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Gardening and Cultivation Part Two - The Worms That Turned (Belly-Up)

2/3/2014

My February Musing (see below) contains Part One of Gardening and Cultivating. In it I refer to my ‘worm farm’ in which I breed worms to improve the very poor quality of my garden’s soil here in Perth, Western Australia.

Of all the creatures whose existence are crucial to the growth of edible crops on this planet, the bee and the earthworm are prime contenders. Of the two, I suggest the worm is the more essential. The bee is, indeed, the most prodigious pollinator of flora, but it is not alone in this. Other insects also acquire pollen (perhaps by accident rather than the "be-all and end-all" design of the bee) and fertilise plants on their travels. But the worm alone excretes a waste product essential for the healthy development of plants. Without this lowly creature there would be no agriculture, no horticulture, no domestic vegetable garden.

The ‘worm farm’ comprises three tiered plastic trays, with perforated bottoms plus lid, resting on a base tray standing on four legs which acts a reservoir. (Only two tiered trays are needed at any one time - the third tray is used for rotation purposes.) A worm consumes organic matter that passes through its system and is converted into the most essential waste product on our planet. It is capable of eating the equivalent of its own body weight every three days, which is much to its productive effort.

Without the ‘casts’ that the worm expels from its body the Earth’s top soils would remain infertile. By digesting organic matter the worm accelerates the process of decomposition many hundred times, and the end-product is a sterile compound material rich in chemical nutrients essential for the growth of plants upon which human life depends. The worm cast also contains micro bacteria that continue to break down undecomposed organic material. It provides a continuous process of soil enrichment and water retention, which is a real and present problem in Western Australia.

I acquired my worm farm at a seminar given by a commercial worm breeder sponsored by our local city council. So eager was the council to encourage recycling and composting that a 50% subsidy was offered towards the purchase price. In addition to the tiered-tray structure, there came a kilo of worms (several thousand of the little creatures) and a supply of worm casts to fill a tray and to kick-start the process.

The principle of the system is to place the worms in the top tray, with the worm casts in the tray below resting on the base tray. Shredded paper and other fibrous material is placed in the top tray and sprinkled with water. This assists decomposition and maintains a damp, cool environment that the worms require to exist, eat and propagate. Blended vegetable peelings, tea leaves and coffee grinds, even dog hair, can be fed to the worms. They will consume this feed and the shredded paper. Their progress can be observed as the fibrous mixture becomes inundated with tiny black strings - the worm casts that gradually replace the original contents of the tray.

Together with the liquid I use to sprinkle over the top tray, I add cardboard egg cartons that have been soaked in a bucket of water. The cheap fibre quickly dissolves and the mixture turns into a grey, organic soup that is easily digested by the worms, thus not only watering the tray but adding to the worms’ diet.

This liquid drains through the perforations in the bottom to the tray below containing the worm casts. Organic material is dissolved in the liquid as it passes downward, together with micro bacteria, that drips down to the base tray where it collects in the reservoir. The base tray is so designed that the liquid flows towards one end where a tap can be opened to drain this ‘worm tea’ into a container and stored. It is an excellent feed for plants, and reduces the need for purchased fertiliser.

I referred in the heading to this Musing to a calamity involving the loss of worms. It was almost catastrophic and I came close to wiping out my whole stock of worms. I have mentioned that it is important to maintain a damp environment within which the worms are contained. This to ensure the worm’s mucous membrane is maintained in good condition, failing which it will dehydrate. The process of evaporation also helps to keep the trays cool. This is a part of my daily routine in looking after the worms to which I pay particular attention, especially during these hot summer days.

I have positioned the worm farm on the southerly side of the house, under the eaves, to minimise its exposure to direct sunlight. I discovered to my cost over one weekend that this was not sufficient to keep the temperature of the tray contents adequately cool if the daily watering did not take place.

This occurred when late one Saturday afternoon while gardening I dislocated my right hip. (I had had the hip replaced 12 months earlier due to osteoarthritis, and it was the prosthesis that popped out). I fell to the ground and was completely immobile. An ambulance arrived and whisked me to the emergency department of our nearby hospital. The prosthesis was relocated and I remained in hospital overnight for observation.

The following day proved to be the hottest of the summer, reaching 44 degrees C. Encapsulated in the tender care of Fremantle Hospital I was unaware of this. I expected to be discharged by midday. I asked my wife to water the vegetables and other plants which I reckoned would not survive until evening. I gave less thought to the worms. I anticipated they could survive a day without watering as their trays were invariably damp and reasonably cool upon my daily inspection.

