Thanks for embedding those for me! Some times I can get them to embed and sometimes I cannot.
I popped open the worm towers today. I had STUFFED them both full of scraps, eggs shells, etc. a few weeks ago. As of today they have about 1/3 to 1/2 of a tube available for more stuffing of scraps! So they seem to be working.
Makes me wonder...
Since we all know
compost gets HOT... and we all know that soil in raised beds tend to warm up a few weeks earlier in the growing season than the ground...
Aren't those
composting worm bins being directly in the soil going to be like little
heaters for the soil?!?!
This may play out to equal faster growing greens in the cool season. As well as soil life that never goes fully dormant on those warm Winters like we experienced in my region this year. I don't think I saw much frost till late December.
I want to run some crazy funny numbers here really quick. Bare with me...
The bed cost me a little over $150 to build.
Just the other day I saw some micro heads of lettuce for sale for $4 at a
local farm.
I am currently growing out 12 Large heads of lettuce right now in the bed. (really several more since half of them were double plantings). So I will call each of them being worth $5 a head even though they are about 4 times the mass of those $4 heads I saw.
I have 4
tomato plants that can produce an average of 15lbs to a max to say 75lbs to tomatoes this year(I am not that good but I like to dream).
I will grow carrots under the tomatoes when the lettuce is gone. (maybe 10lbs of unknown value I will not count)
Then I can grow another crop of lettuce or two this Fall in the same beds again.
So for the lettuce lets be on the slim side and say I grew 24 heads at $5 value each every year. That would be about $120 worth of lettuce every year. (possibly much more)
I don't know the Summer prices but this Winter the conventional tomatoes were about $1 each at the store. So lets just pretend we grew just a dismal 15 large tomatoes on each of the 4 plants every year. That would equal out to $60 a year. (very easy to reach but would need a
greenhouse for those Winter prices)
I am not going to count the carrots or cilantro or whatever I could grow there too.
I
should be able to easily
pump out $180 worth of produce a year in a 2'x8' space. So a less than 1yr return on investment!
Also, Since these can be put on wheels you can stack them so that there are No Rows between plantings. Just pull aside when you want to make a pass.
Here comes some funny math! Lol Hang on tight.
An
acre of
land is over 43,000sq/ft. You could put about 2,687.5 of these beds in a space that size(not really if you want it to function).
That would be about $483,750 worth of produce per acre per year. If you get organic certified it would drastically increase.
Just sayin
Just daydreaming a little too... But I bet one could make a decent living with this if they slowly worked up to it over the years. You have to be able to sell what you grow.
Marty