Amanda Takes Off...

Last week, I watched a worm hatch in my hand. It wriggled its way out of the cocoon. Wriggle, wriggle. I watched it, fascinated.

Last weekend, Mark and his Lover came over to our house for a Korean dinner. Spicy pork, sesame leaves, red-leaf lettuce, kimchi, sesame leaf kimchi, mushrooms, three types of pajeon (green onions, mushrooms and green onions, and kimchi and mushrooms and green onions), dipping sauce, brown rice, and some raspberry wine.

Dinner

After we ate, Mark and I separated my worms (more than a pound) into two parts and we got him started on worm composting. I also harvested my compost and restarted my bin.

I actually harvested this bin in two parts, two weeks apart. I used the light harvesting method with a bit of a twist. (The light harvesting method consists of shining a bright light on the worms in the bin. They burrow down, you scrape some compost off until they appear. Let them burrow again, scrape... Repeat.)

My compost wasn't fully finished yet, so when I reached the point where I was tired of harvesting and I was having a hard time finding finished compost, I closed the bin. For two weeks, I didn't feed the worms anything. I just let them finish what was in the bin.

Well, my idea worked very, very well. I was able to harvest the second batch of compost fairly quickly (although I'm not sure Mark thought it was quick).

My first batch of compost was rather wet, so I let it dry out for about a week. Then I ran it through a piece of 1/2" hardware cloth to get some of the still-uncomposted stuff out. When I did that, I found a few worms I'd missed. Based on size, one was an adult when I missed it. The others were juveniles and hatchlings, and I'm pretty sure a few had hatched in the compost.

Freshly Harvested Vermicompost

Since that worked so well, I'll be doing the same thing with this second batch of compost. Wait a week, run it through a screen, take out new worms.

The only thing I really got wrong? I didn't think the first batch of compost looked like much, so I got a 10 liter bucket to store it. Well, letting it dry and then passing it through the hardware cloth really made it "fluff up" and now the first batch is nearly to the 6 liter mark on the bucket. Since I won't be using this compost until the spring, I will probably need a bigger bucket.

Also, there is still some unfinished stuff in the bucket. When my hardware store gets 1/4" hardware cloth back in stock, I'll be sifting the compost through that as well.

Compost, Post 1/2" Hardware Cloth

I've made a few changes to the way I worm compost. Last time I started off my bin with newspaper, but this time I started it off with a mixture of newspaper, junk mail and computer paper, cardboard and paperboard, and cotton. I usually keep my food scraps in the fridge for a week, but I read that freezing the scraps makes them decompose faster, so I'm going to try that.

Vermicomposting, Round 2

I think I did two things wrong my first time around with worm composting, so I'm going to change my methods this time.

First, I didn't keep adding paper bedding as I was adding food. I thought they'd eat the bedding and then food and if I quit adding bedding, they'd finish all the food. Instead, it got too wet and then I couldn't harvest it. (It was really wet.) Then I'd have to quit adding food and add more bedding and wait longer for the bedding to be eaten.

This time I'm going to add paper bedding about once a month. I'm figuring that they'll basically eat the food and bedding in equal amounts.

Second, I started off feeding the four corners. By the time I got to the first corner, if that food wasn't gone, I'd wait a week. This worked well. In fact, the worms mostly followed the food around the box, which made it easy to see how the worm population was growing. But then the box started getting too wet (not enough bedding!) and I'd only feed them in another corner when the first corner was entirely gone. This didn't work as well.

I'm going back to the four corners method of feeding, and I'm going to add bedding to keep the bin's moisture level right.

I did discover one great secret: if stuff grows in the bin, conditions are right. I had a onion end that grew a root a good two feet long. Most of my scallion ends sprouted as well. I had apple seeds sprouting left and right. If stuff grows in your pure compost, it'll grow in your compost-enhanced soil!

Good Man and I walked to the hardware store today. This meant we had to walk back the 1.6 miles carrying our purchase.

"I wonder what people are thinking," I said, "seeing you with a laundry basket, a foot and a half and wire mesh, and a ten liter bucket."

"They think we're organic terrorists."

