I’ve Got Worms
Yesterday I managed to get another bucket out of Burger King. I recently found out that I’m competing with the manager of the store for the buckets. She’s using them, according to her, to make 5 gallon planters. That’s not a bad idea especially if you have to move plants inside.
When I got home, bucket in hand, my wife looked at me and said, “no more buckets!” as I placed the newly acquired bucket onto the counter. It wasn’t until I had to go back outside that I noticed we had even more buckets than I remembered from yesterday morning; the worms had arrived. It’s been around two weeks since the buckets were taken to the office to get “set up”. Now they are here and we can start to use them for composting part of our kitchen food waste.
This morning, I went to work modifying the two bucket set up. First, I transfered the worms to my four bucket system. The two bucket system uses one “solid” bucket as the base and an upper bucket with holes drilled in it and a lid with ventilation holes as well. My bucket system uses larger holes in the bottom – 1/2″ versus 1/8″ – over which I lay newspaper that is dampened. Both systems use newspaper as bedding material so there is not much change there. Then over the top I placed one inch strips of newspaper. All of this is moistened by spraying it with a water bottle – everything I’ve read tells me that it has to be the consistency of a damp sponge so it’s pretty wet. I then started scooping the lettuce and other greens that were placed on the top as food into a plastic bin that I set to the side with a hand cultivator. Once the majority of the foodstuff was placed to the side I tipped the starting bucket and gently pulled the remaining compost and the wriggling worms over the top of the bedding in my new system. I then added the food back to the buckets.
As I sat looking at the bucket system I was trying to figure out how to save a little space with it. Then it hit me, stack the “unused” segments below the used bucket. So I have the solid bucket on the bottom, next is a bucket with all the vent holes, then a “spacer” which is the top 6″ or so of another bucket with the bottom cut out and finally the bucket with the worms and a lid. When the castings get to be “too much” for the top bucket, the spacer is placed on top, then the next main bucket with bedding is placed into the top of that. Assuming that the top bucket sits just on the top of the castings and bedding. Start feeding in the new top bucket and worms should naturally make their way to the top. Leave it that way for three weeks and all the cocoons should hatch with the next generations of worms leaving nothing but worm castings on the bottom – which becomes plant food. Then we use the worm castings for fertilizer and start all over.
