“Nothing is more the child of art than a garden.” — Sir Walter Scott
Here are some gardening tips for a happy garden that I just wrote up for a friend who is buying land in Sicily and travels a lot. These suggestions are doable by oneself and the worms will sustain themselves for months at a time without sustenance if you are a traveler like myself.
Mulch, mulch, mulch! I practice a technique my son taught me called Chop & Drop. When I prune and trim, I leave the cuttings on the soil around the plants. This includes big branches. The mulch rings around our fruit trees are up to 3 feet high. It breaks down quickly and provides nutrients for the soil plus a rich environment for worms and bugs. It also retains moisture in the soil for three times longer than barren, racked ground.
Worms! I love my worms. I have a worm bin where I drop all my kitchen green waste including coffee grinds and egg shells but no salt, oil or meat. It is a big sink and I have a plywood lid on the top to prevent rodents from digging in it. After the worms eat up all the waste, there are piles of rich loam you can spread in the garden but the real benefit is the worm juice that drips out of the bottom via the sink hole into a bucket. Pour this directly on your plants and they will grow like crazy!
To make the worm bin, get a large, old kitchen sink and prop it up on cinder blocks so you can stick a bucket under the drain hole. First lay screening on the bottom, then cover with gravel, then add a few shovels full of regular dirt plus some green waste. Find red worms and add them to the pile. They should start eating and multiplying within 2 weeks.
PS: The hibiscus in my hand is from my beautiful garden in Hawai’i that is currently being threatened by active lava flows. Nothing is permanent—even my wonderland of fruits and flowers cultivated over the last decade.
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