416-993-4953 32 Grenville Street M4Y 1A3 CPRGreaves@gmail.com Home

Vermicomposting – At The Desk

Sunday, August 10, 2014

This is a bit like Vermicompost Guerilla. Your spouse or office manager is lukewarm on vermicomposting, but you hate throwing an apple core in the garbage.

Build or obtain a desk-side vermicomposter.

I started off with a clean plastic pail. Clean as in washed-and-triple-rinsed. I want no toxins or detergent for my babies.

The pail is about ten inches height and diameter. Do the math.

That is shredded newspaper, stuffed dry into the pail. Not stomped down, but pressed firmly with the fist.

I have poured some plant-water from my simple grey water system to flood and cover the paper scraps.

Half an hour later I upend the pail (carefully!) over my grey-water drainer; you can see ripples in the water as drops continue to hit the surface.

Half an hour later dripping has stopped. I figure the shredded paper has absorbed water and yet is not dripping wet. No need to squeeze it.

I have been collecting a few kitchen scraps these past two days.

I make a slight depression in the damp paper and toss the kitchen scraps into the depression; the scraps will not start off against the plastic side of the pail.

You can see that I can’t be bothered peeling that annoying little plastic tag from the banana peel. More about that later ...

I have grabbed about two litres of matrix from my bin vermicomposter and spread it in a cone-shape on a plastic garbage bag. I leave it sit for about an hour so that most of the worms will migrate to the centers of the cone.

I carefully scrape away the edges of the cone with a plastic teaspoon and catch stragglers. Here is the first slow-poke, trapped, captured, and carefully deposited on top of the scraps.

Later on he will proudly tell his grandkids “When I moved here there were no paved streets”, and there still won’t be!

Time passes; I ladle about fifty individual large healthy worms into the scraps pail.

I am suddenly confronted with a pile of worms all anxious to flee the light.

The ball of worms would be about two or three inches diameter. Do the math.

The plastic teaspoon is a regular size teaspoon from the coffee bar at The Marriot Hotel. Gives you an idea of scale and size, right?

The residual matrix will go back into the bin composter.

Here’s the “later”: I am of the dump-it-all-in school. My job is NOT to vermicompost; that’s the job of the bacteria and worms.

So in my matrix you will see a red elastic rubber band, some yellow plastic packaging, some shredded window-envelope crap, a rather large beef bone (with all the soft parts eaten away!), next to the elastic band is one of those tough plastic do-hickeys that keep your bag of apples closed, and lots, lots more.

When it comes time to harvest the castings, I’ll sieve the lot and toss out the non-degradable crud as garbage.

Here you see that I have carefully lifted the ball of worms and placed it atop the scraps.

A quarter of an hour later the worms have almost disappeared. The few that remain are tired, and are dragging themselves, millimetre by millimetre away from the light.

When I come back from buying some ice-cream I’ll put a small layer of damp shredded paper on the top and let the worm population settle in for a week.

The worms are gone to bed, a couple of handfuls of wet shredded newsprint serves as an insulator.

In case you are wondering how to get hold of a pail, they come in all colours!

Here’s one waiting to be tossed out with the Garbage. Look down any back lane in the Downtown Office Core of Toronto.

This one is a lovely green shade.

Saturday, August 23, 2014

Two weeks have passed. I meant to post a status photo showing that the pail has settled down, so in the spirit of better-late-than-never ...

Here is a view of the bin this morning; I have been tossing the odd piece of torn-paper on the top, a dead leaf, and so on.

With clean rubber gloves I remove two scooped handfuls of paper from the top to reveal (above) a writhing mass of pregnant worms attacking the banana skins and other debris; the vegetable matter has been attacked by bacteria, the worms are scavenging the bacteria. Things are going well.

I suspect that the worms were pregnant before they were placed in this pail.

The two scooped handfuls of paper laid out on the black plastic garbage bag, some of the worms have found this piece of banana skin, too. All seems healthy.

I lift the paper matrix away from one side and the base of the pail. Worm Castings are littered across the base and up the sides. This tells me that the lower part of the pail is not too wet. It is damp enough, but not too damp, for the worms to migrate here to excrete.

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

I have been away for two weeks, the little bin has been undisturbed. What’s going on inside?

The scraps of paper I’d left on top are not traveled, but the sides of the pail and the matrix are coated with castings.

With clean rubber gloves I lift the top couple of inches of material and am greeted with well-composted material.

Except for pieces of egg shell, there’s little evidence of shredded paper, carrot tops, apple cores and the like.

I tip most of the pail onto a plastic garbage bag. What’s left in the bottom of the pail looks like the entire contents.

This tells me that the initial matrix (Sunday, August 10, 2014) has been consumed. It has taken about seven weeks for MY bin to settle down, and that’s dependant on many factors, such as the initial material used, relative volume of paper, number of worms added, and so on.

I discover a few remaining clumps of paper, but these seem to be saturated with brown moisture, probably rich in the bacteria that the worms love.

I drop in shredded paper to the volume of the pail.

And then I return about 80% of the material on top of the dry shredded paper. (The remaining 20% I tossed onto a larger bin).

The weight of the damp composted material will gradually flatten the paper.

I will continue to add an desk-load to the pail each day 1 apple core for example), and the pail’s worm population will settle down to deal with whatever I tea-spoon into the bin.

Loading

416-993-4953 CPRGreaves@gmail.com

Toronto, Tuesday, September 30, 2014 4:38 PM

Copyright © 1996-2014 Chris Greaves. All Rights Reserved.