Squirmy Wormies

I thought you'd all like to know that my worms are very pleased to have their worm bucket suites. Whenever I lift up a layer of burlap they're happily wiggling through the dirt eating their decaying food. And there actually is some worm poop dripping through to the bottom bucket to use for fertilizer! It's finally happening!

Now, I know most people will probably get grossed out thinking about worm poop, but any organic gardener will agree that this is the coolest way to enrich your plants and soil. I heard a little clip on the radio yesterday about a guy who just recently began composting. He was talking about how neat it is to do it, though, mentioned it is a little more work than just throwing food away.

Is it really work? The worms and rolypolies are doing the work. I don't feel like putting aside veggie and fruit scraps is any harder than putting them in the garbage. And a worm bin is really a great idea for people who don't have much space outside for a large compost. We even have our worm suites inside currently due to a possible freeze last night. It's not messy and doesn't smell.

Give it a thought if you haven't started one yet, and here's a link for how to get started making your own worm bin if you'd rather not buy one. Instead of rubbermaid bins, which is what this link suggests using, we used two 3 gallon buckets that fit inside each other. The top buckets has the holes drilled in the lid and in the bottom and fits securely inside the bottom bucket.

And did you know you can even buy red wiggler worms online and have them shipped to you?! Amazing.

Oh yeah, and here's a tip for helping veggies and fruits compost faster: freeze them before dumping them in your compost. I read this tip in a gardening book last year and I realize that I like this way a lot better than having stuff getting all juicy and moldy in a container while it waits for me to be in the mood to take it out to the compost.

For those of you haven't visited us and seen our precompost holding pen in the freezer, it's actually quite simple. We have a tupperware container, about the size of a rectangular cake pan, sitting on the bottom shelf of the freezer. We toss all of our compostable items in the container and they freeze together at their leisure. It's not smelly because the stuff freezes before it can rot. We empty it (usually) when it gets full. Sometimes we're lazy and add another container if we don't feel like taking the compost out quite yet. When we do take it out, we simply turn the container upside down and hit the bottom to make the frozen meld of contents fall into our compost heap. From that point, every thing can unthaw and get juicy where it's supposed to and not inside where we have to deal with it.

Also, for anyone who is just beginning to compost, keep in mind that you can put some pretty incredible household items into your compost heap: hair (you know the hair that gathers in your hairbrush?) and fur (if your animals shed fur when you're grooming them), fingernail and toenail clippings, lint from your dryer, snotty tissues, shredded paper (non glossy) and cardboard too (toilet paper rolls, cereal boxes), used coffee grounds and teabags, etc.

Make sure when you're composting that you alternate layers of brown and green materials. What I mean by this is go back and forth between carbon-rich and nitrogen-rich stuff. "Brown" stuff includes leaves, straw, sawdust, and paper. "Green" stuff includes food scraps, coffee grounds, and grass.

There's lots more to say about composting, but we're headed to the farmer's market soon, so I've got to go get dressed and get the pooch walked. Here's a link to more info about composting for anyone who's interested.