Are you a worm expert?

It's funny, I've composted at home for a handful of years now, and tried my hand at worm composting at least twice, with mixed success. But to the 1st grade FoodPrints class I was assisting with at SWS this morning, I seemed to be one of the authorities in the room.

"Are you a worm expert?" young Isabelle asked me as she crumbled coconut coir into our homemade, two-level bin. I tore up some more paper bag scraps as I considered this new title.

"Well, I know that worms breathe through their skin," exclaimed her table mate, Evan, "so that makes me kind of an expert!" He had a point.

I wonder what makes someone an expert at anything, really. I mean, I am pretty darn good at changing flat tires. And improvising ways to lash an inordinate amount of stuff to my bicycle. I can prepare a meal out of seemingly incompatible ingredients -- take my chicken, chickpea, peanut, and coconut milk stew I tossed together last week for some personal chef clients: delish!

I suppose by the time I got through working with the fourth group this morning, I was a worm expert. I could talk about slimy skin and a lack of teeth and not letting the bedding get too wet with the best red wiggler authorities out there. Especially if my colleagues are 6 years old.

I can't wait to start a bin with 1st graders at Tyler Elementary in a couple of weeks. Viva la vermiculture!

Worms, are you there?

I know some of you have been holding your collective breath, waiting for an update on my fancypants composting nighcrawlers. Well, I just checked on them this weekend, and again this afternoon. I'm happy to report that our European-bred worms -- hardier, I was told, than their red wiggling brethren -- appear to be happily squirming around in the top foot or so of the outdoor compost bin. The scrap level has even visibly gone down a bit. Yes, in spite of our recent flurry (ha, ha) of snow showers over the past week, they seem to have settled in.

Hoping they can pick up the pace on the food scrap eating soon, though: I've been making veggie stock like a madwoman and need 'em to start eating things down asap. I'll need good garden soil soon. They are supposed to eat (and poop out) their body weight in food scraps each day, so with a solid pound of worms, they should be able to catch up fairly quickly. (They'd better not go on a diet, like my former roommates and one of my ex-boyfriends simultaneously did in the middle of an apple dessert baking frenzy I went through a handful of years ago. Now that sucked. Well, I suppose diets do, generally speaking.)

Listen here, wormies, forget about your figures. Your job is to eat as MUCH and as OFTEN as possible.

Or else we're going to go fishing when the weather warms up.

Waiting for the worms

 

About a month ago, my landlady and I determined that between us we seemed to be creating a bit more compost than our single Oscar the Grouch can out back could handle. Okay, a LOT more. I suggested that we simply get a second can -- no, not only because I'd get to let loose again with the drill. Jacky had a better idea: worms.

Now, our household's curious and tenacious beagle population would not allow us to consider an indoor worm bin. And I'd always thought that you could only have red wigglers in your outdoor compost bins in mild weather -- certainly not during extreme cold (like, say, the past few weeks) or hot weather. I didn't want to get some happy wigglers and have 'em freeze to death mid munch, leaving us $40-50 poorer and with the same amount of compostables as we started with. I said as much to Jacky. Luckily, my landlady was not to be foiled so easily: after some research we learned that there are some hardy outdoor composting worms that would do just fine in our chilly DC winters. So a few days before the Martin Luther King holiday, we put in an order for 500 European Nightcrawlers and started stockpiling special kitchen scraps to welcome our hungry new arrivals in 1-3 business days.

We waited.

And waited.

Scraps continued to pile up.

And finally, after the first batch, delayed by snow and federal holidays, was delivered to the wrong address, and the replacement worm package, complete with the traditional misspelled name but at least the correct address, dispatched the following week, Jacky was elated to have our box of first-class-mailed wormies handed to her by our local postal worker yesterday afternoon. (The mailwoman was visibly weirded out when she learned what was in the box she'd been toting around in her messenger bag. It seems this company doesn't label their shipments as "LIVE WORMS" like my previous supplier did, but they were well protected -- as was the mail carrier -- by the sturdy, but breathable bag inside.)

 

This morning, before I headed out to teach, Jacky and I had a ceremonial installation of our new neighbors.