So today it was election day (ugh, that crazy psycho man who thinks no woman should have access to birth control won) which meant that we could "choose" to go into work. Fairy Godmother and I chose to go in for about 2 hrs. We had a meeting and then went shopping.

I'm introducing Fairy Godmother to Korean food. She likes some types of rice cake. So we went to the 떡집, sampled some rice cakes, and bought some 꿀떡 (honey filled rice cakes). The cashier was young but had an accent (유학생, perhaps?). We conducted the whole thing in English and as I walked away I said, "수고 하세요!"

She gasped in surprise and when I turned around she was sprawled across the counter.

Score one for Amanda.

We then went to the gimbap place. I explained the various dishes to Fairy Godmother and we decided on gimbap and jjinmandu. I walked up to the counter and ordered in Korean. The woman understood me and the other people in the kitchen (who could hear me but couldn't see me) stretched their necks to see who was speaking. I do, after all, still have an accent.

More side dishes, a to-go box, a fork... Did it all in Korean.

Score another one for Amanda.

When I lived in Korea and was alone, I'd always order in Korean. Good Man and I would split ordering in Korea. But in America, Koreans never expect me to order in Korean, especially if I'm with Good Man, so I usually let him do it. If I order and he's with me, they're surprised. But if I order without him around, standing next to another white woman? They're astonished.

Tonight I peeked at my worms. I couldn't remember the Korean word. "에비? 발이?"

"벌레," Good Man said, "but we call those worms 지렁이. Earthworm."

"지 like that word I asked about last night?" Last night I'd been reading The Little Prince and kept running into 지구. I thought it might be "region" or something similar since 지역 is region.

"Ah, 지구, yes."

"지리학!" I yelled out. Geography. Good Man nodded and I smiled. "I am very clever."

지 (地) Earth
지구: globe; earth
천지: heaven and earth (also a series of forms in taekwondo)
지옥: hell
지진: earthquake
지하(철): underground (subway)
지도: map
지리(학(자)): geography (geographer)
지역: region
현지: that very spot

There are more examples, of course, but these are the ones that made me smile or nod. I've been confusing 지도 and 기도 (ji-do and gi-do, map and prayer) for years. I finally came up with "jeez, I forgot the map" and "God, I forgot to pray" to link English letters with the Korean sounds. But this root knowledge will make a much better hook!

Something is eating my plants. I don't know what it is. But it's chowing on all of my plants (except my sweet potato vine). Still, my bell peppers appear to be growing despite the leaf-eater, so I'm ignoring it.

At the beginning of this patio garden experiment I freaked out over bugs and tried killing them with various mixtures. Usually a mild mixture of soap will kill many insects, but it did nothing for the giant aphid population I had going on. I bought a commercial product and it still didn't help. My peppers looked like hell and the aphids were taking over. I was trying to do everything right and it wasn't working.

In addition, I was trying to do everything right be fertilizing my plants weekly, as recommended. I found out that using my "organic" fertilizer wasn't helping. Aphids feast on the new leaves that chemical fertilizers cause to rapidly grow.

While all of this was going on, I was reading In Defense of Food. I was reading about commercial crop production and how horrible it is for soil to be over-fertilized and insecticided.

So I stopped. I bought some ladybugs to eat the aphids. I figured the aphids would come back with a vengeance after the ladybugs left, because, well, I couldn't force the ladybugs to stick around. So I was set to buy ladybugs monthly.

I unleashed the ladybugs at night. I had ladybugs eating aphids for about three days, and then they were all gone.

And they—the ladybugs and the aphids—haven't come back. It's been two or three months and I haven't seen a single aphid.

I left my cayenne peppers outside drying for a bit too long and something started eating them. I harvested the last few peppers while they were green and let them turn red on my counter, indoors.

When I was spraying for bugs and fertilizing weekly, my bell peppers kept flowers and producing peppers, but when the peppers became golf-ball sized, they'd fall off the plant and rot. Since I've quit screwing with the plants, peppers have been growing. And staying on the plant.

