Plant Sightings

Catnip is probably one of the first herbs that people learn about that has a purpose other than food for humans. We all adore our pets and provide them much love and affection, not to mention toys and treats.

Felines love their catnip and we’re only too happy to oblige them their desire. After all, we don’t have mice. We have cats.

We see to it each year that wild, native catnip, Nepeta cataria, seeds are spread about in offering to the little mousers everywhere. Cats rub against the plants and chew on a leaf now and then. One of the big boys holds down a fresh leaf that I’ve given him with one paw and licks the leaf to shreds until he’s down to the stem.

Flowering catnip, pre-harvest. Photos taken 16Sep08.

For fun during the cold season, when catnip will only be growing in a planter at our latitude, we harvest a few plants and dry them.

Harvesting the catnip is as easy as pulling up the entire plant, or cutting the stems off near the ground, and laying the stems on a clean surface for a few days. Don’t pile a lot of stems together so that the leaves can dry out and turn the stems everyday so all parts of the plant can dry. I covered a bench with a large black plastic bag to be able to collect the seeds that might otherwise roll away.

Cut off the flowering tops and carefully strip the leaves from the stems so that they’re not crushed. Careful handing will help to retain the aromatic compounds that attract the kitties.

Catnip, dried on a clean surface.

Not only do cats enjoy catnip, but people can enjoy it, too. Use the dried leaf in making tea – it’s especially nice blended with any of the mints.

Once your catnip is completely dry save it in a glass container.

If you’re looking for a little catnip or just the seeds, check out my ebay auctions of catnip this weekend.

In nature Red Wiggler worms, Eisenia fetida, can be found among and underneath the leaves and throughout the top layer of soil where materials are available to the worms as a food source. Leaves, decaying plant matter, just about anywhere in this zone that you find decaying organic matter, you’ll find some kind of worm and red wigglers are typically found in the leaf litter.

Homemade worm bins come in all sizes and shapes, but most are variations on a simple plastic box. The requirements for a mini-worm farm are to provide them food and shelter. We’ve already touched on the food part and using a crock to hold kitchen scraps until they can be fed to the worms.

Shelter for the worms means you need to provide a place for the colony to survive, thus the box. Worms in nature are mostly underground or otherwise out-of-sight, so a lid for the box is needed to duplicate a dark, natural place for the worms to live.

As time goes on liquid accumulates in the worm bin due to the natural cycles of material breakdown, so we must provide a way for excess liquid to be removed from the worms’ living quarters. This is where the variation comes in the design of home made worm bins. If liquid is allowed to accumulate in the box your worms will try to find a way out. When this happens the worms usually don’t get too far away before they encounter difficulties and dry up.

Some folks drill or cut holes in the bottom of the plastic box that houses the worms. Liquid is then collected on a tray or in another plastic box. Others invent some sort of tap for collecting the liquid.

Worm juice can be diluted by about 1/10 with water and used as a dilute fertilizer for plants.

Using shredded paper for bedding in a worm bin gives another benefit to the earth in that we can recycle some paper instead of dumping it in a land fill. Also, if the worms run out of food scraps, they will eat the paper!

Here’s my little bean pot. It even has a lid! I use it to collect a few days of coffee grinds, tea bags and vegetable scraps from the kitchen.

Bean pot with a lid for saving food scraps to feed my worms.

The occasional cutting of a houseplant, bits of string, egg shells, just about anything that’s organic can go in there. Red wiggler worms are not particular about the rotting organic foods that we offer to them in our little worm bins. They’ll even eat the paper bedding.

The only types of foods that are recommended NOT to be fed to your worms are oil-based foods, like meats, cheeses or oils. Any dinner plate scraps go to the dogs while food preparation scraps go to the worms.

Worms are our friends. They convert lots of organic material as part of Nature’s food webs. We can take advantage of this fact by farming with worms, where the desired product is compost, a source of available nutrients for plants.

Recycling food waste and house plant clippings into compost is very desirable. We can save on the expense to haul the waste away and get a beneficial product in return for a few moments of our attention. It takes only a few minutes to separate food wastes or plant clippings into a separate container for feeding your worms.

Feeding your worms can be as easy as opening the cupboard under your kitchen sink, raising the lid on the worm bin and throwing in the scraps – no meat, cheese, or oils, please. Ours is in the garage, so we place kitchen scraps in an old bean pot that sits on the counter by the sink. It took me forever and many a flea market to find one with a lid, but persistence pays off!

There are more modern-looking solutions to the bean pot. Just make sure you get a compost bucket with a lid!

It’s easy to get started recycling your kitchen waste into compost gold.

Six steps to recycling kitchen waste:

1. Get worms. Use Red Wiggler worms.
2. Set up bin. Large plastic container with lid and tray or spigot to remove excess liquid and air holes for the worms.
3. Get crock. Pail with a lid or compost container for holding kitchen waste.
4. Tear up newspaper. Any paper will do fine for bedding. Newspaper, envelopes, junk mail, old bills, any paper, colored or not.
5. Add worms to moist bedding and empty food waste crock into bin.
6. Keep moist. Use a spray bottle to keep moist or soak paper in water before adding to bin.

Compost has been shown to be a rich source of nutrients for plants. The nutrients in worm castings, as their poop is called, are highly available, which means that the nutrients in compost are more easily absorbed or used by the plants as compared to the nutrients in chemical fertilizers.