I’ve got worms!!

And I’m so excited!!! Isaac says I shouldn’t phrase it like that, but it caught your attention!

So my friend Kyla has been using worms for composting for a good while now. And because she is moving to San Diego (I’m not jealous) because she is getting married and her fiance said that she could build a larger home for worms when she gets there, she said I could have her already established homemade worm composting system! I was so excited! I’ve always want to compost better (I just hate waste) and my attempts have been poor to say the least. I have a trash can outside that I was going to compost in, but I never remembered to roll it or take the compost out.

So Kyla brought over the system this weekend with her amazing cheat sheet on how to take care of the worms! Isaac just rolled his eyes at my excitement and I told him thank you for letting me have it. He said we hadn’t really discussed it (oops) but was glad I was so happy. Here are her rules:

	⅓ food	⅔ Dry Stuff
Yes	Almost Anything Organic: crushed eggshells, coffee grinds, peels, etc.	Newspaper, dryer lint, leaves, cardboard
No	Meat, Dairy, Citrus, Poop	Bleached white paper, shiny paper

When you add food, put it under the top layer of dry stuff.

Ideal moisture is the same as a squeezed out kitchen sponge. Just add more dry stuff if it is too wet.

Worms get unhappy if:

• it’s too wet, cause they think they’ll drown (add dry stuff)
• ridiculous amount of food in container (just hold off on adding food and they’ll catch up)
• left in sunlight or temps outside 50⁰-90⁰ F

Harvest Time: Take top layer of newspaper from “home” tub and add to empty tub. Put tub on top and only add food to it. They’ll move as there’s nothing left in the old tub.

These are red wiggler worms, the only kind that can live happily in a shallow container.

Kyla recommended me keeping it in my basement, so I’m going to put it our pantry area downstairs! It smells like dirt, not like rotted food so the reason for keeping it downstairs is for the temperature. I spent Saturday morning feeding the worms leftovers from spaghetti night (bread crusts, Olivia’s sweet potatoes, onion top) and some dryer lint, but gonna start a food container so I don’t overwhelm them! Yay! Happy Rebecca! Thank you so much Kyla!

And ubiquitous picture of Olivia!

Eating dirt at Stone Mountain playground