Vermiculture produces a unexpected crop

I didn't document it, but I built a worm bin and combined my two worm beds into it.  I had one bed that was in my old raised bed garden and another that I just threw together in a Styrofoam cooler.  The new worm bin is made from 3 10-gallon tubs, shredded newspaper and the existing dirt from the Styrofoam cooler.

I've been throwing food waste in it and some butternut squash seeds sprouted.
I had just cleaned out the red beans and lettuce from my growbed and now I have space for my summer garden.  I was about to seed some butternut squash seeds and now I have them already.  Yea!

I will be seeding a few Zucchini, yellow squash and few cilantro seeds this weekend.  FYI, I tried seeding a few cilantro seeds directly into the growbed a few weeks ago by wrapping a small piece of paper napkin around them to keep them from flowing with the water, but none of them germinated. 

Picking the red beans and Pulling up the lettuce

The internet says, "let the red beans dry a bit on the vine.  When beans rattle, its time to pick." Half the bean pods are brown, the others are green.  The net said, once you pick, pull the plants up because they only produce once.  The net doesn't lie.

My son and I pulled all the bean plants, shook the rocks out of the roots and pulled the bean pods off.  I planted 24 dry red beans, I got about 100+ fresh, ready to cook (or dry) red.beans.

The lettuce was bolting all over.  Time to pick what I can as I rip it all out.  I got almost another gallon bag of lettuce off of the plants that weren't bolting.

The last picture should be the growbed after we cleared the lettuce and red bean plants.  I cleaned out all of the roots and leaves that I could see.  It looks like I have lots of available space for my aquaponics summer garden.

Lettuce Is Bolting. Nitrates Are Down

 Have you ever had a week where you have plans for a weekend project and just don't feel up to it?  I was going to build a worm growing system, but I was too busy at work this week to come up with a plan.  It is a simple idea, but I still like to have a plan.

My lettuce is beginning to bolt.  I have never grown lettuce, so I have been looking at pictures online of what to look for.  The pictures online aren't much help because their plants are farther apart than mine and grow short and wide.  My seeds flowed together and then grew on stalks as they were fighting for light.  I really should have taken a better picture from above.

I took out about 10 plants, roots and all.  I took those plants, cut them up and put them in the worm beds.  From the remaining plants I got ANOTHER bag of lettuce.  Hopefully, I didn't pick any from a plant that has turned bitter.

I checked the nitrates today and I'm not happy.  20 ppm nitrates is too low.  Everything else was in the normal or ideal zone, so I'm adding a few sheets of  dried seaweed.  I'll check again in a few days.

The tomatoes are going nuts.  The tomatoes look like a grape vine nightmare.  I have grape-like clusters of fruit, but nothing is ripening yet.  Soon.