Sunday, September 12, 2010

Build a Plastic Worm Bin, Day 2

Assuming your box of soggy paper is still outside or in your tub, pull the worm bin up and rotate it 45-90° and place it over the catch bin. The water will rush out, leaving you with very damp paper in the worm bin as the catch bin becomes full with water.

Let stand anywhere from a couple hours to overnight to relieve the paper of excess moisture.

Dump whatever water accumulated in your catch bin. Please pour this over your plants or lawn or your neighbors garden. If you HAVE to dump it within your apartment, you can pour the water down the tub drain, but I'd recommend the toilet in case there are loose gluey bits of paper in there.

Now dump the damp paper into the hole-less catch bin. Break apart the clumpy bits of paper so it's sort of fluffy as you transfer it back into the worm bin with holes until you have an inch or two of paper in there.

Spread the worm food you've been saving in a nice little layer over the paper in the worm bin. Did you get the coffee grounds and filter out of the coffee maker? Throw that in there too. There's probably about 4 cups of food over the paper in this image.

The food I gave the worms included coffee grounds and filter, carrot peels, potato peels, turnip peels, tomato ends and melon pieces.

Transfer remaining paper from the catch bin into the worm bin, taking care to break up the clumpy parts.

Paper can be added up to the lowest set of holes -- apparently, I hadn't saved enough paper the first time around.

Now that the catch bin is empty, put your stand-offs in there (juice bottles or Ziploc containers, whatever you've got) and put the worm bin inside of the catch bin.

If you feel like it, throw in a handful of dirt from your backyard. Worms don't have teeth, and it is believed their gizzards contain tiny rocks they've swallowed which assist in grinding up their vittles. While your worms likely come equipped with gritty gizzards, some insurance is nice. I added about half a sandwich baggy of dirt that was in the back of a Tonka truck at my brother's house.


Add your worms. Just dump them right there on top of the paper and they'll slowly burrow down into the paper as they are light sensitive.

A lot of sites say you should leave the bin open and blaze lights down on the worms to ensure they'll go down into the bin instead of crawling out into your kitchen.

My experience is that only 1 out of a 1000 worms has any interest in what's happening outside the worm bin and will naturally go where it's dark, moist and food awaits. And that one wild worm will quickly realize he's being silly and join his friends. Just leave the bin open for 30 minutes or so in a regularly-lit setting (natural or fake light). Please don't point lamps directly into the bin. That's just lunacy. And mean.

Snap the lid on the bin, tuck the entire thing into a corner of your kitchen and forget it for a week.

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