Mother’s Day Gift Ideas
I was telling my mom about the worm bucket system that I set up and she decided that’s what she wanted for mother’s day – a worm farm. And mom was serious. So I had to look into gathering more empty buckets. I had one and my “design” calls for four. So I stopped in Burger King last Friday, bought an obligatory coffee and asked about buckets. The kid behind the counter brought me one. I asked him about the ones I had seen by the dumpster and he told me that I could take those too. I scored five.
On Saturday I started making mom’s worm farm. After thinking about it for a while I decided to make the farm five buckets instead of four. My thinking was to make two into the spacers. That would mean that the stack would be: solid bucket on the bottom, empty main bucket, main bucket, spacers. Two of the rim sections of these buckets adds about six inches of height. Once the empty main is rotated to the top there is nearly a full bucket worth of castings in the main bucket. I liked this idea so much that I added another spacer to mine. I added 3″ of newspaper bedding and scooped out a couple of handfuls of worms to drop into the new system. It’s not much to start with, but they are supposed to be prolific breeders.
We went to mom’s on Sunday for late brunch. My aunt, cousin and my cousin’s daughter were visiting with my mom. I haven’t seen my cousin in something like 15 years so it was good to see her again. Mom was waiting for her worms. I showed her the setup, told her how to feed them and when to rotate the main buckets. Her main compost bin is too narrow, doesn’t heat up enough and dries out too fast (I see a new compost bin construction project coming) and she is probably going to end up using the worm buckets as her primary kitchen waste processor. And she couldn’t have been happier with a store bought gift.
