Worms in Our Laundry Room

He says: 
Over time Abby and I decided that we were throwing out too much organic waste (food scraps).  Every time we would throw out a fruit peel or a piece of bread we would sigh and lament about how we could be doing some useful--like composting it.  However, since we live in a rental there's not really a good way to set up a compost pile, and for cosmetic reasons I like to limit the heaving of kitchen refuse into our backyard to a minimum (not to say it doesn't happen occasionally).

We had heard about worms bins and how useful they were for recycling organic waste, and then we caught wind that they could be kept indoors.  So we started looking at designs for worm bins and settled on one that uses a series of opaque storage totes.  After getting them from Target, I drilled holes in the tops, bottoms, and sides of the bins for circulation.  Then we tore up some old junk mail to provide the bedding.  Once that was done we set out on a search for the red wiggler earthworm at the Minnesota baitshop in Kansas. 

The next part of the journey is fraught with missteps and setbacks.  Our instructions told us to put in a little bit of dirt for texture in order to help the worms grind the paper and to introduce some local microbes.  We did that, but once we put the worms in their new home they were immediately angered.  They flailed about and tried to escape their new environment (and some did).  Thinking this was normal I proceeded to put in our excess organic material into the bin, mostly citrus peels -two mistakes in one I would soon find out.  I didn't start noticing problems until a few weeks in when I opened the lid only to find a large amount of feathery mold in the bin.

I was disheartened.  I thought the whole project was over and that I had foolishly sacrificed tens of worms due to my ignorance.  After a little more in-depth research, I found that worms have a hard time breaking down large amounts of citrus and also “fresh” material.  Several people said that they keep their food waste in a plastic container for a few days to ripen and then they give it to the worms, since apparently worms don't eat the food, but rather they slurp on the decomposing goo (disgusting!).  Abby suggested that we continue to keep it going, at best the mold would clear up and things would be fine and at worst we would just dump it in the spring.  So I piled on loads of dirt covering the mold and I waited.

A few weeks later, following the new guidelines the bin was fixed.  No more mold and plenty of fat earthworms crawling around in the soil.  Now the only thing we notice is the bin getting heavier as the weeks go by.  Hooray!

The next step is to set up a container garden and fortify the pots with our very own nutrient-rich compost!