Chuck's Questions

As promised somewhere on this blog, I'd answer any questions that have yet to be answered. Chuck posed a couple to me today.

What are the dimensions of one of my worm bins?

Every one of my bins is a 10-gallon Sterilite bin. Each is 12" tall, and across the open top, 18" long and 13" wide.

As Chuck has been closely monitoring the humidity in a see-through bin, he was concerned that it would be hard to determine the humidity in a dark bin.

It's obvious if humidity is too much. Any condensation on the walls of a bin is what I'd consider pushing the limit on humidity. This, for example, is excessive:

Here's a good time to insert a reminder that ventilation holes are an excellent way to circumvent this problem. While there are two rows of ventilation holes (larger holes up top and smaller holes an inch below those) in the bin above, they were drilled too low overall causing the lower holes to be useless as they are masked by the catch bin. Don't make the mistake I made on this bin. Remember that your stand-offs in the catch bin will compress with the mass of the materials in the worm bin and that mass will continuously increase as you feed the worms and thus, compression will increase over time.

Long story short: drill the holes as close to the top as possible.

When this much moisture is present, feed the worms a dry-paper-only regiment until the system is at more desireable moisture levels. High moisture isn't dentrimental to the worms as long as it isn't continued an extended period of time though you might find that the natural balance isn't as worm-favorable as it is mite-favorable.

How I Made Eve, aka, How to Split a Worm into Two

June 28, 2008 Adam was born. By August, I determined that an Eve was necessary. And so she was made.

Segue:

Holy crap, I've been keeping worms for nearly three years!

Later this month will be the 3rd anniversary;

I know it's not the paper anniversary

so would it be rock or scissors?

 

August 26th, 2008, Eve was born from Adam. I had made it so. Rodney helped. Not that Rodney and I...well, nevermind. Eve came from Adam. Period.

 

Look at the time frame between Adam and Eve. That's just two months. Certainly I could've postponed on making Eve, but at the time I was ultra-concerned that the worms would be suffering if I kept them in such a pile of poop. As I said in the About Me, I didn't know what to do with so much (what I'd now consider not-very-much) of Adam's poop anyway.

 

So let's take a look at what I did to split Adam into Adam and Eve. It'll be fun trip down memory lane for me and, for my current generation of worms, family history.

 

First, I soaked a couple of paper grocery bags in water and transferred them to the newly bottom-holed Eve. Then I soaked some shredded paper, primarily grocery bags, and transferred those to Eve.

Because I bought the coir and hadn't used it to make a bed for Adam, I went ahead and used it to make bedding for Eve; surplus went to Adam. This poorly imaged brick of RoLanka coir was what I started with.

After removing the coir from the plastic encasement and glossy paper label, the brick went into the water left from soaking the above-mentioned paper.

The coir went from totally dry at time zero to semi-soaked exterior in 6 minutes and (after flipping) totally-soaked exterior at 36 minutes.

The coir was totally soaked and started breaking up at about 38 minutes.

I put in a nice layer of the coir on the paper in Eve.

Followed by a nice even layer made up of some of this food.

The food included coffee grounds and filters, puffed rice cereal, lettuce, tomatoes, used paper towels, melon rinds and seeds, carrots and mushrooms.

Adam sidled up next to Eve and gave her half of his wormy contents.

Adam was fed the rest of the food and Eve was topped off with more damp grocery bag strips.

After the remaining coir was spread over Adam, additional dry paper was added to the coir water briefly before being spread over Adam's coir layer.

Cardboard from a thin box a book came in was placed over Adam and Ever before their lids were snapped on.

Voila, a happy couple. 

Why Catch Bins are a Good Idea

Remember when I said you should have a catch bin under your worm bin? Ok, maybe I never said so explicitly, but it was always implied even from the beginning.

This is why:

That's water, wet poop, and worms accumulated in The Offspring's catch bin. You really don't want this leaking all over your kitchen floor or whatever location you decide to keep worms.

Look at this mess:

Note that there are worms right in the mucky water! As an FYI, the container in there is an old Tidy Cat container.

