Shadyside Worms

Garlic is often overlooked by gardeners in Pennsylvania, but it is incredibly easy to grow and there are dozens of varieties to try.

Garlic is most often planted in the fall in the Zone 5/6 temperate zones, but it is easy to plant, and often times it is worth planting in the spring if you forgot to plant last year.

Now that March is just around the corner, it is important to find yourself some quality garlic- preferably “seed” garlic if you can find it. Local farmers like Enon Valley Garlic Company are typically sold out of their seed garlic varieties this time of year, but grocery stores like East End food cooperative and Giant Eagle Market District often sell quality garlic that will make do as seed garlic. Sometimes you can find special varieties like elephant garlic, but you can also look for any kind of organic garlic, and check to see if some of what they are selling is starting to sprout:

sprouting fresh garlic

The earliest time to plant garlic in the spring is in March, when you can start to work the soil. It helps to have 3+ days above 40 degrees. Make sure you have some quality compost to put in your garden bed before planting, or get some worm castings to mix in to your soil. When we get a good 2-3 days of guaranteed warm weather, and you can work the soil to add your compost, go ahead and get ready to plant. Planting in March will give you whole cloves of your own homegrown garlic by July/August.

Planting your garlic is easy, but I will leave it to Enon Valley garlic Company to give you concise directions. Get out there and play in the dirt!

http://www.enonvalleygarlic.com/growing-garlic.html

After surviving the past two winters of bitter cold, it’s important to be prepared this time of year when it comes to backyard composting! First thing you need to do is find a source of fresh wood chips. Find a neighbor doing some tree trimming, or a small tree company in your area one day, and see if they will help you out. Make sure the wood chips are from a deciduous tree- the resin in coniferous trees prevents rapid decomposition and the compost will not reach higher composting temperatures desired to last through a cold winter.

Pile up at least one yard of wood chips (3′ x 3′ x 3′) and get them soaking wet. Depending on the percentage of bark, which adds nitrogen, the pile will heat up to a range of temperatures. Regardless, even wood chips with lots of bark and leaves can still have a high carbon/nitrogen ratio of 300:1. This leaves plenty of room to add vegetable waste throughout the winter before reaching the 30:1 ratio of carbon(browns) to nitrogen(greens) desired.

Wood Chips in Gardening and Composting- check it out!

If you’re confused about what you can add while still keeping an active compost heap, check out this great website below that provides a source calculator. Remember to keep the carbon content high while slowly increasing nitrogen over the winter, and keep your compost heap covered with straw or leaves to maintain a hot, humid environment.

http://www.klickitatcounty.org/solidwaste/fileshtml/organics/compostcalc.htm

A great fall scavenger hunt!

We used the colorful leaves, flowers, and grasses we found to decorate our house plants.

My favorite colors are the red maple leaves with the dark purple hibiscus flower.

We are opening the doors at Shadyside Nursery Saturday April 25th!
Come down and get some worm castings for your garden or talk to us about
composting and vermiculture! We have lots of workshops, events, and even a CSA planned this year!

This is a lovely article about our trip to Allentown to teach some kids in an afterschool program about composting and worms, check it out!

The Brashear Kids

If you are looking to set up workshops for your organization or business this spring or summer, send us an e-mail and we can get started planning!

If you’re one of the many people that would like to compost, but don’t have a yard or the proper space, you finally have a way to do it! Our residential composting program, the Curbside Compost Exchange, is designed just like your recycle pickup, except we take your food scraps and return fertilizer that you can use to enrich your soil, or donate to a local community garden or urban farm program.

A big THANK YOU to my good friend Brent Riley, owner of Access Media Labs out of Frederick, MD for helping us out with some super awesome stickers for our compost buckets! I’m too excited not to post some pictures. I LOVE ‘EM! 😀

Our 2 gallon, or 3.5 gallon compost buckets

This past week we have been fortunate enough to teach some composting workshops to a few summer camp groups at the EECO center(Environment and Energy Community Outreach) in Larimer.
It has been so much fun! The kids are learning all about nutrient cycles, composting, and of course WORMS! We even take a trip to Larimer’s community garden to get some hands on work done.
If you would like to have Shadyside Worms teach some workshops on composting or soil science, shoot us an e-mail so we can set up a meeting with you and make great things happen for your community.

shadysideworms@gmail.com

Please take some time to check out all of the the cool things we have to offer here, from worm bins to our composting program- but more importantly, take some time to go out in nature and enjoy the beautiful ecosystems all around western Pennsylvania! Appalachia is a truly unique place to live in and explore, and this time of year there is nothing more beautiful than the natural composting that feeds our wilderness.

Sometimes we wish we could spend more time out in the wilderness, but this is also a busy time of year for composters with all the urban gardening/farming projects going on. Our apologies if it is hard to reach us, PLEASE keep trying, we value our customers, and hope that as we chug along through our second year, we will be able to make more time for everyone!

THANK YOU!