I've Got Worms!

My much anticipated Can-O-Worms arrived yesterday from Our Vital Earth. Unfortunately, I was way too sick with a stomach bug to assemble it, so I waited until today. The Can-O-Worms is a composting system that uses worms to convert household organic waste into fertilizer for plants.

We have been to Our Vital Earth for two field trips. I wrote about our second trip here. I had never heard of vermicomposting before our first visit there but was intrigued the more I learned and read about it. Once we got our container garden going in January, I knew that I wanted to get a worm bin. It was just a matter of when I could get it.

This is what the Can-O-Worms looked like when it arrived.

The first step was to soak the coconut noir. It acts as a bedding and food source for the worms initially.

After assembling the bin's legs and drainage spout, a large piece of the cardboard label was placed in the bottom tray of the worm bin. This was to keep the coconut noir from falling through the holes into the collecting tray below. I love that the packaging was minimal and that some of it was reusable.

Once the coconut noir had soaked up all of the water, it was placed inside the bin.

Caleb volunteered to pour the worms into the bin.

Eli acted as supervisor to make sure the worm bin was assembled properly.

This is a close up of the worms before they burrowed into the coconut noir. Worms have no eyes but are light sensitive. They prefer the dark.

This is what the finished set up looked like.

Because the noir and worms came up to the top rib of the first tray, we were able to place a second tray on top. It will take some time for the worms to do their work, but when we harvest our first worm castings and tea, I will be sure to post about them.

If you want to learn more about worms and vermiculture, check out Worm World, Herman the Worm, NIEHS, and Journey to Forever.

A Small Harvest

We picked several ripe tomatoes and some green beans today. We have had a good tomato crop so far, but today was the first time we harvested any green beans. Yum!

How Does Your Garden Grow?

We are still doing quite a bit of gardening around here. We added some more veggies to our container garden including corn, spinach, and peppers. We had a few potatoes, heads of garlic, and onions start to grow in the pantry, so we also planted those. The potatoes and garlic are doing well. The onions looked like they were dying, but there seems to be some new growth this week. The basil is growing well and will be used for homemade pesto soon. Check out this pesto recipe and this pizza recipe we love.

This is how much things have grown in a month.

Is There Anything Eli Won't Eat?

One of Eli's favorite things to do is eat. He loves food. He eats a lot of food for someone so little. In fact, we are not sure where he puts it all or why he doesn't weigh a million pounds. He has Pop Pop's ears, so maybe he also has Pop Pop's metabolism. I guess we'll have to see.

Eli also loves to be outside. If we open up the blinds for the sliding glass door, he will crawl over and beg to go out back. We like taking him outside, but it can be challenging since he isn't walking yet. The concrete is a bit rough for his sensitive skin to crawl on.

Today, I went out to water our plants and took Eli with me. I let him crawl around a bit on the concrete even though Daddy is always afraid he will scrape his skin again like he did on the driveway a few weeks ago. When I wasn't looking at him, he picked a tomato off of one of our plants and began to eat it. I guess the pretty red tomato was just too appealing for him to resist. Luckily, I had the camera nearby and was able to capture the moment of juicy delight. He really enjoyed that tomato and begged for more.

This is a picture of him eating the tomato.

These are pictures of him with a mouth full of tomato.

This is a funny tomato face.

This is Eli signing, "Please." He wanted more tomatoes to eat.

I fed him some tomatoes the next day only to discover that they are a bit too acidic for him right now. He ended up with a terrible diaper rash. Poor guy! I plan to wait until he is 18 months to give him any more tomatoes.

Our Vital Earth Worm Farm

Today we went to Our Vital Earth for a field trip. Our theme this month in Roots and Shoots is worms. This was the second time we visited the farm to learn about worms and vermiculture. After learning all about worms, the kids got to make their own mini worm farm to take home.

This is a picture of Caleb with his mini worm farm.

I am hoping to get a worm bin soon so that we can compost our food scraps instead of throwing them away. The worm castings (poop) and worm tea (pee) are great for gardening with. Plus, composting will cut down on the amount of trash we throw out each week.

Grandma Bernie and her husband are featured in this video about the work they are doing at Our Vital Earth. Be sure to check it out.

Our First Fruit

Our first tomato was finally ripe enough to pick and eat. We were excited to be able to enjoy the fruit of our labor.

Here is a picture of the ripe tomato still on the vine.

Here is a picture of Caleb with his ripe tomato after he picked it.

Here is a close up picture of the ripe tomato.

Here is a picture of Caleb eating a piece of the tomato.

The tomato was very yummy. I was a little afraid that the tomatoes would not taste good once they were ripe, so I was glad that they tasted great. I would have been sad if all our hard work had been for nothing. There really is nothing like a tomato fresh from the vine. We are looking forward to eating more tomatoes from our garden.

Ladybug Release and More Gardening

Most of the ladybugs had emerged from their pupae, so Caleb decided that it was time to release them. He wanted them to be put on our tomato plants so that they could eat any bugs on them. I was a bit surprised that he was so anxious to release them. I thought he would want to keep them in their Lady Bug Land habitat as long as possible. It is a good thing he did want to release them as they only live 2-3 weeks in that habitat. In the wild, they can live up to a year, which is pretty long for an insect.

We did our best to put all of the ladybugs on tomato plant leaves, but some flew off and some landed in the grass. I did get a good picture of one on a tomato leaf.

After releasing our ladybugs, we added to our garden. We planted green beans, sunflowers, basil, and red poppies from seed. We are looking forward to seeing how these plants grow. If we are lucky, we will have yummy food to eat soon.

"Now we won't have to go grocery shopping anymore!" (quote from Caleb)

Caleb has been talking about starting a garden for a long time, so we finally did. I got some Tom MacCubbin gardening books for Christmas. MacCubbin is a local gardening expert, and although his books are not organic, they are chock full of great information on what to plant when. I have already learned a ton from reading them.


We decided to start with tomatoes, green beans, and basil. We got three bonnie tomato plants from Lowe's and planted them in containers. I decided that it would be easier to do containers than dig up the yard, but we may do some raised beds in the future. The tomato plants have already grown taller, and we have a few green tomatoes growing right now along with lots of pretty yellow flowers. Caleb is not a huge fan of tomatoes, but he is excited about trying the ones he is helping to grow. Fresh from the vine tomatoes taste so much better than store bought ones, so I think he will really enjoy them once they ripen.


We got green bean and basil seeds and plan to start them soon. Assuming that our garden grows well, we have plans to add more fruits and veggies to it soon. I would love to create a strawberry pyramid in the fall since we all LOVE strawberries. And Caleb loves the prospect of not having to go grocery shopping any more, which he hates. :)


Gardening has become a great hands on homeschool project that Caleb and I are both really enjoying. We created a chart to track each plant's growth, number of flowers, and amount of fruit produced that we will turn into a graph later on. Caleb has been helping to measure each plant with a tape measure. He has also been counting flowers and tomatoes. His favorite part, though, is watering them with the hose. We got a few books from the library about how plants grow. One of the books has close up pictures of the tomato life cycle, which helped us know what to expect as we watch our tomatoes grow. We have plans to make a lapbook about our garden to chronicle its growth and to show off what we are learning.