I drained off the water caught in the Tidy Cat container cavity (formed over time due to a hole that eventually blew open in a corner) straight into the catch bin, taking care to strain out the worms floating around in there (and yes, they were still alive though slow-moving). Then I scraped the worms and poop into The Offpring so the worms could get back to work.

What kind of spa/resort do they think I'm running here?

I'll admit that the caught water was fairly stank. I poured the poop-brown water from the catch-bin over a bush in front of my apartment. And no, I didn't bother to rinse the catch-bin out before I put it right back where it belonged. However, I did wipe the pouring edge with a piece of TP left on a roll destined for worm feeding. You can hose out the bin, scrub it if you want, but once the water accumulation is discarded, the odor is pretty much non-existent.

It's up to you though, you clean-freak, worm-bin-wanna-be-havin' friends of mine. One day, you'll find that you can't have enough worm bins...yes, yes, my friends, we will revel in that together. It's only a matter of time...and I can wait.

And lie in wait I will.

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.

Build a Plastic Worm Bin, Day 1

These are images I collected when my first worm bin was built, which I'd later named Adam. It's really hard to name individual worms, thus they were named collectively.

Before we get started, let's put definitions into place for clarity: "worm bin" is the one that the holes are drilled into; the "catch bin" should remain hole free.

First, I marked dots where I wanted holes drilled in the bottom of the worm bin. And it was done.

I think these were 1/16" holes, evenly spaced a couple inches apart, throughout the bottom of the bin. Make the edges of these holes as burr/flash-free as possible for the future. One day this bin will be the second story of another worm bin.

Then I inverted two 5 1/4 cup Ziploc containers inside the catch bin and placed the worm bin inside of the catch bin. I made two sets of dotted lines around the entire bin; small holes were drilled on the bottom line and larger holes on the upper line.

Lower holes, I think, were 1/8" and the upper were 1/4". Burrs on hole edges here don't really matter.

And holes were also drilled into the lid of the worm bin.

Also 1/4", I think. Burrs on the holes in the lid don't matter either.

Now I'll save you the hassle of doing your first worm bin like I did mine, where I wasted a lot of time and yielded a big mess. We won't get into what I was thinking back then.

Remove the Ziploc/juice containers from the catch bin and place the worm bin inside of the catch bin so the bins are set up like a pasta-cooker/strainer in one. Load the worm bin with strips/pieces of paper you have ready. Fill the bin with enough water to cover the paper straight from the tap*, say, from your bathtub tap or a garden hose outside, about 4-5 gallons. Add as much additional paper as you can into the water so the paper is completely submerged. Let the material stand overnight.

Overnight? Is that really necessary?

No, not necessary, but I've found that worms will be much happier if you let the paper marinate overnight. It truly is a phenomenon the difference standing overnight versus a couples hours makes. When marinated overnight, the material stays damp much longer than if marinated a couple hours, which requires less maintenance, which is nice.

*some websites claim you have to have chlorine-free water to wet your worm paper.  I say phooey on that as keeping worms shouldn't be a complicated thing. Worm maintenance should be as simple as possible from the git-go. So far, my worms have not complained once about the chlorinated water.

My First Worm Bin, the Purchases Required

As I said in the About Me and This Blog tab, I started with one worm bin. Which then became two, then three, and soon, six.

Let's start at the beginning. When I decided I was ready to start my own worm bin, I researched the various types available. The best one for me would be a homemade plastic bin as they are cheap and won't break down over time, compared to wood. The downside of plastic is that they don't breathe. Holes take care of that, no problem.

I bought, and continue to buy, all of my worm bin purchases (except worms) at Big Lots.  Everything there is dirt cheap.  As I was going to be producing "dirt", dirt cheap was perfect. My first worm bin consisted of:

• Two blue 10-gallon Sterilite brand plastic totes with lids: $3.75 each (now $4.25)
• One 8" Village Green 3-pronged garden cultivator: $2
• One 32-oz spray bottle: $1.20

Total cost for the worm bin materials including tax: $11.64.

From Flowerfield Enterprises, I purchased a pound of red wigglers and a brick of coir (the coir I found out later was not necessary, but I was paranoid about killing the worms): $31, including shipping.

That brought the grand total to $42.65.  Had I not purchased the unnecessary coir, it would be more along the lines of $35.