I hope the red wigglers — natives and imports — do their thing

I’m always startled when someone asks me for gardening advice. Oh, I’ve had some good years when the squash vines were above my knees and there were enough tomatoes to share throughout the neighborhood. But more often I’m picking squash bugs twice a day and trying to figure out what is eating the beet seedlings and gnawing on the peppers.

I’m a great bad example.

For instance, the young handyman who makes my life so much easier built more raised beds on the “back 40” last winter to go with the three he built a couple of years ago.

Before I go any further, let me assure you I spent a long time measuring everything, from the trellises I didn’t want to move to the beehives sheltered by the neighbor’s block wall. I read a lot about how wide the boxes should be and figured two blocks high would be adequate for stability and my back muscles. I thought I knew what I was doing.

A couple of hundred cement blocks later and six beds of various sizes and shapes, it was apparent I hadn’t thought of everything. A couple of bags of potting soil would be lost in all that space. Obviously, there had to be an alternative to all the money it would cost to fill them with soil.

Since I don’t have to live on what I grow — at least right now — I took the long approach: a layer of newspapers, one of cardboard, a hodgepodge of leaves, grass clippings, organic kitchen scraps, small branches pruned off the apple and cherry trees, straw, and on the top, a couple of trailer loads of compost.

The idea was that I’d plant shallow-rooted crops like beans and cucumbers in a thicker layer of compost along the edges and let them grow over a trellis while the center layers rotted. I knew not to expect much from compost because they would yield lots of greenery and not much fruit. But sometimes I’m an optimist.

The paths between the beds were where I made my biggest mistake. Oh, I put down more cardboard and covered it with straw to kill out the weeds, but I didn’t measure the wheelbarrow I rely on to move everything heavy. It didn’t fit on the paths.

Lots and lots of five-gallon buckets of compost later and bales of straw balanced on the kids’ old wagon, and a few things had been planted. Some things even thrived. The bindweed still made its way up the edges inside and outside the planter boxes but progress was made.

It was no problem that only a few tomatoes had actually ripened when the first frost hit or that a couple of the plants didn’t yield anything. The year-old beds had bumper crops of cherry tomatoes, sweet peppers and garlic. (Garlic is a heavy feeder I found out and I didn’t replenish the soil adequately so the heads were smaller than a year ago. That’s another learning experience.)

We will see what happens next year, is my ongoing philosophy.

So with more than a little help from Kenny the handyman, the last of the season’s grass clippings and what seemed like tons of leaves were heaped on the beds. I prayed the wind wouldn’t blow them all out before rain settled them in.

But then just as it was time to quit for the year, I read again in a real gardener’s column about how worms can quickly break down plant material and create soil. Figuring it would take awhile for the resident red wigglers to work their way up through the cardboard and branches and not wanting to buy bait worms a dozen at a time, I looked online. Two days after I hit the “buy” button, Uncle Jim in Pennsylvania, with FedEx’s help, delivered a small bag containing a fist-sized knot of the writhing little red critters.

I was so pleased with how healthy they looked, I grabbed a small shovel and started digging small holes in the beds, wanting to spread them out as much as possible. There was no need. Every shovelful turned up red wigglers. Every single hole was full of resident worms.

I know even less about worms than I do about gardening design, but I figure Uncle Jim and I have done our bit to diversify some Idaho genetics. That can’t be all bad.

The only question now is how fast they will work. When the weather starts to warm up, which could be sooner rather than later this year, we will find out.

A final note: The big spruce tree in my front yard might have a handful of cones on it compared with most years when there are literally hundreds. I noticed that last fall and wondered if it was a sign of a mild winter to come. February is just around the corner so it’s too soon to make anything like an accurate weather prediction, but I expect I’ll pay more attention to things like cones and woolly caterpillars’ black stripes in the future.

Lee is an longtime gardener and a retired Lewiston Tribune reporter. She may be contacted at sandra.lee208@gmail.com.