worms

[willtaran]

I now have a worm bin in my kitchen! (Yes, that's exciting.) It's a mini-bin, a converted flower pot. It's been a while since I even tried to keep a plant alive, but this should be easy. I feed the worms my veggie and fruit scraps, and shredded paper, and they turn it into vermicast. Cool!

Comments

[galactic_dev]

That's awesome. L and I save our scraps to dump them into some larger compost projects that some of her coworkers maintain.

[akaba]

Very cool. I highly recommend a divided method if you can (so you don't have to sort your castings). We don't put paper in our bin but do add coconut coir which seems to work really well. At this point our worms are eight years old (well not individually) and going strong :)

[willtaran]

At the moment I only have space in my apartment and my awareness for a mini-bin, but hopefully all three will grow.

[a_steep_hill]

Worms are fun, though they can sometimes be a bit tricky to keep happy. The main thing is to keep the moisture level right -- damp but not too wet -- so that things don't go anaerobic. If a section of the bin goes anaerobic, the worms will avoid it, and it will stink. Coconut pith (i.e. coir) is a big help here, because it can hold so much water that it helps regulate the effective moisture level. I recommend it over paper

[willtaran]

Thanks for all the advice! It's hard to tell if the worms are happy, since they don't do much. I guess I'll know if something is bad because the thing will start to stink, which so far it is not (unless I open it).