, but even the ones that have very deep green leaves with more of the compost... - OK, well, I got lots of questions to ask you.

Is there any thinning at the soil line of the stem?

- A little bit, yes.

Come to think of it, yes.

- So this sounds like a variation on damping off disease, which, like so many horticultural terms, is "it got too damp and the flowers went off."

So what are you growing your Tithonia in?

- Well, they're home-made raised beds, aged aged horse manure, a sandy loam soil, a little bit of wood chips with some lime.

- Why?

Why?

- I'm sorry?

- Why?

No, wood chips are non strengthening your plants.

They're weakening them, which is the word I should have come up with first.

But wood chips have no place in a vegetable garden.

How big are your beds?

- Oh, my goodness.

- You have a single or double?

- 30 by 15 feet.

- They're not raised beds.

Raised beds are defined by you being able to tend to the plants without walking on the soil.

- Oh, OK, well, all right, I built mounds, all right, - Mounds?

- Large mounds, mounds on top of the native soil.

- Do you ever grow in containers?

- Well, no, I don't, because I'm just, I hate to say I'm just not a container person because I forget to water and I feel so bad when I see it start to wilt.

- But see, that's OK.

If a plant wilts because it hasn't been watered, it can be revived by watering.

But if a plant dies from sitting in soggy soil, it's dead, Jim, and it's staying dead.

So what I would... and I have never grown Tithonia in the ground, I've always grown these Mexican sunflowers in containers because when we get into the migratory season of the adult monarchs, I want my plants to be up on a bench or someplace or even a hanging basket where they're nice and high so the monarchs can see them, come feed, and then continue their journey down to Mexico.

So, you know, I don't know how your other plantings are doing, but it's sound... And do you have any other spot or does everything get flooded during the bad times?

- No, no.

It's just that that side of the property seems to...

There might be an underground spring, it always seems to be damp back there.

Oh, and I get full sun.

I do get full sun.

- OK, that's good.

- But I just, I don't want anything to drown.

And so far the sunflowers, Mexican sunflowers are also adjacent to elderberry and the elderberry are taking off like crazy.

- I would go and build true raised beds on a drier part of your land, you know, frame them with anything you got - bricks, cinder blocks, even non treated pine will last for years.

But of course you can go crazy and get knotty redwood or knotty cedar, and then fill those half and half with good quality compost and good quality topsoil.

And if you go back into our Questions of the Week, there are several that explain how to determine what good quality means.

And I would urge you to grow a couple of plants in containers.

Tithonia takes to containers brilliantly.

But either way, you're going to do much better.

- Fair enough.

- All right.

We gotta to move on, Liz.

I'll talk to you later, bye-bye.

888 492 9444.

Pam, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Hi, Mike, how are you doing today?

I am just Ducky, thanks for asking.

How is Pam?

- Great.

I'm doing very well.

- And where does Pam do well?

I'm doing well in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania.

- OK, what can we do you for?

- Well, we, unfortunately, were hit by the tornado that was a result of Hurricane Ida on September 1st, and we had many trees, including black walnuts, which I wasn't too upset about ,uprooted.

And many trees were damaged to a pretty extreme, er, root.

But at any rate, what we've lost, we've lost about 30 to 40 trees.

Our property previously was fairly wooded.

And, of course, there were, you know, kind of natural woods including, you know, invasive honeysuckles and wisteria and all of these things that probably could have come down earlier.

But the tornado helped us a bit.

- Hey, the tornado got rid of wisteria?

Send it my way.

- I mean, we had to cut it off.

I mean, I think it would have come back.

We had to cut it, cut it and get rid of it.

- Well, that's great.

- So the trees came down and we cut down a number of dead ash trees that had existed on the property previously.

- Right, the emerald ash borer.

- Yeah, unfortunately.

- So what can we do for you?

Well, I'm looking at, we have a number of stumps, as you would guess.

We've pulled out some of the stumps, but we've gone back and forth in terms of stump grinding or just trying to pull them out or working around them.

What would be the best option?

Or what are the options?

- OK, so how tall is the tallest stump you have?

- We have...

The tallest is probably about four feet where we were going to leave a snag, but we decided against it.

- OK, because that would have been like... - Most of them... - Go ahead.

- Sorry, most of them are anywhere from, you know, right down to the ground up to like three or four feet.

- So your options, as you say, you can have the stump ground down, but then you can't grow anything there because there's this giant plug in the ground that won't degrade for 20 or 30 years.

Or you can have the stump ground down to a comfortable height and, uh, cover it with containers of plants that you like to see so that everything is working out together.

I've talked about this before, driving through Allentown, there is a house that had a big tree come down and they made a dining room table outdoors out of the stump.

And then they had a local woodworker come and make chairs out of the rest of the wood.

So it's like Habitron, I mean, it's just stunning.

But grinding is OK if you don't care about something regrowing there, but I always recommend that people consider the stump as a starting place for a nice elevated container garden.