 

Our European Nightcrawlers must be Scandinavian. It's the only way I can fathom them not being phased by this weather and immediately starting to chomp away....

We covered them up with our special welcome scraps -- avocado skins, butternut squash peels, shredded crossword puzzles, and some of their other known favorites -- and left them to eat long and prosper. And multiply, we hope.

p.s.- Apologies to all of you Pink Floyd fans who ended up reading this blogpost by mistake (though I will say it's decidedly more hopeful than what you were originally seeking).

All Quiet on the Wormy Front

Greetings, faithful readers. It's the last Saturday in February and you know what that means: it's time to harvest my worm castings!

It's been a few months since I had to rescue my little commune of veggie-scrap-eating wigglers from the brink of a toxic poop disaster. The fly problem seems to have abated -- a few winged hellions remain -- though I fear that my worms suffered a bit as a result. You see, to get rid of the flies, I had to freeze my food scraps (to kill fly larvae). Then I tried leaving the lid off the bin for a half hour or so a couple times each week. When that didn't work, I stopped adding food for a couple of weeks. At least there were no weird smells. Thankfully, there were still a number of plump little wriggling wormies in there when I carried the bin outside into the 60 degree sunshine and poked around. Yep, still quite a few in there. (Whew!) It looked a little something like this:

Lovely, eh? (No, those aren't my wigglers. I took this pic of Jen's beautiful worm composting operation at Fountain Prairie Farm on my way through Wisconsin about a year and a half ago, right around the time I became enamored with the idea of vermiculture.)

Judging by the estimated compost-to-other-stuff ratio, I decided it was time for my first harvesting of worm castings. (Wow, that sounds so civilized: in actuality this meant scooping worm poop out of a plastic bin.) I fished around with my trowel and scooped out as many wormies as I could and let them hang out with some food scraps and a little coir -- coconut husk (that I would be using to restart the next round) -- before dumping out the castings and tilling the clumps into patches of my little backyard garden plot where I hope to transplant some seedlings in a couple of months. (Hmmm, maybe I shouldn't say "fished" around -- don't want to make my worms nervous.) Hooray for compost!

I am so ready for spring. I was practically dancing around the apartment the other night after I returned home from Mike's house, where we'd talked about our spring planting plans and divvied up a whole mess of seeds and starter soil between us. (If only I had a sunny windowsill to start some seeds. Time to start trolling Craigslist and Freecycle for a used grow light....)

I rinsed out the bin and splashed my slacker version of "compost tea" over other areas of the garden that needs a little help in the organic matter department. Worm poo tea is supposed to be the best stuff around. No joke.

My wormies are settling into their newly furnished worm apartment this evening, complete with top-of-the-line shredded brown paper, coir, and organic lettuce and onion scraps. I'm off to a party at my friend Amanda's place, so they'll have some quiet time to get used to their new digs. I'll just take one last look before I head out....

Fly by

Here we are about three and a half months into The Great Worm Bin Experiment and I'm still a bit high strung when it comes to my first batch of wigglers. I've been advised by seasoned vermiculturists that the best way to go is something akin to benevolent neglect, but to be honest I live in constant fear of inadvertently killing them. Too much food? Too little? Too much moisture? Too little? Too hot? Too cold? And what's with all of the flies lately?

So here we are midway through the second try with the under-sink worm bin. (Those of you following along may recall the premature sifting through castings just before Halloween, when my beloved little guys almost drowned in a poop lagoon.) Things have been going alright this time around... Well, mostly. You see, there has been a noticeable proliferation of flies in the bin in recent weeks. And, more disturbingly, a noticeable lack of worms. Crud. I hope nobody from Worm Protective Services comes knocking on my door. (Earlier today I had to submit an FBI background check form to work with one of the after school cooking programs. Will this mar my otherwise stellar record? I can see it now: Violation of section 27d of the Invertebrate Guardian Clause -- negligence and second-degree wormslaughter.)

