Global Greenie

My handmade wood worm bin rotted through fairly quickly, so I’ve reverted to a plastic bin system again. And now I’ve become a vermiculture model. Yes, those are my legs, hands, and worms in five of the photos. My buddy and neighbor, Will, is the founder of Grow and Make.

I hope you got a chance to do something for Earth Day. My employer had a number of cool activities going on, but I opted for the tour of the vermiculture program. Eventually the worm bins will process about 50 pounds of scraps from the cafeteria per day!

This is just one of the bins. Josh and his team have already built several from recycled wood. He thinks they’ll switch to plastic, though. Our climate is not suited for wood bins (as I recently found with my own, which I’ll describe in a future post).

Another cool thing at my campus is that these bins are located within the Learning Garden and any group can apply for a plot or get involved in some way. I’m a librarian and trying to think of a library-themed spot or some way to get the library involved. Do you have any ideas?

There’s a new layer on the worm bin.  I built it in about 1/2 hour from recycled fence posts.

I had to add a “third story” because the worms slow down in winter and our food scraps were building up faster than the worms could consume.

And I hate to admit it, but my bin has mice living inside.  They’re cute, but somehow I feel like they don’t really belong.  Are they eating the worms or do they just roll around in the scraps harmlessly?

Have you ever wondered where vermicomposters live?  Now you can glimpse into the bins of your fellow worm fanatics with the map at Vermicomposters.com.  I’m embarrassed to say that I started getting hungry when I read the forum thread about what scraps worms like to eat.

On Saturday I lifted the top section off of my worm bin.  I’d been placing food scraps, some leaves, paper, and cardboard in that section for several weeks and noticed worms had indeed moved from the bottom section to the top.  Sadly, not all of them moved.  There must have been some nutrients worth eating in the bottom section because the majority of the worms stayed.  But the top was almost full, and I didn’t have the time to build a third section of this stackable system.

I emptied the castings (along with the worms) into a large bucket, walked around the yard, and placed a scoopfull of poop and worms at the base of each of our plants.  I didn’t know if these kinds of worms could survive in the earth instead of our compost, but didn’t have the patience to hand-pick tens of thousands of worms out of their rich, dark byproduct.

Soon I got my answer.  The robins practically swarmed the place this weekend.  Every bird loaded up beakfuls of worms.  It looked like a spaghetti feed.  Small birds, affectionately called LBJ (little brown jobs) also partook.  Every avian was exhibiting chicken behavior, scratching the lumps, breaking them apart, and finding the goodies.

I never intended for the worms to become a meal, but that’s nature, I suppose.  Now let’s see what the vermicompost does for the plants.

Meanwhile, I dumped all of the newer compost from the top section into the bottom of the bin.  The cycle starts again.  There were enough worms in the top section that I have no worries that they’ll proliferate in the bottom.

Although I’ve had worms (I mean vermicomposted) for about a year, I’ve been wanting to build a wooden home for them since before Tony G., my friend and fellow librarian, gave me the worms already living in their Tupperware container.  Tony warned me that mice sneaked into the plastic bin when it was in his house.  Needless to say, I kept the Tupperware outside and the mice away.

I had no idea that I could build the worms’ new home in just a few hours, but I did, roughly based on this plan.  Here’s a photo of me dumping the little guys into their stackable condo.  In a few days I’ll post a few pictures of the finished bin.