Worms

So since I left school in January we have had a small problem with compost. For a while we tried to collect out food scraps and give them to my parents who have green bin collection but after a couple of weeks we started to realize that just wasn't going to work. The scraps would sit around too long and start to smell. Sadly the only thing we could do was just through scraps in the garbage.

The environmentalist in me hated doing this but there was no other option. Then I remembered some blogs I had read a while go about using worms to compost your kitchen scraps. So I started to look into it more. The best resource that I found was http://www.redwormcomposting.com/ which went through a really easy way to go about making a bit for the kitchen. There were probably 5 or 6 other sources that I read and all of them said that it was easy to do without having any smell.

But Talia wasn't too thrilled about having worms in the apartment. Something about being kind of freaked out by them which is odd because she has no problems putting worms on hooks to go fishing.

But after a couple more weeks of talking about it she finally decided it was ok for me to try it out. Now came the hard part, finding the worm bin. A lot of the web pages suggested using a rubber maid bin but they are expensive and I couldn't find one that would fit under the sink. Eventually I found one (as per my blog entry the other day) but I couldn't fine the vents I needed to let things stay well aerated.

So today I had to go to York to do my last testing session for an experiment I started back in December, and on my way home I stopped by a home depot to try and pick up the vents. I couldn't find the louver vents that were mentioned but I did find some sink drains that I thought would work. I also picked up a drill bit (1.25 in although I probably should have gotten a 1 in.), epoxy  to glue the drains in, and a black berry bush (with pot) for Talia.

So when I got home (after putting the laundry up) I started work on building it.

My worm box

Side view with the vents in

There was a funny story about the next picture. While I was drilling the holes, Talia was out getting laundry change from her bank and going to the dollar store. After starting to drill I realized I was missing the nylon that I needed to prevent the worms from coming out. It was at this point that I had to call Talia and say "Can you pick me up some pantihose?" lol, I had to ask someone to pick me up some up.

my vents with fabric elastics on

Later this evening I was able to stray paint the bottom of the bin. Unfortunately it needs another coat of paint to get it nice and dark but It was getting dark and raining a little so I called it quits for the night.

~(' ')~