I dragged my bin outside during a freakishly warm afternoon earlier this week and took the lid off, trying to shoo most of the flies out. At least there wasn't standing water this time, but where were the worms? I saw a few 1/2-inch white worms squirming around, but mostly lots of flies. I began to worry. Did I mess things up irreparably? Would it be better for me to bequeath my wormies to a better caretaker, entrust them to Mother Nature? Am I a terrible mother??

As usual, Susie -- my calm and reassuring worm expert on call -- talked me down from the proverbial ledge. The flies can be a nuisance, she admitted, but there are a few ways to curb their numbers. I already had one of the fly traps that the Worm Ladies website suggested (filled with fancy, organic apple cider vinegar -- well, I'm not going to the store in this 30-degree weather just for a bottle of the cheap stuff). I realized that rather than burying the food scraps, which discourages egg-laying by flies, I'd simply been lifting the lid a crack and tossing a handful of vegetable scraps on top as I was cooking dinner every few evenings. But -- not to defend my total failure to follow these basic instructions, I'll admit I missed that part -- wouldn't I be disrupting the worms too much if I was stuffing scraps into the bottom of the bin every time?

My worm guru suggested that I cut a piece of cardboard to fit the top of my bin, run it under the water in the sink so it gets wet/damp, and lay it inside over the scraps. A fly egg barrier, I like it. I learned that putting food scraps in the freezer overnight also interferes with the flies' egg-laying activities. Huh. Who knew?

Finally, Susie pointed out, the presence of small, white worms was encouraging. It meant that the worms were reproducing. (What? My worms are old enough to kiss other worms and go on dates and...? Oh.) My little wormies are growing up. But they'd better get cracking to be able to keep up with my holiday vegetable scrap production. Maybe I need to put on a little Marvin Gaye to get them in the right mood....

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A test of the Wormergency Broadcast System

Readers, if I am famous one day -- and in the unlikely event that I get too big for my britches -- you can remind me of today: my first experience sifting through poop with my bare hands.

It's not the kind of thing I would usually do on a Thursday afternoon, mind you, but I had no rubber gloves and no alternative during the code brown wormergency. My newly returned under-the-sink compost bin had mysteriously developed a thick layer of sludge during my time cavorting around New Orleans and Turin and I had a nagging feeling that something had gone terribly wrong. I mean, I know worms breathe through their skin, and actually prefer a moist environment, but sludge?? Not good.

The problem was not simply the distinctly swampy consistency (though that would've been reason enough for concern). I also noted that it was smelling a little like a dirty diaper in there. (Faint but distinct -- parents, you know what I'm talking about here.) Something was definitely off, and the wobbling, slow moving fruitflies were making me suspicious that they were tipsy. Hey, I'm all for invertebrates enjoying a drink now and again, but I'm pretty sure worm bin fermentation is a warning sign of things going awry.

[Note: I do not believe the recent downturn of the bin is in any way due to negligence on the part of my wormsitter, who returned my herd of red wigglers when he came by for dinner last night. I'd still write Mike a glowing reference letter for future wormsitting gigs. I mean, the man is devoted to developing the optimal fruitfly trap and the high quality food scraps over at his apartment are almost on par with my own.]

I recalled reading that too much water could wipe out a whole herd of wigglers. There wasn't exactly standing water, but such a development seemed imminent. (Drowning in a pool of fermenting poop -- what a way to go.) "Quick!" I thought, "I need to add something to absorb some of the moisture!" I scoured the apartment, tossing in a dry coffee filter and shoving some pieces of ripped up cardboard along the bottom. Then I sent off a panicked message to The Worm Ladies.

Within an hour or two, Susie, my friendly neighborhood WMT (Wormergency Medical Technician), wrote back to tell me that my instinct was correct, that there was too much moisture and I should add more dry material. Oh, and she also said to dump the bin out on a black garbage bag and sift through everything -- the "everything" being a big mess of stinky excrement -- to rescue the worms and any uneaten food, transferring them to a new bin. So I did.