It was not to be. When I did eventually arrive home that afternoon I found the top two trays devoid of worms. They had all dropped down to the base tray, some clinging to each other in a writhing mass; others had already drowned in the worm tea that filled the reservoir. I carried out emergency extraction of those worms still alive, sprinkled water on the top tray and piled on the surface mounds of ice cubes to reduce the ambient temperature.

I was lucky, I had lost no more than half of my worm stock. With lots of TLC over the days following the survivors recovered from their trauma and, as nature often responds to a disaster, they were more than usually fruitful thereafter and multiplied so that their numbers increased to normal within a couple of weeks.

I will shortly return to Fremantle Hospital to have a revision carried out to the hip prosthesis. I will probably remain an in-patient for about a week. As our summer temperatures still remain high I am giving my wife a thorough course in worm farm maintenance and preservation.

Mea culpa; lesson learnt.

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Nick Fielden Copywriter www.nickfielden.com.au

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Gardening and Cultivating Part I

11/2/2014

Down to Earth with a Little Sport

For an immigrant Brit to Australia, the transition of the seasons of the southern hemisphere is probably the most significant and perhaps the most unsettling adjustment that needs to be made. January and February are scorching in Perth, Western Australia. Forget wind, rain, sleet, and English nights that extend from 5.00pm to 8.00am. Remember that come May and June you will not be welcoming spring and early summer. Summer holidays occur incongruously during the Christmas and New Year season, not when they were meant to. Everything is upside down here.

Other adjustments to life down under, such as the Aussie way of speaking, the reverse way that cricket scores are recorded, can be absorbed more easily and more quickly. Lord - or should it be Lord's? - only knows how one for fifty runs has the logic over the English version of fifty for the loss of one wicket. But I’ve given up trying to find out. The Aussies don’t know the answer themselves, and won’t explain.

I love cricket. (I’m writing during the antipodean summer). Test cricket, that runs for a series of five matches, each (potentially) for the duration of five days. You see, I’m old and can occupy myself while the radio broadcast entertains me. It is at its best listened to over the radio with a knowledgeable team of commentators who are objective, sympathetic and witty.

The Aussies are proud cricket supporters, not least because they treat sport, any sport, most seriously, hating to lose any contest, and regard the English as their bête noir par excellence. Cricket, however, is the national sport.TheTest Cricket series between the two nations is known as The Ashes, and takes place not less than once every four years, alternating between each country.

Moreover, cricket has a vocabulary that sets it apart from other sports - it’s quaint, esoteric and poetic. It incorporates words of common usage and transforms them into pictures of such strangeness: an idiosyncratic language that requires absorption and practice from early childhood to fully comprehend. A subject for a future musing.

But I digress.

I’m talking about gardening and the cultivation of plants. Incidentally, sorry to revert to cricket so soon - it does carry with it a gardening metaphor - when the batsman taps down the pitch to even out some unevenness with his bat, he is said to be 'doing some gardening'. Often, it’s regarded by observers as a sign of nervousness as he awaits the first ball by the opposition’s top pace-bowler that might well threaten his skull or, worse still, knock down his off-stump like a skittle.

But I digress again.

This growing season in the southern hemisphere has been my first venture into anything like horticulture. My aim has been to raise all plants from seeds - I am a proud gardener, or none at all. I do not wish to acquire seedlings from a garden centre that have been pre-sown and pampered by hands unknown, potentially accompanied by pests and diseases unknown. Seeds vary in quality but their worth only becomes apparent after germination, when it's too late. So, while I have had some successes, I confess to some failures. I admit to them all. Is that organic gardening?

Like every true gardener, I look to learn from my errors. I need to establish a good soil mix for my plants. I now realise that this takes perhaps a full season before planting. Perth was built on sand dunes, which ensures its soil is easily drained but, as a consequence, does not retain moisture. Water simply runs down, or often runs across the surface of a prepared bed. The local soil acquires an oily component that perhaps serves as an agent to mitigate against evaporation, but at the same time disrupts water absorption. The result is much wasted initial watering as I see the excess run down the footpath, to feed the weeds that will thrust up between the paving bricks.

In my favour, I was aware of the poor soil quality here. My failure was to recognise the extent of that inadequacy. I have applied three-year old compost to my plant beds in the hope of improving soil quality. The compost was home-produced from vegetable and fruit peelings, shredded paper, some grass clippings, crushed egg shells, etc, carefully preserved, turned, ventilated and matured; but it was simply not enough. The local soil is inert. The soil requires no less than 100% additional organic matter to feed plants and to ensure water retention.

