our homestead: readying my greenhouse for spring

Worms still working hard in the worm bin.

Loosening the soil and spreading compost in the greenhouse.

The sun came out of hiding again yesterday, so despite the cold, I decided to get some work done in the greenhouse that I'd been meaning to do for a while now. Ever so often over the winter, I've been casually adding small pails of compost, egg shells and coffee grounds to the soil in my greenhouse, trying to build it back up for spring. Yesterday, I decided it was time to do a more thorough job and haul my entire worm bin (which I keep outside my dryer vent to give my worms a little warmth) and a few full buckets of compost from my other compost keeper, down to the greenhouse. *Phew* that was a workout. I dug three trenches down the length of my greenhouse and then scattered the worm castings, worm juice (rich and black) and compost down each row. Then, I covered each row with dirt from between the rows...to evenly loosen the soil around the greenhouse bed. I plan to keep adding a little bit of compost each week to get my soil ready for when it's time to transplant my tomato plants. I foresee this will be in about a month and a half depending on how big my starts grow on the windowsills and nighttime temperatures. The alfalfa lining the sides of my greenhouse used to have sod underneath it and I used these as pathways last summer. I checked underneath the piles of alfalfa and the sod has now been transformed into dark planting dirt (due to the weight of the alfalfa grass). This year I plan to have my walkway going somewhat down the center of the greenhouse, so that I can use more surface area for planting. I look forward to seeing how much this bed will build up over the years as I care for it.