Worm Composting by PaulaWalla

I added some more damp newspaper this morning to cover all that exrta saw dust (which I assume is really just like kitchen waste, it’s food rather than bedding, so should be covered over).

I noticed a worm clinging to the cover, so I gently prodded him back into the bin. Then I thought, if there’s one on the lid, there might be some underneath (in the liquid catch basin) so I opened her up and found three more escapees!  These were more stubborn so I had to don my gloves and pick them up one by one. Yes, me, picking up worms. Never thought it would come to this.

I’ve already got two more containers of kitchen waste (coffee grounds, egg shells, old chopped up onion pieces, and veggie leavings from making salads yesterday). I don’t want to overwhelm my little worms – there really aren’t that many yet, so I’m thinking of braving the cold and dumping this stuff in the outdoor compost pile. . .

I picked up some red wigglers from local composter Chuck Drake (who gave a seminar on composting last spring at the Windsor Historical Society) free of charge. Thanks Chuck! And I’ve gotten my bin started!  I took pictures at each step.

1. Tear up a bunch of newspaper – I started with three or four sections of the Hartford Courant. These days all newspaper ink is soy-based, so it’s okay for worms, or so they say. If not, we’ll know pretty quicklyly!

Torn up newspaper for worm bedding

2. Dampen the paper with water. Realize you need more newspaper.   It really compresses when it’s damp. I ended up tearing up another three or four sections of the paper, at least, plus some white paper.

3. Toss all the dampened newspaper, white paper, etc into your worm bin. It should be pretty full.

worm bin full of dampened newspaper and white paper bedding

4. Gently toss in your worms. Coax the stragglers out of their container with gentle words. When that doesn’t work, coax them out with a gloved finger (wow, I didn’t think I’d get over worm – squeamishness that fast).

worms added to bin

5. Tear up more newspaper.  Dampen it and toss it over the worms so they have a nice moist atmosphere to live in.

6. Dig a little trench and put in your food scraps. The instructions say about one quart to start with. I had one overflowing round chinese food container full of coffee grounds, egg shells (slightly broken up), a banana peel, and some dead leaves from a houseplant. Note – the white paper chines food container you see on the corner of the bin is not the one I keep scraps in, it’s the one Chuck packed my worms in.

10. Cover the scraps over with the damp bedding.

11. I also tossed in the rest of the sawdust Chuck packed my worm container in.  I think I’ll need to add more water since they’re so dry, but I’ll check after a day or two and see what it looks like.

all done

The game’s afoot!

Well, I did it. I bought a worm composting bin on ebay from a gal whose worms died (RIP). Hopefully I have better luck.

Can’t wait for my worms so they can start eating my (kitchen) garbage. Yes, I read “Worms Eat My Garbage”, the famous worm composting book!

I downloaded instructions from the internet from two different surprising sources – County of Santa Cruz Recycling Program and Happy D Ranch. Both are out west and completely unknown to me, but they had instructions for this type of worm bin! They differed slightly but I figured between the two of them and the book I read, I can’t really go wrong. We’ll see!