Ewwwwww! Worms!

"Ewwww! Worms!"  That has pretty much been the response we got when we told people we were building a worm bin this weekend.  What is a worm bin you ask?  Well, Its a "house" for worms where they will be making compost from your kitchen scraps.  It is contained so it makes it convenient to have it indoors so that in the winter months (half of the year here in Wisconsin) I don't have to walk in 2 feet of snow and try to bury my kitchen scraps in our big compost bin outside.  So, yes, these worms will be living in my basement and I love it!  I'm far from grossed out.  In fact, I'm totally excited to have these little buggers eat my banana peel or onion skin.  It's a very easy (and cheap!) project and in a couple months you could have some seriously good compost.

How to build a worm bin:

You will need two plastic totes (12 gallons or more).  Mine are two 18 gallon totes that I had on hand.  Just make sure they are not clear or see through.

Next you will need to drill about 20-25 evenly spaced holes in the bottom of each tote with a 1/4" drill bit.  As you can see my holes are not very evenly spaced.  I think I had too much caffeine in my tea that day because my markings for Andy to drill were just plain awful.  He really should have fired me from the job.

Next, with a 1/16" drill bit, you will need to drill two rows of holes all the way around the top portion of the totes and on ONE of the lids.  They should be spaced about 1" to 1 1/2" apart.  My markings continued to be sub par.

 After all the holes are drilled you will need to gather shredded newspaper or even that shredded junk mail and get it wet.  Wring out any excess water so that the paper is just moist and fluff it in the bottom of one of the totes (about 2-4 inches deep).  Throw in a couple handfuls of dirt and some kitchen scraps, but be sure to bury it into the newspaper to avoid fruit flies. 

The best part?  Adding some worms (beneath some of the newspaper).  You will want to use red worms.  We got ours from a bait shop.  $3.00 for about 30 of them.  We got 60 worms because now that it is starting to warm up we will be using our outdoor compost bin more.  And we can just throw in a small amount of scraps into the worm bin for now.  It is said that a few female worms can produce 1000 baby worms in just a couple months, so we will hopefully have an abundance come fall.  If you want to get free worms instead, just wet a piece of cardboard and leave it outside for a couple days and gather the worms that gathered there. 

Wet a piece of cardboard and place it on top of the newspaper/dirt/worm mixture and put on the lid on.  Sit the tote on top of two brick sitting on top of the other lid.  This is so any liquid can drain out (this is compost tea) and be caught in the lid.  The compost tea is a GREAT fertilizer for your garden.

When the compost is ready to be used.  Set up the same scenario in the other tote with the exception of adding worms.  Then place the composted bin into the newly set up tote.  It will look like this:

In a month or so all the worms should have traveled from the first bin to the second one via the holes in the bottom.  Than you can than use that lovely compost from the first tote for whatever you desire! 

Notes:
-Don't add too many scraps.  Before adding new kitchen scraps make sure all the old scraps have been composted. 
-Make sure the newspaper is moist.  But you don't want it too dry or too wet.

Obviously, Andy and I didn't just learn how to do this out of our... yeah.  So check out this source because it was beyond helpful!