On Tuesday, June 28th we had an open meeting in our treehouse to work on two of our vertical gardening systems. One of them is the hydroponic “Lush Jungle” system where plants will cover a large surface on the wall. The other one is the “vermiculture system”, a compost system with worms.
In the last few weeks, Miriam and Tim, both Urban Garden and Free Space Management students at local Beuth University, calculated which plants work well for the big hydroponic system. Anna looked up pictures online and cut them out so we could place them next to each other to design the garden. But there were more suggestions for plants delivered this evening. The two experts explained why the system had to be homogenous and simple and why flowering plants are a bad idea. Eventually, we will select five final plants which we will cut out on the computer so we can design the garden. The whole system should be ready by the end of August/beginning of September. In a next step we also have to think about setting up the watering system in the cellar.
The vermiculture group was very blessed to have Hany Elkhodary, Co-founder of Würmer Hof, come all the way from Frankfurt Oder to meet and help out with the worm compost system. He had some valuable insights for us: Give the worms some leaves to balance the carbon/nitrogen levels. Separate the soil from the worms by holding a light over the soil, then scrape away the first layer and so on. We should also cut the kitchen scraps into pieces. Worms won’t travel from one box to another, we should just duplicate the same system in the other box.
Next up: Get the worm gang together, harvest some fresh compost, find a way to chop the kitchen waste in a WG-friendly way.