- OK. And as far as planting grass seed over where the stump was ground, is that doable?

- No, it won't work.

- Oh, really?

OK. No, only where you've actually pulled the stumps out, and they're a bear to get rid of.

- They are, yeah.

The good news is we got a lot of black walnut wood that we're saving to try to give to a sawmill or sell to a sawmill because it's beautiful wood.

- OK.

There is an old friend of mine from Rodell, Alice Walentine, not Valentine, who was the editor of the woodworking magazine at Rodell.

And I think his website is wood.com, and it's a gathering place for people who have small scale sawmills to find wood, for people to approach them and all that kind of stuff.

- Oh, great.

Great.

That's very helpful.

We've been, we've been searching.

- OK, well, start there and... - All right.

- I think you'll find your way from there.

OK?

- OK, great.

Well, thank you so much, Mike.

I really appreciate all your help.

- My pleasure.

Take care now.

888 492 9444.

Henry, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Hi, Mike.

- Hello, Henry, how are you doing?

- I'm doing great.

- And where is Henry doing great?

I'm doing great in Ambler, Pennsylvania, just north of Philadelphia.

- What can we do for Henry?

- Well, this year I grew some Yukon gold potatoes and I did what you suggested.

I didn't mound them, I just put them in the ground, I put compost on them and they did great.

- Oh, yeah.

- When I harvested them, I got big ones, medium ones and little ones.

And the little ones were about an inch, an inch and a half in diameter.

So I was wondering, can I save those as seed potatoes for next April?

- How did you get the potatoes you started with?

- I did buy those as seed potatoes.

OK, I am obligated to tell you that the experts - who also advise planting potatoes in mounds, which is the foolish idea of all time - want you to continue buying fresh seed potatoes every year to make sure they are not spreading disease, certified disease-free potatoes.

But if you didn't have any problems in your garden with the potato greenery turning black or with your tomatoes coming down with late blight in which within days the whole plant turns black, it is highly unlikely that there would be anything wrong with saving your potatoes and using those for fresh planting stock.

Matter of fact, my theory and actual use with my garlic plantings is I'm always replanting the biggest cloves because I now have a strain of garlic that didn't exist 20 years ago.

It's totally adapted to my climate and my tender abilities.

So the same thing can be said of potatoes.

But I will add that I have learned also to rotate my garlic from bed to bed and not follow garlic with garlic.

So I would suggest the same to you, that if, you know, you coddle your potatoes through, some of them, till spring time and they have good eyes on them, then I would say I would plant them but just in a different bed.

- And... - OK, I can see that.

The only thing I'm noticing is some of the eyes are starting to bloom a little bit.

They're starting to, you know... Looks like they want to grow.

- Yeah.

No, global warming, climate change, whatever you want to call it.

Some of the potatoes I harvested this fall were already trying to regrow.

- Yeah.

- So first of all... - Would you recommend... - Yes.

- I'm sorry.

Would you recommend keeping them in the refrigerator?

- Oh, God, no.

Did you do that?

- No, I did not.

- No.

A cool, dry place.

You know, if you don't have a root cellar, plant them in... Plant them!

Store them in mouse-proof containers in the coolest part of your basement.

Never refrigerate garlic, potatoes, tomatoes.

It just destroys them.

Now, I'm going to turn your head around because I know you want to use the little ones for replanting.

- Yeah.

- They're not going to make it.

They don't have... - Oh, really?

- They don't have enough biomass.

Over the time between now and planting time, they're going to lose all their moisture and it's just going to curl up and die, whereby the largest potatoes, which is the ones you want to keep and eat, are the best for replanting - again, stored in a cool, dry place - because they have that biomass the tubers will not start to die or anything like that.

- OK. - And the little potatoes are cherished.

Did you ever see what they charge for those in the supermarkets?

- I know I've seen them in the supermarket, but I haven't purchased them.

- Eat them.

Eat them.

- Eat them, OK!

- Yeah.

Before they go bad.

The smaller they are, the earlier they're going to go bad.

And if any of your potatoes are sprouting.. Are all of your potatoes sprouting or just some?

- Just some of them.

- OK, I would also use those.

Just cut out the eyes and use them like you would regular potatoes.

And if they continue to sprout on this side of New Years, I would just use them and get fresh certified seed potatoes.

But if you... - If the larger ones... - I'm sorry.

- You help drive home... - If the larger ones... - Why are you saying you're sorry and keep talking?

Listen to me.

- If the larger ones don't sprout, do you recommend slicing them in half or so and then, you know, with eyes on each piece?

- No, I plant them whole.

If you have a wet spring, you increase the chance of disease by having all these wounds on the potatoes.

- Oh, OK.

I got that.

Yeah.

- OK?

- OK, well thank you.

- My pleasure.

- I appreciate the answer.

- You take care.

- Have a great day.

- You too.

Bye-bye.

- Bye-bye.