Well, I didn't have a second container, so I dragged everything out to the garden, rinsed out the existing bin (while its contents were smeared across a Hefty bag for God and my neighbors to see), layered in some fresh brown paper and cardboard and food scraps (not too many high water content ones this time), and moved my wriggling wormies one by one into their remodeled home. (No, I didn't rinse them off first...but I sure was tempted to.) The drippy, aromatic remains on the garbage bag found a new home in the outdoor composter. Actually, maybe it'll make my regular compost even more amazing for the spring.

I checked on the shell shocked wigglers again a few minutes ago. They seem a little sluggish -- maybe they're hung over -- but I'll be sure to post an update on their recovery soon. Oh, man, I hope I don't lose my vermiculture merit badge for this....

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Adventures in wormsitting

I now know how parents must feel when they leave their infant with a babysitter for the first time. Certainly they interview a few candidates, and I did as much for the person who would be watching my worm bin. (My own interview process consisted of mentioning that I had a worm bin and gauging each person's reaction: "Really? Worms? Ew! Do you have to touch them?"... Next.) Leaving the kids with a trustworthy individual is important, but after a series of reassurances the sitter is left with 47 ways of contacting the parents in the event of an emergency....

Okay, fine, before you get all offended, let me revise that: maybe worms aren't quite on par with a child, but somewhere between houseplants and a puppy. But still, someone is left in charge of a living thing (or in the case of my worms, about a pound of living things) near to my heart and they are completely dependent on this other person who is not me for their very survival. During my little ten-day jaunt around Chicago and various Michigan locales recently, I entrusted my friend Mike with my beloved worms.

I felt pretty confident that "Uncle Mike" -- as the worms refer to him -- could handle them. He'd been hearing about the red wigglers all along, had contributed some lovely food scraps, had even peeked into the bin once or twice with me -- I can't imagine why I am not more popular in social circles with this habit of showing dates my worm bin -- and was not an avid fisherman (and thus not tempted to "borrow" a few plump ones). Since he had otherwise not interacted much with them, Mike came by the evening before my departure and I gave him the rundown, or what I like to call Worm Care 101, and then he took them home.

We talked through general care (what, when, and how much to feed them), things to look out for (standing water, fruit flies, weird smells), and what to do in the case of emergencies (call me). What's that? Yes, I said worm emergencies... like a mass exodus of worms attempting to evacuate the bin. They're pretty low maintenance, but there are things that can go seriously wrong. Aside from opening the bin to find a worm graveyard, seeing a whole mass of worms trying to escape means something is seriously amiss. (A rank smell emanating from the bin can also be a concern, but Mike had learned from my ill-advised inclusion of shrimp shells a few weeks ago to stay away from animal-based food scraps.) I felt pretty good about turning them over into his care for a week and a half. He seemed capable.

You can tell a lot about a person by how they react to challenges. Some are proactive troubleshooters, others call friends in a panic, still others stand around swearing or simply do not react. Mike falls into the first category, I think. (Whew.) Once, when he noticed a few worms slinking up along the sides of the bin, he guessed there was too much moisture and tossed in a few coffee filters to absorb some of the excess liquid. Then came the experiments with trapping the growing (but not unmanageable) fruit fly population. I do believe he is looking forward to setting various fruit fly traps when he will be left to worm caretaking once again, for a solid couple of weeks as I venture to New Orleans and Torino next month.

When he brought my bin back to my apartment a few nights ago, after joking about giving them a bath before my return or playing whack-a-worm, my faithful wormsitter said that he rather enjoyed having them in his care during my absence. To quote an e mail from yesterday: "I'm happy you're back but I sort of miss the worms."

Welcome home, my little wigglers. I've missed you, too!

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How ya' bin?

Today marks 10 days since my darling red wigglers arrived! They seem to be adjusting alright, squirming around and slowly digging into the (perhaps overly ambitious) pile of food scraps. I've limited myself to one (or maximum two) times each day when I open the lid for a moment and look at them. Things are coming along. Susie tells me it takes as long as a month for some worm bins to get going. My little guys must be overachievers -- type-A worms, if you will. Maybe it has to do with all of the healthy, diverse, organic food scraps. And a bit of coffee now and again.

