Food for worms…
by Richard PerkinsLet’s talk about feeding the worms. Now don’t panic. I’m not talking about the dirt nap here, or even sleeping with the fishes. I’m talking about vermicomposting.
This week we decided to stop throwing out our household organic waste, choosing instead to recycle it. How do you recycle vegetable scraps, one might ask? With the help of a few thousand little critters called red wrigglers. When I was a kid, we raised chickens, goats, cows, a rabbit or two, and a few horses. But this is my first honest to goodness worm ranch, so I thought I’d share the experience with the uninitiated.
First of all, let me just say the whole process has been surprisingly easy. You can have worms shipped to you just about anywhere in the US from a number of online vendors. You can even buy worm composting kits from many of them. These systems range in price from $80 to $200, but the good news is, you don’t really need one. I bought a couple of used recycling bins from Santa Clara County Waste Management. After drilling a bunch of holes for drainage and air circulation, adding feet and a drain line to the bottom bin, I now have my own vertical stacking system for $15 and a couple hours in the garage. Best of all, the entire system is made from recycled components diverted from one of California’s overextended landfills. Win-win.
I bought my worms from a local distributor. It’s hard to claim your karmic environmental responsibility credit for composting when your worms have a three thousand mile plane flight in their carbon footprint. We have a little bucket that we keep next to the sink for scraps. When it fills up (which takes us about a week) we empty it into a ziploc and freeze it for a few days. You can skip this step if you want, but putting the scraps through a freeze/thaw cycle kills opportunistic fruitfly eggs. It also softens the food up so the worms can get at it faster (lacking teeth, redworms prefer food that’s easy to gum). After coming out of the freezer, the scraps get dropped into the working bin and covered with damp shredded newspaper. Now, we have a few thousand worms in the garage, happily chomping through the leftover vegetable scraps and producing nutrient rich castings.
We have a small vegetable garden in the back where we pulled up a few rows of paving stones to make a four foot by eight foot bed. Earlier in the summer we planted beans, tomotoes, swiss chard (or silverbeat as the Aussies call it), cucumbers, peppers, carrots, and some radishes for good measure. The swiss chard has done really well this summer, and the tomoato plants are kicking into high gear right about now.
The carrots were an overwhelming failure, but hey. Win some, lose some, right? So how does this fit in with the vermicomposting? Well, to establish the planter bed for our garden, I used several bags of potting soil. The mix included, among other things, a fair amount of chemical fertilizer. I’d rather not have to refertilize that bed before we start planting our cool season crops. Worm castings to the rescue! We won’t have much useable compost for a few months. But when we do get a chance to use it, I’ll let everyone know how it process goes.
On the writing front, I’m still working on drafint Chapter 13 in the Doormakers’ Fall series. But I’ve also started a side project. It’s a short story, set before the events of Doormakers’ Fall. It’s meant to help me with some world building, but it will also be a stand alone story in its own right. It’s about the son of a wealthy merchant who’s life turns in a decidely unexpected and not entirely welcome direction. I’m working on it pretty steadily to see how well I can do at writing on a schedule. Hopefully, I’ll be able to post it in its entirety in the Writer’s Lair in the next week or two. In the mean time, enjoy a couple of scenes from Chapter 9.
