Harvesting Our Compost & Re-Bedding Our Worms...

It's only been 3 months since we started our worm compost bin. Click for the 1st post<. The guidelines suggest re-bedding your worm bin after 6 months. We couldn't wait! Hahaha. It seemed that they were rapidly consuming the food we fed them and creating a lot of vermicast so we decided to "harvest". This photo collage to the left is in chronological order. The top is what the top layer of the bin looked like when we decided to harvest. We removed the newspaper layer to get to the decomposing food and worms. There are thousands of other insects and things that also live amonst the worms and help break down the food. (Btw, their "food" is our vegetable waste and coffee grinds.) We made a pile for the large chunks of paper & food, a pile for medium chunks & a pile for finer vermicastings. After that, we sorted through to get as many of the chunks of things out to be re-bedded. At the same time, we are also separating our worms. This is so we can see how much our worm population has increased and so that we can put as many of the worms as possible back into the new bedding. This is what our worm ball looked like when we started 3 months ago. It was a quarter pound of worms at that time. This is our worm ball when we harvested & re-bedded couple weekends ago. We weighed them and they weighed a little over half a pound. This is great because they are estimated to multiply at an average rate of twice it's weight every 6 months under ideal conditions. This means our conditions must be a little better than ideal because they have more than doubled their weight and population in only 3 months! Whooo hooo! This is good news to me because a quarter pound of worms to start with cost $40! I'm glad my worms have more than doubled it's value. Too bad my money in the bank doesn't do that. :P We have set aside our vermicastings in a different containter that I'm keeping watered. I'm trying to let any baby worms and sneaky worms that are hiding in it consume what ever food is left in it. I'll try to separate as many worms out of there in a few weeks and then be left with the compost to add to the plant soil. We love doing this... I'm thinking of starting multiple worm bins at different stages so we can harvest and play with our worm friends more often. I know some of you must think it's gross. There is no smell and the worms are cool... literally. They have a therapeutic affect on you. It is relaxing to have the vermicast (worm doots) flowing through your fingers and squigly worms dancing around in your palm. It also reduces your waste and provides you with nourishing compost and "compost tea" for the plants around your house!

Compost Worm Bin

Last weekend, we decided to begin a compost worm bin. Kelli and I have been interested in these composting worms for a while, but just never made the effort to start one. A lot of the procrastination had to do with the start up costs. There is a local business woman who has been specializing in providing these compost worms and worm bin kits for several years. Her business is called Waikiki Worm Company. The business recently expanded and is now in a larger retail space just outside of Waikiki, at 1917 S. King Street. We started with the basic set up. It comes with: -A 1/4 pound of EPIGEIC Perionyx excavatus, a.k.a. Hawaii's native composting worms. (Click for worm info.) Sold ala carte at Waikiki Worm Company for $40 + tax. It comes in a quart size zip lock bag with some vermicompost that contains the other organisms to help start the composting process. -A 10 gallon plastic bin with "Waikiki Worm Company" logo and pre-fabricated holes. Of course you could buy this bin from Walmart or somewhere for about $5-$10, but it won't have the official logo on it and you'll need to drill your own holes. -A basic worm bin starter book titled "Worms Eat My Garbage" by Mary Appelhof. I've read about half of it, not in order. There are interesting parts, but has a lot about designing your own worm bin. I wasn't very interested in that part because I don't really want design information. I enjoyed the parts of the book that gave more explanation on the care of the worms. -Start up instruction leaflet & couple worm-y bumper stickers. The total with tax came out to $71.20. The other things we purchased to complete our set up was a larger plastic container to fit under the bin to be used as a drip tray and a couple bricks to prop the bin over the drip tray for adequate ventilation. That was another $10 or so. We started with the 1/4 pound because it's suggested that they will be able to keep up with 2 adults average weekly food waste that can be added to the bin. The suggested consumption amount is 2 pounds of fruit, vegetable or grain waste per week. It takes a while for the entire process to look like vermicompost. In approximately 4-6 months we should have our first batch of nutritious compost for our plants. Right now it just looks like a bunch of worms eating fruit and vegetable waste. I'll post another update when they start to break down more of it. Video... From WormBin

New fish for wall aquarium bowl...

Yesterday Kelli bought a beta that she wanted to have in the wall aqaurium in our bathroom. Here is a picture. Below a a couple pictures of my other aquarium.

The nicest Dachsund I've ever seen!

I saw this at a new pet store in Ward Center. The chocolatey color of this dog is something that I've never seen in a Dachsund. I would really enjoy having this dog!

Brownie the dog.

Today we're going for a walk around diamond head with Lianne's dog, Brownie.