Are you out there, Bencjedi? Would love to hear a report on how your worm cast fertilization observations turned out. I'm kind of assuming that your worm castings included little worms and eggs, right? If we use 'soil' rather than 'mix', it gets too heavy because there are no worms for aeration. The 'mix' to me means dead soil, and not best for the plants to thrive. I'm following with interest the Australian 'wicking worm beds' where a worm feeding station is incorporated into the planter. You can check it out at http://www.easygrowvegetables.com/html/easygrow.html I sure would love to have some of you folks try the worm stations in your EarthTainer systems and let us know how it affected plant growth.

Yeah those kids are smart as hell! I plan to get the tubing to make it happen just as they show in their videos. Not all teens sit around playing video games and texting I guess. ;) I grew up on a real farm and texting wasn't invented yet (and cell phones were too pricey for any farm kid to own). I just had video games, but they always took a back seat to school and working for my family. Yup.. we both shared "The Yellowing" of our plants. So far so good with adding that sifted pine bark and more perlite. I cannot remember the initial proportion of peat to vermiculite to perlite that I used for my base soil medium, but I remember it was said the proportion that Miracle Gro uses in their non Moisture-control. The only reason I made my own (which was a lot of work) was because I had 5 Earthtainers to fill and it was cheaper in the long run and I didn't mind getting my hands dirty. I mixed this in the 3:2:1 ratio (soil medium:pine bark:more perlite) for this year's mix. Anyhow you're probably asking about the fertilizer mixes, so for that I used 1 measuring cup of OLD Tomato-Tone + 1 cup of NEW Tomato-Tone for the fertilizer strip (in a 30ga ET). I blended those together and laid the strip. Then for EACH tomato hole I put in approximately 1 cup of my homebrew worm casts. My worm bins are very simple. Take two 5-gallon buckets, drill 3/8" holes randomly through the bottom of one bucket (50 holes or something). Fill this bucket with shredded paper (junk mail, paper bags from fast food and credit card offers are what I use). You will want to moisten the paper and squeeze the water out like a sponge, so it is just damp. This is the worm bedding. Add this and then next add worms and organic matter like banana peels (primarily my worm's major source of material). I use red wiggler worms provided by a class I took a few years ago at UK. Put this bucket inside the other bucket which will serve as the outer bucket to catch whatever drips from the worm's activity above. I use that worm leechate on my Blueberry bushes. Also get a lid for the worm bucket bin. The worms get enough oxygen by lifting the lid every now and then to toss in more organic waste for them to work the bacteria off of. I've gone weeks without lifting the lid. The hardest part of the worm bin is collecting the casts 6-8 months later. I can describe that process if you want. Here's what my bins look like: From 050509 Harvesting: From 022810 From 022810

I am about ready to construct my 3 ETs thanks to Ray helping me out with the wicking baskets. I am going to try the removable cages. Home Depot sells the 24" 1/4" threaded rods for $1.47. Unlike bdobs, my local store sells the 36" ones for $5.87 each! , so needless to say I went with the shorter ones. I don't think I am even going to cut them.. I just hope they are not too heavy to adversely affect the cage support system and the aeration bench. The extra length above the soil might help a little for the taller tomato plants too. Then again..with enough twisting patience, I could twist the nut high enough on the bottom of the rod where the reservoir is to give some stilt-like support to the bench. That will give 8 points of 4" extra support in addition to the 4" cut drain pipe pieces for the bench. This might not be a bad idea since I am using the cheaper, thinner Sterlite totes ($7.50 each at Walmart). I don't want that cage system to jab a hole through the bottom of the reservoir, so I'm trying to come-up with a cheap way to add protective 'shoes' to the bottom of the rods. Possibly soda caps from 2-litter bottles of Coke can be 'shoes' glued to them. I bought the Glamos cages a few years ago at Walmart and accidentally took almost double. When I got home and was pulling the cages apart I noticed my mistake. I returned the extras to Walmart, but I bet that happens very commonly, especially when Walmart just asks you to run out and pull the UPC off one of them and run back to the check-out and asks you for quantity. Ooops! My cages are bent at the 'feet' from trying too hard to jam them through subsurface slabs of limestone deep in my garden, so when I get pictures up to share, don't be surprised by the artsy-look of the randomly re-formed shape of my cages.

Posted by rnewste 8b NorCal (My Page) on Fri, Feb 27, 09 at 0:49 Hey Big Alan, How are you doing tonight? You air "injection" has some interesting possibilities. It would be interesting to grow the same variety in one 'Tainer with, and one without the air injection, as a comparison. Air to the roots is quite important. Raybo Ray, I will be doing just this. I don't really have any way for mosquitoes to get into the containers other than the tiny overflow hole. Since going with the float valves for the autowatering setup, I was planning on trying an air stone in one of the containers to see what kind of difference it made. I also will be just using water soluble ferts in the resevior instead of a fertilizer strip. I'll still adjust the mix with epsom salts and lime as needed, but I want to see what I can do with the water soluble ferts. My generic plan is to have a 35 gallon trash can that I will fill with the soluble ferts, and have it feed the containers via 1/2" line to the float valves. I figure I'll have to fill it once every two weeks in the summer when the tomatoes are really drinking the water down. I will be trying it on my three already made containers. If it works I will add it to the four containers I plan on making this spring. I'll have 2 cherry, 2 slicing, and the other 2 Opalka plants in the three test containers. The other 4 containers will just have either Opalka or romas in them.