This whole experiment with patio gardening has taught me a few things. First, growing things can be a pain in the ass, and I'm feeling greater appreciation for farmers. Second, next year I'm going to try to use commercial products as little as possible. I should have a good amount of vermicompost by then, and now that I know the ladybug trick? Third, I think Americans in general expect produce to be bigger than it naturally should be. Fourth, cooking something with something you grew feels fantastic. I have been known to point at cayenne rounds in our kimchi kkigae, only to say, "Hey, I grew that cayenne right there." Fifth, letting plants do their own thing seems to work better for me than doing what's "right."

Hence, I'm ignoring whatever bug is chowing down on my plant leaves. Instead I'm taking it as a sign that it's time to remove the dying cayenne plants. It's time to trim back the mint. I'm time to whack back the basil.

I whacked down my basil. I made some pesto out of the two cups of good leaves I got. Dumped that over three-turned-into-six chicken breasts (seriously, American chickens are too big) and tossed it in the slow cooker for an hour and a half. Made GABA brown rice to go with it. When the brown rice was finished cooking, I steam cooked green beans for five minutes. Served the chicken over the rice and spooned some of the liquid in the slow cooker over it. Served it with freshly grated Parmesan cheese. It tasted wonderful.

I thought my vermicompost was about ready for harvesting today, but I was wrong.

One way to harvest the compost is to dump it on plastic and expose the pile to light. The worms are supposed to dive down into the compost (they don't like light). You then scrape off a layer of compost, let them dive deeper, and scrape again. Repeat until you have a wriggly mass of worms left over. Easy, right?

Well, my compost has been really wet lately, probably because I've been overfeeding it. I ended up smooshing all of the worms and the compost to one side of the bin and propping that side up on two yogurt cups. Over an hour or so a lot of water flowed to the other side. It was probably a good six cups or so, and the composty stuff was still too wet.

Still, I figured I'd harvest the compost. But there was a lot more unfinished material in it than I thought. Plus, it was rainy and not too bright out, so the worms didn't really go anywhere. The lack of light combined with too much unfinished material made any worm diving difficult at best.

I took ALL of the compost out, and dumped the leachate. I added fresh, damp newspaper and dry corn husks and silk. I then went through the compost and sort of aerated it by hand and put it on top of all of the new bedding. I found worms all over. Inside packed newspaper, in clumps of compost, in banana stems.

Egg production is down, as is the mature worm population, probably because it's too damn wet. Hopefully since I'm adding all of this fresh bedding, the worms will have more food and get happy and bring their sexy back. I still have a lot of worms, so it's not like I've accidentally killed them all.

Oh well. Learn as you go. Maybe I can harvest my first batch of vermicompost by the new year.

Since Good Man didn't have a SSN, getting a credit card in America would've been nearly impossible. But in order to be approved for his green card, we needed to show joint finances. So I added him to one of my credit cards as an authorized user. Of course, this did nothing to actually create a credit record. He's basically non-existent on the financial playing field in America.

When we got his SSN last week, I called MBNA and asked to add his as a joint account holder. The woman asked Good Man a bunch of questions. I listened in and told him how to answer. She rattled off the whole "we're going to use this number to find out information about you and you might be denied but if you're not you're responsible for the bills and..." thing. I just told him to say yes.

Found out today that indeed, he is now joint on my account.

Let the slow slide into Americanism begin... Credit cards are just the first step...

I made kiwi-strawberry ice cream last night. (OK, more like "ice milk" because they were out of cream at the grocery store!) Kiwis, strawberries, sugar, milk, vanilla. Ended up being pale, pale pink and full of seeds. Just tart enough.

My worm bin is about ready to be harvested. My population is growing. The original newspapers are entirely gone. Food goes pretty quickly, too. Right now the whole system is a bit too wet, so I've been adding small amount of dry paper daily to try and get the moisture down a bit. I'm going to feed the worms one more time this week and then starve them for a while until all the bits of brown (paper, cardboard, etc) and green (kitchen scraps) are gone.

I can tell the compost must be some good (worm) poop because stuff grows wild in it.

Carrrots

Scallion? Leek?

Sprouting Bok Choy 'Flower'

Random Sprouts (Peppers, Maybe?)