Once again, it is time for the Question of the Week, which we're calling... Frank in Cherry Hill, New Jersey writes... Teresa, Frank doesn't get on the show again for a while.

Anyway, Frank continues... As well, you should, Frank.

That's a great idea, Frank, especially if you're on city tap water and you want to use non treated water for your precious plants.

Frank continues...

Absolutely they do, Frank.

Full strength tea is generally too strong, especially for younger plants.

The rule I follow is that the color of the diluted worm liquid should look somewhere between strong tea and weak coffee.

And I find that a three to one dilution generally looks right.

Frank is up to bat again.

Well, that's another great idea, Frank.

Sometimes my housemate will include avocado husks in our worm bins and they decay at about the same rate as plutonium.

"They're organic matter!"

she says.

So are whole trees, I reply.

How many shows could we do on spousal compost arguments alone?

We'd have to subcontract with Judge Judy.

Anyway, I like this idea a lot, except for the collateral damage to any red wigglers that get into the blender.

I'm getting flashbacks to Dan Aykroyd's classic Bass-O-Matic skit on the original Saturday Night Live.

Oh!

And so I will continue to add the finished compost of my worm trays to an active compost pile.

But still, except for the memory of Dan Aykroyd, it's an interesting idea.

Frank is up again.

Well, that's another great idea, Frank, but why use a coffee grinder?

I would load the crushed shells into that old blender of yours with some water and whiz until the shells become liquid.

Liquefied calcium will be more immediately active in helping prevent blossom end rot on those precious tomatoes.

Frank, again.

Doesn't this guy ever finish?

Well, Frank, your location just across the Ben Franklin Bridge from Old City Philadelphia is going to be somewhat cooler than gardeners in the actual City of Brotherly Love.

While I in the foothills of the Lehigh Valley South mountain am cooler than you.

You know, honestly, I'm cooler than just about anybody except little Steven Van Zandt, Howard G Krebs, and Ed Kookie Burns.

Hey, Kookie, lend me your comb!

As always, I digress.

But I did leave a trail of pretzel salt to help me find my way back.

Soft pretzel salt, of course.

To wit... To wit?

To wit or to wonder.

Anyway, although your finished product sounds like a great mulch, composting in areas with real winters is best accomplished as a two season event.

We diligently shred our leaves in the fall, then we pile them into tumblers, spinners, sealed compost bins and/or open wire mesh cages, adding items to provide nitrogen that are either unwise, wise and/or bat poop crazy.

Winter then greatly slows the composting process, especially if you loaded your pile up with low-nitrogen kitchen scraps.

Such compost may not even be thawed out by spring, much less finished.

The wisest choice in cold winter climes is to let that compost break down in the warm weather of spring and then use it to freshen up your plots early to mid summer.

But Frank's habit of making red wiggler smoothies opens up a new train of thought here.

The best, the hottest and the fastest way to compost shredded fall leaves is to add lots of spent coffee grounds to the leaves as you shred them, mixing the grounds in as you go.

Coffee grounds are an excellent source of nitrogen, while most kitchen scraps are not.

Which is why we urge all of yous to get a worm bin wherein those otherwise worthless scraps are turned into garden gold.

Back to Frank.

Remember Frank?

I suggest he dump the finished worm castings into that bin of his, where the undiced worms will help make finished compost faster, plus they won't be dead.

In gardening, not being dead is always an excellent goal.

Well, that sure was some good information about water, worms and compost, now, wasn't it?

Luckily for you, the Question of the Week appears in print at the Gardens Alive website where you can read it over at your lee-sure or your leisure.

Just click the link for the Question of the Week at our website, which is still and will forever be, say it with me, Ducky, YouBetYourGarden.org.

Gardens Alive supports the You Bet Your Garden Question of the Week and you'll always find the latest Question of the Week at the Gardens Alive website.

You Bet Your Garden is a half hour public television show, an hour long public radio show and podcast, all produced and delivered to you weekly by Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, PA. Our radio show is distributed by the Public Radio Exchange.

You Bet Your Garden was created by Mike McGrath.

Mike McGrath was created when the abrupt change to Daylight Savings Time spun him into an alternate universe where cats had replaced racecars in the new NASCAT series.

Meow!

Yikes!

My producer is threatening to wrangle my worms for his bin if I don't get out of this studio.

We must be out of time, but you can call us any time at 888 492 9444. or send us your e-mail, your tired, your poor, your wretched refuse of a message teeming towards our garden shore at ybyg@wlvt.org.

Please, please, please always include your location.

Oy!

You'll find all of this wonderful contact information, plus answers to hundreds of your garden questions, audio of this video, video of this show, audio and video of recent shows and links to our internationally renowned podcast.

It's all at our website, YouBetYourGarden.org.

I'm your host, Mike McGrath, and I'll be outside shredding leaves and yelling at the evil squirrels to stop planting black walnuts in my garden beds, and in my containers, and in my flower beds, and in the wheel wells of my car, until I can see you again next week.