Chowder is helping rip up the bedding materials.
For the first time since I got my worm bin, for Christmas last year, its time to clean it out and start over. It hasn’t been that long, because I didn’t order the worms until around February or March, and it’s a pretty big bin so it’s taken a while to fill up. Still, the worms have multiplied beyond reason (quadrupled, at least) and have eaten most of their bedding and all of their food by now. The hardest thing about all of this, though, is that the pace of things around here hasn’t slowed as much as I’d like. All of the afternoon naps, hot tea, and scary movie marathons I have been longing for are still, for the most part, on hold because my schedule is just too hectic. Needless to say, I don’t have the time that cleaning out this big ol’ system requires. I devoted a couple of solid hours the other night and only managed to harvest about a gallon of compost and a pound of worms, which I sent right over to Turby and John for their own backyard compost bin.
Getting ready for their journey to Turby and John's.
When I started my bin I started with around that many worms (a pound is roughly 1,000 worms), but they have multiplied by this point to at least five times that number. At this point I’m realizing that what I need to do is get a tarp and an entire day free and I’ll lock the cats in the kitchen (they love to sniff the worms, and Chowder has actually licked one or two to death) and go to town. I may lure some friends over with family dinner. So far cleaning out the bin is a kind of tedious process, but it has been very educational as well. By digging through the entire system I’m learning what the worms like best (they love eggshells as well as egg carton cardboard and coffee grounds and filters) and what takes longest to break down (peanut shells). The whole thing, though, defied my expectations as far as smell and cleanliness–after all, I had been putting rotting food in there a few times a week for six months up until a couple weeks ago when I let up so they could finish digesting (the plan to clean out my bin has been in the works for a while). There was very little left in the way of food scraps. The fact that I gave them some time to eat everything up combined with the fact that I puree all of my scraps in a food processor is a likely explanation for this. I think that for outdoor systems throwing food in whole is an okay practice because, in general, those systems are a lot roomier. Breaking things down, though, makes the food itself more accessible to the worms because they don’t have to wait for the food to begin to decompose before they can eat it–something that I particularly appreciate since I live in an apartment and my bin stays inside year-round. (I first read about this blender method at Red Worm Composting, which is actually the place I ordered my worms and my definitive source for all things worm-related. This feeding method is called Homemade Manure, and while I have amended the process a little I think my results are still relatively the same, although the stuff I feed my worms is more like a thick sludge than the texture I think manure would have–take that however you will.)
With ample space left, as you can see.
So, anyway, I worked on separating the worms and compost for upwards of two hours and I barely made a dent. However, I did come to the realization that there’s actually a lot of room left in my bin, so I gave them some more food and bedding and decided to worry with it on a day when I have more time. I may continue to separate it out a bit at a time, but Thanksgiving break is coming up relatively soon so, if anything, I should have at least one day to myself then (I’m keeping my fingers crossed about this).
My sorting method is less than scienfic and highly inefficient--I made piles of worms, uneaten bedding, and compost.
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