How Gardening Has Changed My Life 3

Today, while digging in my garden, I saw a worm. Delightful! Worms are fabulous for gardens and I need to keep at least a few in each of my containers if I am to continue my Lazy Vermicomposting experiment. Last time I found a worm I instructed my two year old son to pick it up and move it to the tomato. He was happy to oblige.

It's my usual habit to never walk on grass in bare feet. My normal practice is to disinfect my hands after touching anything. It is not in my character to reach into the dirt, pick up a worm, and toss it at the base of a plant, but that's what I did.

I reached down into the earth over and over again, plucking more than two dozen misplaced earthworms out it and evenly distributing them to each of my plants. The deeper I dug, the more worms I found. There were so many that I started piling them up for release back into the garden bed when I was done.

Suddenly I was ambushed! I disgusting fat, white, lumpy monster with a red face and nasty teeth came hurdling toward me. I shudder to recount the story now. Its soulless eyes were looking into mine as it squirmed and wiggled in the soft dirt. I screamed a string of unintelligible and possibly expletive words as I chopped the grub into pieces with my shovel. I had flashbacks of several recently made zombie movies in my head as I reacted on pure instincts.

I touched worms and I killed on impulse. That is how gardening has changed my life - so far.

My Lazy Vermicomposting

Vermicomposting is a fancy way of saying "worms eat my garbage, and I get to keep their poop". You may already know that worm poop, or worm castings, as many gardeners delicately call it, is great for plants. I used to think that worm poop was just dirt, but I was mistaken. Worm castings are actually minerals covered in mucus? Disgusting! I can't believe the guy at the home and garden show tricked me into touching that stuff! Well, dirt or mucus covered minerals, worm castings are a great way to keep your plants growing strong.

My mom has a worm garden, purchased from the culprit who tricked me into touching worm-butt mucus. It's a container with several separate bins and a drainage system. She puts vegetable table scraps and old coffee grounds into the top bin and the worms come up to eat it. Later, they poop out their mineral rich manure, which we use to fertilize our gardens. It's a simple process that doesn't require much work and yields a lot of reward. And by reward, I of course mean poop.

So my mom feeds her worms, she mists them, and she turns their soil. This is the traditional way of vermicomposting, and; like I said, it isn't very difficult or time consuming. As easy as it is, I still don't want to deal with it. Mostly because I don't want to touch any worms, and now that I know they poop mucus covered mineral lumps, I don't want to touch their castings either.

I have found a simple solution. Every time I plant a pot in a container, I drop in a couple of my mom's worms. I have only just started this practice, and don't know if it works well or not. In theory, it seems to make sense. I keep the soil moist for the plants and that's how the worms like it. I drop in just the tiniest bit of food because there aren't a lot of worms in each pot. Even the dead leaves that I pick from my plants should be enough.

I don't expect an explosion in my worm population, and I don't think its going to be a great permanent home for the worms. Even if I move the pots into the garage in the winter, I think it would still be too cold for them. Until I get motivated enough to want to touch a worm, I am going to continue my lazy vermicomposting.