Worms Way Outnumber People At Our House

Even though they're in a box, worms know which side is up!

I’m long overdue with a post. Sorry about that. In between work and the heat and the rain and more rain, it’s been hard to get everything done in the garden and post to my blog too. I’ll make this one short so as not to wear out my welcome with worm talk.

But I just have to say that the worms really love the new condo they moved into a few weeks ago. As I explained in my May 7 post, I wasn’t that keen on my one-bin system so I moved everyone into a new bin with four stackable trays.

The other bin was working just fine. But its design made it hard to actually see the worms eating or just wriggling around doing worm stuff. I figured the trays would make it easier to interact with the worms at feeding time, or if I just want to take a peek to see how they’re doing. And it is easier, and much more enjoyable.

The worms are snug inside a cool, wet shirt.

One thing I realized once I could see the worms properly was that there weren’t enough of them to eat a reasonable amount of food waste coming out of our kitchen each day. I read that you can start a bin with 500 worms (about half a pound), which is what I imagine I did. But, really, a whole pound of worms would be much more efficient, most of the books say. Clearly, I needed to order up more worms.

So I looked in my Worm Factory 360 instruction booklet and found their recommendation to go to www.findworms.com to locate the nearest worm farm or grower. I did, and I was happy to find Laverme’s Worms in Duluth, Minnesota, which is just a couple of hours north of Minneapolis.

Ellen Sandbeck has been running Laverme’s Worms since 1989. She speaks frequently on vermicomposting, teaches people of all ages how to do it and works as a federally contracted “Worm Farm Specialist” at the Federal Prison Camp in Duluth where she helps inmates and officers manage the 100-foot-long worm bin she set up at the camp in 2000.

I ordered a pound of worms from Ellen and she was kind enough to take the time on the phone to offer me a few pointers on worm composting. Namely, she said the stacking systems like mine aren’t so hot because you have to fuss with them quite a bit. She said I should hang on to my old bin because I would probably want to go back to it soon. I know she’s an expert, but I hope she’s not right about that. Time will tell. Once the thrill wears off, maybe I will want to go back to the easier-to-manage single bin.

Yay! Freedom.

Anyway, I wanted to tell you about the worm shipment. Since they’re alive and need to stay that way, they were shipped using overnight mail. I opened the box and inside was a wet T-shirt that had been tied up tightly. The whole box smelled like fresh dirt after a rain. Inside was a GIANT pile of wriggling worms intermingled with a bit of soil/compost/vermicompost—not sure which.

I released everybody into the lower tray to join the others and I’m happy to say that all is going well. They’re eating about a cup of food scraps daily. Worms don’t have teeth, so I chop all of our veggie peels and odd bits into little pieces for them and add crushed eggshells, coffee grounds, tea bags and other things they can have. It only takes a minute.

Oh, and there are no gross fruit flies buzzing around yet. Woo hoo!