Compost Worms "Recycling"

Do worms eat your garbage? We find that we produce much less household garbage by recycling and composting, but recently, I tried a new paper product disposal method. I fed a Botanus catalog to my composting worms, who live in a plastic bin in our semi-heated garage. It seemed like a fitting completion of the garden cycle; from glossy catalog to fertile worm castings that will fertilize next year's flowers from the Botanus catalog. Dear resident lawnmower-man had concerns about the dyes hurting the worms (I didn't know he felt so fondly about them), but I reassured him that most printers are using vegetable-based dyes these days.
Vermicomposting bin, with perforated inner container inside a larger container that collects excess moisture as "compost tea":

October 19, 2009: Botanus catalog destined for worm box (staples were removed):

Worm box with catalog, which I buried about 5 cm below the surface:

December 7, 2009: I was planning to avoid adding more kitchen scraps to the bin during the experiment, but our houseguests had been using the box while we were away. This didn't seem to distract the worms from the catalog too much, and I am impressed that our houseguests got friendly with the compost worms!
Worm box, seven weeks later:

Remnants of catalog left as of December 7, 2009:

The remnants resembled a bit of wet paper towel. I'm sure there will be nothing left by New Years. I guess this goes to prove that the worms enjoy the garden catalogs too!

Worms, Glorious Worms

I am a proud mother to two thriving boxes of worms. Vermicomposting worms, that is. I think it's been a while since my last worm compost blog post, but I'm happy to say the worms are still doing well.

Remnants of vegetables from days past make gourmet food for worms:

I even know that they're happy. I know this because the worms are no longer clinging to the lid and dashing out of the box (as fast as a worm can dash) when I remove the lid. There were a few grim months in winter when I had to push them back into the box, telling them about the slow painful death they would face on the concrete floor of the garage.

Several generations of worms can be seen in every handful:


Here is one of the two blue compost boxes (outer container collects the liquid that drains out the bottom) and the green kitchen bin we use to transport compostable stuff to the compost box.

Remarkably, nearly our whole winter's bounty of kitchen waste went into my two worm bins. They are pretty full now, so soon I will spread some compost on the flower beds. I really wish those stickers on fruit and vegetables were compostable though, since those darn things never break down in the compost bin. Ideally, we could have ORGANIC compostable fruit stickers. I hope there's a university agriculture/chemistry department somewhere working on this.

Honey, the worms started a corn farm...

Have you ever considered vermicomposting? RLM and I were at a dinner party last night where we discussed (among world politics and office gossip legends) making our own dirt. This is no small matter in northern areas, where garden dirt is either made locally or imported. I've heard many stories of local people making dirt from fish guts or peat from the thousands and bogs around here. I still think that some enthusiastic entrepreneur could make good money making dirt by composting whatever is available and then selling it to local consumers.

The worm compost is used in the vegetable garden, flower beds, and in the pots growing herbs and vegetables under grow-lights in the basement. There is the odd worm living in the bottom of my pots, and they, like cats, like to leave their droppings in a particular place. Most seem to poop out of the bottom holes of the pots, and a few extrude their waste matter towards the top corners of the pots -- check this out:

Whole heads of corn + worm composter = Abundant corn sprouts in the worm box.

We also have a heap of slowly composting grass clippings and yard trimmings outside. In cold climates with short seasons, the outdoor compost heap operates slowly and I imagine it has to maintain a critical size in order to generate heat at its center and actually result in decomposition. I laughed hard at the post on (outdoor) composting in the Tundra Garden, a blog about the most northern garden in North America.

"The pumpkin from Halloween 1996 didn't look any different than the one from 2005 before the snow fell. As an archaeologist, I can attest to the fact that organic material can stay frozen with minimal decay for hundreds of years here."

I think this just goes to show that there are just some places you can't do outdoor composting! As an aside, if anybody locally wants some Eisenia foetida (special compost worms) for their own worm box, let me know. I have lots.