My friend Mike was over the other night to help me can tomatoes -- I know, I know, I still need to write about that -- and I proudly showed him my nascent vermiculture operation. He seemed impressed with how low maintenance the under-sink worm bin has been. (This is good because Mike is slowly being groomed to be my wormsitter when I head to New Orleans and then Torino for conferences in about a month. He only is beginning to suspect this.) Without any prompting, he even commented on how surprised he was that it doesn't smell. Thank goodness: that was one of my concerns, too. In fact, in my informal surveys one of the most common reasons folks seem uncomfortable with the idea of an indoor worm bin is the potential for unsavory odors. I am acutely sensitive to smell. No, really, I have actually turned down dates with people who just, well, smelled funny. Not bad, just... not appealing. Or who happened to be wearing the same cologne as my dad. True story, it happened once in college. But I digress....

Last night, as I returned from a lovely evening of drinks and theater with my friend Ronn, I noticed that something smelled a little funny in my kitchen. Sure enough, when I opened the cabinet under the sink the ripe odor was stronger. And once I took the lid off of the bin: phew! Clearly some anaerobic action was underway. (Also, I noticed that some plants had sprouted -- would they be tomato plants? peppers? melons?? Speaking of melons, here's a pic of a little bitty watermelon that I just noticed starting up in the garden this morning when I was out watering. Woo hoo!)



The smell is starting to get to me. Arkady and I were distracted by it tonight while concocting our roasted tomato tart and tomato corn salad. I lit a candle on the kitchen counter, hoping that it would have the same effect as candles did in stinky shared college bathrooms, but it didn't seem to do much to alleviate the stinkiness. So of course I started researching....

According to the Worm Ladies (and other vermiculture experts concur), if you're doing things right the bin should not smell. (Apparently the worms are the overachievers, not me.) The most common culprits behind unpalatable aromas are too much moisture (maybe I shouldn't've put in quite so many melon rinds) or too little ventilation (maybe I need more air holes) or adding in animal-based products (so the handful of cooked shrimp tails on Wednesday may have been a bad idea). It's too hot for me to air out the bin outdoors -- oh, that DC heat! -- nevermind the brazen rat population that would welcome the self-contained buffet, so for now I've fished out the rancid shrimp shells (while holding my breath), added a bit more shredded paper, stirred things up to create some air pockets, left the lid partially open, and put a box of baking soda under the sink. It's smelling pretty rank, but I am hopeful the damage is not irreparable. (I'm also hopeful Mike isn't reading this.)

The core message I have taken away from my various, slightly panicky e mail exchanges with the calm, reassuring Susie (of the Worm Ladies) is that the best thing I can do is leave the worms alone and let them do their job. So, now that I've checked to be sure there isn't standing water in the bin, I'll let them be. I'm heading out of town for the long weekend and the worms seem to have plenty of food and adequate moisture in there. We'll see how it goes....

I've got worms!

The care package labeled "LIVE WORMS" arrived via postal service around lunchtime today. Woo hoo!

Thanks to Susie and Nancy for entrusting me with about a pound of their darling red wigglers. I do solemnly swear to do my best to provide them with adequate food, shelter, and love during their time with me. And I'll try to tone down the off-key singing that the houseplants have been complaining about lately.

Even after making the worm welcome sign last week, some additional preparations were in order. A lot of it comes down to common sense, but since I hope to provide my worms with the best possible scenario to flourish -- I want my worms to go to college, become artists and doctors and farmers, lead fulfilling lives as upstanding citizens in the worm community -- I had a whole litany of questions. During an extended counseling session on Sunday, Susie talked me through some dos and don'ts of worm composting. (Easy on the coffee grounds and peach pits, don't open the bin and peer in every five minutes, etc.) I took some measurements and cleared a space below the sink where it's nice and dark, not too hot or cold or moist.




That evening I brought home remnants of the mint and melon salad from a lovely dinner party I attended in Crystal City. I wanted my worms to feel welcome: I'd heard that melons are their favorite. (I'd previously established myself as "the wacky dinner guest who packs out her food scraps" so Kelly wasn't too perturbed when I headed to the metro with a slight wine buzz and a ziploc bag of honeydew rinds.) On Monday morning I shredded some cardboard and drilled holes in a perfectly good plastic bin with my handy cordless drill. (Yes, every self-sufficient modern woman needs her own drill, and I have my former partner, Adam, to thank for this one.) The worm buffet was at last ready for business.