I have had some successes in my gardening ventures. For one, I have learnt of the benefit of ‘worm farming’. The local soil is almost devoid of worms, which renders it virtually sterile. I am encouraging my worms, in my worm farm, to increase and to multiply as fast as they can.

More on that in next month’s musing. (A caveat: Perth’s summer temperatures are not worm-friendly. I have a tale to tell of near devastation).

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Nick Fielden Copywriter www.nickfielden.com.au

Just Walking The Dogs

19/12/2013

Rufus Thomas wrote a song ,‘Walking the Dog’, in 1963 and the next year The Rolling Stones sang their own version. That was in the days when The Stones were a pucka R&B band. It was a hit. I loved it. It had something of the languid pace of their later interpretation of ‘Little Red Rooster’, although a little more athletic. It was soulful, honest, simple, and captured the essence of an age when dance crazes were the thing. Walking The Dog enabled Mick Jagger to strut a bit, to develop his stage persona. Interesting how songs about animals are scattered across the panoply of pop music - not always to be taken as literal figures, though.

Richards and Jagger had not started their song-writing partnership at that time, and chose instead to interpret past standards. I always felt this was made as an honour to the singers and songwriters who had come before them; a homage, in a way. A salute to the those who ploughed the furrow into which The Stones would drop the seeds of their own success.

But I digress.

Dog-walking, not R&B, is the subject of this musing. I walked our two dogs this morning, 15th December 2013, in the Bob Gordon Reserve located in the Perth suburb of Bull Creek, Western Australia. It was still dark when we arrived, the two dogs in the back of the Honda CRV. They know the place well, as we visit it each day at approximately the same time. This morning, Rex, a one-year-old Blue Heeler/Alsatian cross, lept over the car’s back guard, so eager was he to get started. The more sedate, Hallie, a grande-dame Staffie/Mastif cross of 10 years, with a lovely brindle coat, followed him after I had opened the car’s rear gate.

Orion and his belt welcomed us from the north-west. Venus, the brightest light in the sky, untwinkling, sat to Orion’s right. The Southern Cross hung in the opposite quadrant. They don’t change, thank goodness, and thereby reassure us that while ultimately all must turn to dust, at least it will be a good while coming. You have to bear in mind, of course, that everything is history - as are the lights of the night sky.

The Bob Gordon Reserve is a well-managed open space within the local authority of Melville, that reckons it is a ‘City’. It is mainly grassed which is mown frequently during the summer, and less so in the cooler, wet months. Ancient, sentinel paper barks and a variety of eucalypts are scattered about. Most years Melville council will plant young versions of existing varieties to extend the tree cover. These saplings are generally set out in some orderly pattern, so the Reserve grows to look like a municipal park, which it is.

Within its centre, a rather small area of bush has been preserved, untended, unmanaged, where nature has been permitted to thrive, or at least to strive as it will. Of course, grasses predominate but native wild-flowers have secured a foothold, and a couple of months ago they bloomed in the shy way that Australian flora seem to do: perhaps, wisely, to avoid the heat of the sun.

Some beautiful, delicate flowers with white petals positioned above one another on the stalk, like miniature gladioli, stuck their heads out of the surrounding vegetation, and for a couple of weeks were a welcome each morning, till they suddenly wilted and drooped. Some yellow flowers, tall like poppies, spread amongst the grasses and waved languidly in the timid breeze of early spring. Confident daisies flowered above sturdy stalks and green base-leaves, brightly yellow. They are deeper-rooted and remain still.

This morning we arrived before 4.00am, but the imminent dawn was already lifting the night sky upwards from the tops of nearby trees and houses. The southern summer solstice is a week away, when the night will be at its shortest. A week after Christmas Day the dark hours for sleeping will inch their way back.

As I completed my circuit around the bush area, and came to face directly eastwards I was presented with the perfect early morning vista. There are some very old trees in the Reserve. You can tell from the diameter of their trunks, from the solid, twisted branches that hang and stretch outwards, that these fellas have been around for a good while. I look through those branches at the cloudless, lightening sky. Every one of them, every twig, every sprouting piece of foliage is set in infinite detail against the whiteness of an early dawn.

