By Ken Sakamoto, Star-Bulletin
Lawrence Koga's wiggly worms turn kitchen waste into
rich compost, eating their weight in garbage each day.
WORMS "R" Us. Lawrence Koga, a computer whiz and ham radio operator, has a scientific mind and believes in research before making decisions. Two of these findings are that you don't need soil to grow vegetables, and worms, not dogs, are man's best friend. Worms squirm
into hydroponicsKoga supports hydroponic gardening, a method of growing plants without soil in water enriched with nutrients. But if you do plant in soil, and most of us will continue to landscape our homes by growing gardens in the earth, you need compost, and compost needs worms. "I have a box 3 feet by 1-1/2 feet by 8 inches deep. I throw all the kitchen waste and leftover food into it. The worms eat it and turn it into compost. Five pounds of worms will eat 5 pounds of garbage every day."
The glitch here is that 1 pound of worms is anywhere from 1,500 to 2,000 wiggling things, so 5 pounds could be up to 10,000 worms, and the notion of 10,000 of them in a box not much bigger than a TV set is unnerving.
Important point -- the box has a lid.
However, Koga says it works, and that there is no smell because the worms work fast, and in more than one way. "They double in number every 60 days. They eat and they breed, and they leave worm casts that are a great soil amendment. When the worms have eaten the kitchen waste and turned it into compost, you dump the whole thing, worms and all, into your garden and work it into the soil." Koga provides his mother with this compost and says she grows prize-winning papayas and tomatoes.
A happy worm will stay in the box, but occasionally you find revolutionaries. "You will find a mass migration of the worms if any one of three things is wrong. When they don't like the soil, when the population is too high or when the soil conditions change they will leave."
This leaves the impression of the kindergarten song about ants, changed to worms. "The worms go marching two by two, hooray, hooray," and you envision worm armies mustering under your plumeria tree. Koga says no. All this happens underground where worms spend their time. They do a lot of good down there, aerating the soil.
If you want to know more about worms, Koga is giving a class on "Worm Farm and Vermicomposting" from 9:30 to 11:45 a.m. Dec. 6 at Lyon Arboretum. Call 988-7378 for information and registration.
Koga will not only explain what to do with your own garden worms, but will provide a starter kit of worms for any of the worm-challenged members of the class. Kids are welcomed, and they like worms.
If you don't, then maybe hydroponic gardening is for you. Not only does this form of growing plants prohibit worms, it discourages almost all insects and weeds. Hydroponics is not a new idea, Koga said. The earliest recorded references date back to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The Aztecs in Mexico and the Chinese boat dwellers grew plants on rafts in rivers and lakes.
"People forgot about it for a long time, but then the idea was revived by the Army in World War II. They needed to grow fresh vegetables for the troops in places like Greenland and islands in the South Pacific, and they were too busy to farm. So they remembered hydroponics."
But you won't want to take on anything of those proportions. Koga grows tomatoes in a 5-gallon pail. "You can buy them for $1 each from bakeries and for a little more at the supermarket, or you can use those 99 cent foam coolers," he said. The idea is to keep the container small because larger containers require water circulation units. The bucket or cooler will need a plastic top into which holes can be cut. "Gentlemen farmers use the automatic hydroponic tanks, but if you spend that much, you aren't going to want to fiddle with them, and you won't learn much."
He said that just about any vegetable except a potato will grow hydroponically. "Tomatoes, green onions and Manoa lettuce are a good place to start. Lettuce is a quick crop, and you can harvest a head of lettuce in 3 to 4 weeks, where it takes as much a six weeks for one to grow in the ground. They have the same food value, but they taste slightly different. Lettuce leaves are a little more leathery grown hydroponically, but if you pick them early you can avoid this."
A hydroponic garden not only takes a fraction of the space of a conventional garden, but you won't need to use chemicals since bugs and weeds don't like all that water. But you will need a commercial nutrient to keep your plants alive. Koga buys his at Kahala Greenery which also sells the more high tech hydroponic tanks. "You can make the nutrient yourself, but its a humbug job because you need a lot of ingredients that are hard to find," he said.
Koga uses plastic yogurt cups and the polyester filling stuffed in cheap pillows. He likes yogurt, so it's just a matter of saving the cups, and he buys the pillows at the Salvation Army. He punches small holes into the bottom of the yogurt cup. He stuffs the seedling into a handful of the pillow filling and then shoves the filling into the yogurt cup. The he cuts a round hole into the top of the bucket or cooler, less than the circumference of the yogurt cup and secures the cup in the hole.
The roots will grow down through the holes in the bottom of the cup into the water, the weak young plant will grow out of the cup, and the stuffing supports it as it grows.
"You can start from seeds, but then it takes a lot longer. I buy seedlings at garden shops," he said.
As the water evaporates, the nutrients must be replaced, but all of this is explained on the package. Koga said that there aren't any good books on this simple method of hydroponics, but he does teach occasional classes in the subject at Moiliili Community Center and Lyon Arboretum.
So when you harvest your hydroponic lettuce and tomatoes, remember to throw the leftovers into your compost box for the worms. They love green salad, and won't migrate if they have a dependable source.
Gardening Calendar in Do It Electric!
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