Oh, but when they arrived today I suddenly panicked. Do I have the right balance of cardboard and food? Are there enough air holes? Wait, can I include a few egg shells in the mix? Is it moist enough? I mean, the pamphlet included with my bag-o-worms said to wet until the cardboard and coir (shredded coconut shells) feel sponge-like in consistency. "Sponge-like?" What the...? Is everyone okay in there??




It's taking all of my self-control not to peek into the worm bin every five minutes. While worms are blind, they don't like bright light, and someone poking around in there can't be helpful to the adjustment process. They shouldn't be jetlagged coming from Rhode Island, as it's in the same time zone -- do worms even have circadian rhythms? is there such a thing as NST (No-Daylight Standard Time)? -- but they also just went through two days of USPS transit trauma. If it's anything like flying on American Airlines these days, they're probably worn out and grumpy. At least they didn't have to keep taking off their shoes and coats to go through security lines.

Okay, fine, I should let them be. I'm meeting my friend Ben (famous lender of Sheldon!) and his wife tonight for dinner so at least the worms'll have some peace and quiet for a few hours. Maybe I'll just check on my little wigglers before bedtime....

Diary of an amateur vermiculturist

By now you might gather I am a little obsessed with composting. I have been known to pack out my vegetable peels after making dinner at friends' houses so that Ollie and I might bike them home and deposit the future black gold in my Oscar the Grouch compost bin out back. (My scraps have traveled from such far flung kitchens as those in Foggy Bottom, Pentagon City, Takoma Park, Columbia.) I have trouble sitting still when I see food being tossed in the trash -- I mean I actually get noticeably twitchy. And yet to date there's been no recourse for bits of cooked food I scrape from plates after a dinner party or any protein-based remnants in the home composting setup I have at my disposal. Well, things are about to get a little bit more interesting in the soil building department....

By this time next week I will have my very first under-the-sink worm bin teeming with squirming, munching, pooping, composting machines. Yes, worms. I can't wait!

In preparation I find myself puttering about the apartment moving this and that, measuring and remeasuring, even doing a little decorating. I spent yesterday evening clearing out space for the future worm buffet and making a welcome sign. I can't help wondering if this is what "nesting" feels like. (Should my mother be concerned that my maternal impulses are being directed toward what many would consider fish bait? Perhaps.) But seriously, if you were a hungry worm, doesn't this look like somewhere you'd like to live, maybe start an asexually reproducing family? Prime Columbia Heights under-sink real estate (and you *know* the food scraps will be consistently above average).

I also made a list of questions to ask Susie, of the friendly Worm Ladies -- the Rhode Island-based small business who will graciously be sending me my first batch of worms -- so that I know what to expect when I'm expecting. You see, as excited as I am, and as much as I've read and spoken with other people who have tried their hand at vermiculture (the fancy word for "worm composting") -- heck, I even volunteered at Growing Power, Milwaukee's own urban composting mecca -- I find that I still have a lot of questions. How will I know if I'm doing things right? How often do I need to add cardboard? Is the bin big enough? What if it's too small? How many air holes will my wormies need? How can I tell when it gets too crowded in there? How will I know if they have enough food? How much is too much food? Are there foods I should avoid? (I compost a fair bit of coffee grounds, but what if they have too much caffeine: will the worm bin start rattling? If so, should I tipple a little cooking wine in there to calm them down? Kidding...mostly.) What if they get too cold? Or too hot? What if they drown? Or dehydrate? How do I get the finished worm castings -- the fancy term for worm poop -- out? Will they smell funny? Will they like me?

My first batch of red wigglers -- the preferred vermiculture candidates, due to their chill disposition and ability to eat their own weight in food scraps each day -- will be mailed out on Monday. I'm actually having trouble falling asleep I'm that excited. If you've ever daydreamed about building your own indoor worm composter, stay tuned for the next installment of The Diary of an Amateur Vermiculturist....

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