Tag Archives: garden

Starting To Grow Worms

I found out some really terrible news today. It turns out that worms, when you cut them in half, do not in fact grow both parts back. If this isn’t devastating to you, maybe you never cut a worm in half accidentally as a kid? Or, your parents were better informed than mine and you felt the appropriate sorrow in the moment. Either way, I live with new knowledge that I am a murderer with my shovel. I found this out in a book, on worms.

This book said that depending on where the worm was cut, the tail end can sometimes grow back. The tail, though, cannot grow a new head. This makes a lot more sense when you think about it for half a second. Sometimes, it’s possible to find a worm with two tails, like a fork. This is usually caused by some injury to the worm’s tail end where it had to grow a new one, I imagine, just in case.

Worms As a Trend

Worms are especially fascinating to me because, growing up in a 12 foot wide townhouse in the middle of the city, I distinctly remember discovering a big red bin full of red wrigglers in my parents basement when I was about three years old. At three, I thought it was super gross. Now, years later, I think it’s totally awesome, and interviewed my parents about their worm habits this afternoon. My favorite question was “so… dad… was this like, a thing? Like, was there some sort of worm trend that you were on to? Or were you and mum just totally wacky?

It turns out, that they were definitely wacky, but they were also on to something! Reading gardening manuals from the late 1980’s, worm composting inside the home was kind of a thing, maybe. Please, people who were adults during that time, confirm or deny for us?

Vermicomposting, I’ve found, has a whole subculture to it. After interviewing my parents I went and bought a second hand book called Worms Eat My Garbage: How to set up and maintain a composting system by Mary Appelhof. Written in 1982, it tells you how to recycle kitchen food waste, save energy, produce fertilizer for house plants and gardens, grow fishing worms, and reduce waste disposal cost. It sold hundreds of thousands of copies.

Doing It!

Making up for my earlier years of brutal murderous ways, I’ve immediately and unequivocally decided to start a vermicomposting system in our urban apartment at home. Will my boyfriend appreciate it? Maybe. Will the four year old? Yes.

Looking in to some resources now, this one seems like a pretty good starting point, along with Worms Eat My Garbage. I’m also wary of what can go wrong, especially after reading about this atrocity. We’d love to hear about any experiences you’ve had with vermicomposting! Please let us know in the comments whether this has worked for you or not.

Claire Atkin

Claire is an oya lover from the West Coast, where she grew up gardening with her mom, dad, and two sisters, five bunnies, six gerbils, eleven fish, one cat, two dogs, and a plethora of avian garden visitors. She loves farm animals, the beach, and running our social media. Please say hi for questions, comments, or virtual high fives! Our contact page is below. While you're there, sign up for our newsletter to get the best deals on oyas when you most need them!

Food Diversity Is Decreasing. Grow Something Rare!

Grocery stores today carry on average forty thousand items. This sounds like a big number, but when you look at groceries, it’s actually nothing compared to what nature has to offer. According Jennifer Cockrall-King, author of Food and The City, the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization believes that over 75% of the world’s biodiversity of foods has vanished as a result of industrial agriculture. These days, despite economic and scientific expansion in the agricultural industry, we actually eat fewer diverse vegetables and fruit than our grandparents did!

Seasonality of fruit and vegetables is obscured within the walls of the grocery store. Often, while winds howl outside in February, we find the same exact vegetables in grocery stores as we do in the peak of summer. Imagine a time traveller arriving to the interior of a grocery store. The uniform temperature, humidity, and stocked shelves full of the same things all year would make it hard to guess what season it was outside!

We actually eat fewer diverse vegetables and fruit than our grandparents did! – Jennifer Cockrall-King

Often, too, grocery stores have the same things inside each one of them. Whether you go to one company or the other, very often you’ll be buying the same things. And beyond the diversity of actual foods available, according to food activists just a handful of corporations are behind 90% of the food supply in America.

All this to say that diversity is important. Diverse nutrients help our bodies grow and maintain health and wellness, and diverse fruit and vegetables help to maintain biodiversity and resilience in natural ecosystems. And rare varieties are nothing but interesting to grow.

What are your favorite veggies? Are you curious about rare heirloom varieties of broccoli? What about a digital museum dedicated to carrots? Whatever the garden good of your choice, it’s worth some quick research into resources on rare varieties. You never know what you might find on RareSeeds.com or the Smart Seed Store.

Where are your resources for rare seeds? Do you seed swap or head to the local nursery? Where do you get inspiration to grow diverse and interesting vegetables? Write in the comments or visit us on Instagram at @Growoya to let us know!

