Vermicomposting in the cold-climate apartment- Fun with food

My mother always said “Don’t play with your food”, but she never said nothin’ about playing with the worm food.

Set up a nursery bin as an experimental station. Introduce a few worms, and feed them on a diet of regular stuff with occasional introduction of specialty foods. Hot peppers? Don’t risk your main vermicomposting station on these. Try them out first on the nursery.

Cucumbers

And carrots and other vegetables where we slice towards one end, but don’t use the end. With a sharp pointed knife make about a dozen “stab” cuts into the fleshy end of the cucumber. You want to introduce lots of air-space and bacterial channels in the flesh without cutting the skin, which will form a cone holding the flesh.

Place the cucumber end soft-side down on your bin. The worms will inhabit the interior. I’ve seen a carrot where the pithy centre has been eaten and occupied by a writhing mass of worms. The outer part was still intact.

Banana skins

You peel your banana the normal way, right? Three strips.

Lift the damp cardboard, carpet or bedding that you use to cover your composter and place a strip of banana soft-side down. The worms will come to dine.

Weirdest experiment yet

OK. So I got bored.

I used the blender to create vast amounts of paper slurry – newspaper, egg cartons, office paper.

I used the blender to make 4 litres (one ice cream tub – my standard measurement) of food scraps, including the “spine” from the beef kidney I ate for breakfast.

I ended up with 25 litres of paper and food, 4 parts paper slurry to 1 part food slurry, well mixed.

In a plant tray (about two feet by one foot and two inches deep with lattice bottom) I spread about 1 half-inch layer of pure paper slurry, extending it up the sides to make a “pie crust”.

Into this crust I placed as much paper-food slurry as I could fit.

I topped it off with pure paper slurry.

I have made a paper/food slurry pie, and left it to drain.

My theory is that it will dry out to make a large cake of digestible bedding, which can be broken up into day-size portions; maybe act as a bait for harvesting worms.

I have four four-litre tubs of paper-food slurry left over. I might freeze those.

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