vermiculation

Preparing the planting beds gives us a chance to recycle some waste material and see if we can help promote worm growth. Worms fertilize the soil, so we want to give them some habitat and nourishment. We laid a layer of paper on the bottom of the corner planting bed in order to keep the weeds down. The recently ended school year left with with an ample supply of homework and notebooks that should serve this purpose well. On top of the paper, we laid a layer of corrugated cardboard to provide the worms with some habitat...

We've got lots of cardboard packaging to use. The cardboard is a good bedding material to use for vermiculture, though a lot of people will shred the cardboard first to provide an easier medium through which the worms can move. We laid the cardboard loosely enough that it should be fine.

The next step involved raking soil over the cardboard-note paper lasagna. We've got a good amount of soil left over from the septic system excavation, and much of it seems to have a fair amount of organic material already in it. We'll add more organic material as we start composting, but for now we're curious to see how well this existing soil works for our plants.