The inside of the worm farm

Our worm farm arrived!  As you can see, we set it up outside on cinder blocks to make sure it wouldn’t get flooded.  The spigot is to get out the fertilizer juice, otherwise known as “worm tea”, which is great for watering plants.

Inside there is a layer of newspaper (so the worms don’t fall out the bottom) then dirt mixed with coir (coconut hair), with a handful of worm food in the corner.

On top of that goes a layer of shredded newspaper, and on the very top is a layer of moist unshredded newspaper.

So after getting everything set up, I’m reading through the directions one last time, and see this little statement in the very back of the booklet:

The worms like to be between 60 and 80 degrees.  You can keep your worm farm in the kitchen.

Emmy helping

That’s right, inside!  Turns out the worm farm is an indoor thing.  I never got that from reading the website, and was I ever surprised! You can see Dozer and Emmy (Emmy is the black one) coming inside to scout a good area in the kitchen for it.

In the kitchen

So here is our worm farm in the corner of the kitchen.  The booklet promises that it won’t be stinky unless we overfeed them.  You can see that Emmy’s help consisted of leaving a great big hairball next to the worm farm.  Talk about spring shedding!

The extra tray on top of the one in the previous picture is full of dry shredded newspaper.  That is supposed to keep any fruit flies from escaping their life as worm food.

The worms arrive later this week, so more pictures then!

Red Worms

Vermiculture you ask?  Yes, vermiculture!  Though I think it should be called “wormiculture” instead.  It is the process of growing worms and using their “castings”, i.e. worm poop.  Worm poop and worms are great for your garden.  I also wanted to cut down on our waste by composting our kitchen scraps and ads we get in snail mail.  That’s right, worms are happy to recycle snail mail, newspapers, and leftover veggies that no one will eat into worm poop that will do your garden wonders.

It took me a long time to decide what kind of bin I wanted to keep the worms in.  It isn’t like you can just let them follow you around the house like puppies!   I wanted one that was easy to assemble and get the worm poop out of without having to get my hands all icky with worm slime.  Not that the worms like it either I’m sure!  I finally decided on one from Happy D Ranch.  It should arrive some time next week, with the worms arriving the week after.  I’ll be sure to post pictures of my new venture into the Green!