But wait. Those dogs are at it again. They are 9 years apart, yet behave together like close siblings. Rex is a relentless teaser. He will find a stick or a tennis ball that some dog-walker has left on the ground, and he will hold it between his teeth and push it towards Hallie to tempt her to take it. She never succeeds because this youngster is too quick. Moreover, he has an intelligence that belies his youth. He manoeuvers, he turns away from Hallie’s probing jaw and elludes all her advances. He pesters her to try again, coming back to her, placing a paw on her head to cajole her. Perhaps he will thrust the stick or ball towards her, actually pushing it against her jowls, as if to say, ‘Here it is, why don’t you take it?’.

Eventually, Hallie will succomb to frustration and will start barking in some half-hearted entreaty to Rex for comfort. That is my signal to walk away from the neighbouring bungalows and houses that straddle the Reserve. It’s not yet 4.30am, and I won’t be flavour of the month if the locals are roused from their beds on account of my noisy dogs.

So we travel down alongside the BMX cycle park that occupies a portion of the Reserve, straddling the main road through Bull Creek, away from the houses and back gardens. Rex is a true Blue Heeler, and carries the bulk of an Alsatian. The pure breed was reared in Queensland during the early colonial days to herd cattle. They are clever, loyal (thus ‘Heelers’) and will run and run all day.

Owning a Blue Heeler is no easy job. Intelligence results in the undoing of all sorts of restraints or obstacles put in Rex’s way to keep him orderly, and his energy means he needs constant attention. Pity any person who owns a Blue Heeler without at least 10 acres of land for it to run across. I confess we don’t own so large a spread (a mere 800 sq metre suburban lot), but I now have the time to keep the two dogs occupied so long as weather permits.

There’s one thing I have failed to mention about our morning walk. That is the birdlife. The birds of Western Australia are a fairly sociable brood, and once one of them has woken and announces its presence, the others are not far behind. But on arrival, we have preceded their dawn chorus. This morning, only a pair of jabbering Kookaburras disturb the night air from a half-kilometre away. They are often seen in pairs and their territory is wide, so you only rarely hear more than a single pair. They often call throughout the night hours, and especially shortly before dawn. During the day they tend to be silent but often settle on telegraph lines or poles to survey their domain.

The Magpies occupy the swollen, arthritic branches of the old paper-barks, often hidden by the tangled, primitive foliage. During the night it is not uncommon to hear the warble of an insomniac Magpie. Its lilting call, the most complex of any bird, gently rides the night air reminding all listeners of its presence, the length of occupation of its territory, perhaps its name and its intention to remain for many a year. At dawn the Magpies will take to the ground to feed on seeds and grubs amongst the grass. When approached, they stand with head erect, defying my trespass, until their will falters and they fly up into a tree’s safety, squawking defiance.

Even before them, a pair or trio of wild Ducks may circle the reserve, flying at tree-height and appearing to be in a great hurry. They sometimes come back for a second pass, as if they haven’t decided where to land. Occasionally, a mating pair will drop down within the Reserve to feed on the watered grass.

Before long, a brightly coloured Lesser Holland Honey-Eater will chirp up. Then will come the shrill carping of a Wattle Bird that pierces the early morning air. During the nesting season one of the parent birds will fly sorties against any living creature in the Reserve that approaches where their eggs sit. Neither humans nor other birds, no matter their size, are spared - especially dogs, whom the Wattle Birds regard as prime targets, swooping to within centimetres of the animal’s head. Hallie, now accustomed by age to these attacks, trots on unhurried and unstirred. Rex, ever the young adventurer, will give chase across the Reserve as he is lured away from the Wattle Bird’s nest.

Then appear the pairs of tiny green-necked parrots, that are not native to WA and are often vilified for occupying the nesting holes of indigenous varieties. As a newcomer, I love them - such brilliant plumage of red, black, yellow and green. I still haven’t got used to seeing parrots flying free in the wild - they should be in a cage. They fly at a hectic pace, squawking as they go, usually in pairs, one closely at the tail of the other. Then the gallas appear. Not so much in a flock as in a lazy mob, like sleepy kangaroos of the air. They are delightful birds, gregarious, noisy, and such relaxed flyers, if somewhat lopsided at times.

I went sailing on the Swan River later in the day, and saw a sea eagle and a bi-plane passing across the sky together. Lovely sight. That’s why I live in Perth - for it all.

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Nick Fielden Copywriter www.nickfielden.com.au

Gardening and Cultivation Part Two - The Worms That Turned (Belly-Up)

Gardening and Cultivating Part I

Down to Earth with a Little Sport

Just Walking The Dogs

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