Worm Update: harvest

After all these months of feeding our worms, today we finally harvested almost 9 pounds of castings (worm compost) (worm poop), from Bin A. Some gardeners call it black gold. I can't wait to spread some of it around our community garden plot. My tomato plants look like they could use some food, and I just planted some new seeds that could use a boost, too.

Our other two bins are almost ready to go, too. They'd had a hard time taking off, but a transplant of worms from Bin A helped boost the population. In about 3-4 weeks, we should have another 10-20 pounds of castings, just when the garden will really be hungry for high octane organic fertilizer. We've added a little of this stuff to house plants, and it's worked very well (we have a very happy rosemary plant now).

The bins haven't been consuming much of our vegetable waste, just a few pounds every week and a half or so, but the worms are thriving, so I think we're going to see if we can feed them a little more.

Grab Bag Update

here's the short update on all the recent goings on:

1. The worms are doing pretty well. We still don't have very many of them yet, since they take while to multiply, but they are eating (slowly) what we put in the container. We just bought 2 more bins and plan to buy a lot more worms to start them off this time, 500-1,000 worms per bin. We figured out that we generate as much as 12 pounds of plant waste a week. Plus we were looking at seed catalogs for our 12'x27' garden today--we're going to need lots of compost.
2. Plays on Tap went very well. The show on opening night was sold out, and the actors did a great job. My pieces, Lies, Lies, Lies, is really a good one to start the evening--we got a ton of laughs, which surprised the actors a little. (Michael Pfaff and Becca A. Lewis have great chemistry.) I heard Saturday was sold out, too. (So if you go, make sure you buy your tickets ahead of time.) (Seriously.)
3. I've finished (for now) two of my four freelance gigs, which feels pretty good. One of them required a fair bit of work these past two weekends, so I'm looking forward to hanging out and relaxing with the kids this week during their winter break. One of the jobs was on two different photography web sites--check 'em out: www.michaelgphotography.com and www.awesomeaspens.com. (I'm still tweaking them, but the images are great (and you can order them)).
4. I get the pin out of my finger in just over two weeks. I think I've adapted pretty well to typing without a pinkie on that hand so far.
5. I am still making some writing progress on the new novel, but I've fallen off the Writing Purge challenge these past few days. I've just been spending my writing time/energy on paid work. But I see a good opening coming up in my schedule in a few weeks, with only 1 or 2 freelance gigs at a time, and not ones that require every minute.

That's all the news fit to blog. (More on the books I've been reading soon.)

worms, worms, worms

Tracy took a short class offered by a colleague about vermiculture last week, and we decided to give it a try. (The No Impact Man has had a big impact on us around here.) We're going to try to use worms to compost our vegetable matter garbage (and since we eat mostly vegan, we have plenty). It'll create some powerful compost for use in our community garden plot this spring. The cool thing about this is that we can do it in our house (since we don't have a yard).

Here's the steps we've taken.

1. We started saving vegetable matter for feeding the worms (the recommended worms are called "red wigglers" or just "red worms"). That didn't take very long. We're only doing one bin for now, but our household probably generates enough to supply four bins.


2. We bought a 14-gallon plastic bin for less than $10. It needs to be opaque, since the worms don't like light. And it shouldn't be too deep.


3. Then we drilled a bunch of holes in the bin, from the top halfway down and in the lid, so they get plenty of ventilation. This is also supposed to help the moisture content stay about right and keep it from getting smelly.


4. We ripped up a bunch of newspapers for the bedding into 1/2 inch strips. We needed enough to fill the bin 3/4 full with damp newspaper, so it needed to be full to the brim with dry strips. You're not supposed to use newspaper that print in color, unless you know the ink is soy-based. Tracy e-mailed the Boston Globe, and they responded that yes, the ink should be safe for the worms.


5. Then we went to the Arlington Bait Shop (after calling first, to make sure they had what we needed, since this is winter time) and bought 8 cans of worms (24 each) for $21 (192 worms). We're told that in six months, each worm can have 96 offspring, which would give us 18,432 worms. Our bin can probably only support about 1,000 or so, but the population is self-limiting--they won't produce more than their food will allow. We can use our worms to seed new colonies, or we can put them directly into our garden (or go fishing). The guy at the bait shop was really nice--we weren't the first ones looking for worms for compost. He says he also sells them in the winter to people who use them to feed their turtles, shrews (I've never heard of a pet shrew), and birds. A pack of 1,000 worms is $65. (Maybe I'll talk the kids into going into business...)


6. Once home with our worms, we prepared the bedding by getting it wet in the bathtub and wringing it out, so that it was thoroughly damp but not dripping, like a damp sponge. Messy work.


7. Once the bin was loaded with damp bedding, we buried a cup or so of food in five spots. Tracy's instructor recommended laying out a grid on the lid, and alternating where you bury the food, so it's easier to keep track of what they like (worms don't like all kinds of vegetables, and you can't feed them citrus). So today, we buried in the odd grid spots. The trick is to feed them just the right amount, so there isn't a bunch of rotting food in there. We also need to watch the moisture levels a bit, and use a turkey baster to drain off the "compost tea" once a week or so (which we can dilute to feed our house plants).

1. Next we dumped in the worms and set them free in their new home. For now, we'll keep the bin in a corner of our kitchen (they need to be between 40-80 degrees F), so we don't forget about them.

For the first few months, we probably can't feed them a lot, but once they're active and breeding, we can feed them more.

I'll report back on how it's going. With any luck we'll have some rich compost by spring, and send a lot less pounds of green matter to the landfill.

If you're interested in more info, the instructor recommended this book: Worms Eat My Garbage


Here are some sites that offer more about composting with worms:

http://www.capecodwormfarm.com/index.asp

http://www.angoraandworms.com/more_about_the_worms.htm

http://www.nyccompost.org/resources/worms.html

http://www.unclejimswormfarm.com/