Claire Atkin

Claire is an oya lover from the West Coast, where she grew up gardening with her mom, dad, and two sisters, five bunnies, six gerbils, eleven fish, one cat, two dogs, and a plethora of avian garden visitors. She loves farm animals, the beach, and running our social media. Please say hi for questions, comments, or virtual high fives! Our contact page is below. While you're there, sign up for our newsletter to get the best deals on oyas when you most need them!

Weekly gardening links

Wear Your Salad Around Your Neck

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At the National Children and Youth Garden Symposium this week, avid gardeners gathered to show children just how easy it is to grow your own food.

Dr. Marturano started her lecture by giving out necklaces to grow sprouts in overnight. This is her way of showing how fun and easy gardening at home can be. She says

“We’ve made children aware of how healthy eating is important for them but we haven’t really reached the point of changing their behavior,” she said, “but if they grow it themselves, they want to eat it themselves.”

Rick Sherman, a school garden coordinator for the Oregon department of education, was involved in the symposium because he sees the importance of setting up the next generation for success in nutrition and access to vegetables. “It’s our duty as adults to share with kids where food comes from,” he says.

We couldn’t agree more!

Seed Swapping is Great

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Inspired by a party conversation, I recently read Seedswap: The Gardener’s Guide to Saving and Swapping Seeds by Josie Jeffery. Seed swapping is the sharing of seeds with friends, neighbours, and relatives, and exchanging knowledge and ideas. Not only is it super fun sounding, but exchanging seeds is a gesture of community goodwill, and can help in times of economic squeezes. It maintains food security and protects biodiversity, rare species, and seed genetics. At the same time, this fascinating activity helps to make sure that species of a plant is preserved and passed on. This sounds like a whole lot of wins!

“Seeds are, in a sense, suitcases in which people can transport their cultures with them… Many families have brought their favourite seeds on tremendous journeys.” -Mike Szuberla, Organizer of a seed swap in Toledo, Ohio

In the forward, Jeffrey says that seed saving and sowing are a crucial part of a much wider sustainability and self-reliance agenda, where “small is beautiful” and where we must think globally and act locally. Ever since humankind evolved from being hunter-gatherers to farmers, communities have had a vested interest in making sure the quality and security of food supplies. This included the saving, storing, and sowing of the most reliable and productive varieties of crops.

Seed saving and swapping can be a big community event, too, says Alan Phillips, the Chairperson of Seedy Sunday in Brighton, England. “The Seedy Sunday event in Brighton started just over a decade ago on the first Sunday in February. Now thousands of people come out of their winter hibernation for this community event, to swap seeds, meet old friends, buy seed potatoes, obtain heritage varieties, have coffee and cake, and listen to talks.”

Having experienced central Africa in the middle of a great drought, Josie Jeffrey says, and seen at first hand the reliance of people, livestock, and wildlife on wild plants, she is “absolutely convinced that conserving seeds is vital for our future. The act of conserving seeds has the potential to create local food security, and when conditions are right for sowing, seeds can be shared and can help enable communities to survive drought.”

Anticipation and pleasure encapsulate the essence of seed swapping for me. Sowing new acquisitions obtained from fellow enthusiasts who had a glint in their eye of the beauty or the food that they were sharing. Hopefully, the next generation of pleasure-seeking seed swappers is well on its way.

The Internet has masses of information on seed-swapping events. Ask around your area, because it is more probable that you’ll find plants that will grow well in the conditions provided by your local climate.

How to start a “Round Robin” Seed Swap:

  1. Collect names of the willing participants and provide the final list of names to everyone involved.
  2. Send a package filled with your surplus seeds to the next person on the list. If you collect your own seeds you can make beautiful seed packets with this fun tutorial.
  3. The next person will then take on packet of seeds from the package and replace it will some more seeds.
  4. The package is sent to the next person on the list, who removes and replies as above.
  5. The chain carries on until the last person on the list mails the package (which should now contain a completely different combination of seeds) back to the original organizer.

If you want to learn more about Seed Circles, Seed Libraries, and other activities and events, I recommend Seedswap – it was a lovely read, with many facts and pictures!

Claire Atkin

Claire is an oya lover from the West Coast, where she grew up gardening with her mom, dad, and two sisters, five bunnies, six gerbils, eleven fish, one cat, two dogs, and a plethora of avian garden visitors. She loves farm animals, the beach, and running our social media. Please say hi for questions, comments, or virtual high fives! Our contact page is below. While you're there, sign up for our newsletter to get the best deals on oyas when you most need them!