MICA Sustainable Worm Project

December 16th, 6-8 pm, come to Leidy Atrium in the Brown Center at MICA to see [and touch] live worms and active worm bins, learn about composting, and hear first time worm bin-users describe their experiences. Also in Leidy Atrium: exhibits on Oyster Health in the Chesapeake Bay, and Do It Yourself energy.

I write this from home in Pennsylvania, where I grew up. After dinner last night, as my younger (but taller) brother and I were cleaning the kitchen, something subconscious in me motioned to toss a handful of compostable kitchen scraps in a worm bin–in this household a nonexistent furnishing. Without my boxed pets to feed I walked outside into the chilly backyard of my childhood and instead performed the strange old ritual of hurling the scraps into the euonymus hedge that forms the ‘natural’ fence between yards.

It could be that I had thought of the burning bush, as its also known, as the site of decomposition in the scrambled puzzle of the suburban ecosystem–I had seen my father do the same many times with browning banana peels, apple cores, and carrot skins, his tongue pushed against the inside of his cheek as he side-armed the scraps into the long hedge. Or was it rather a more persistent charactaristic of suburban life that drove the practice? Apathy? It might be useful to modify the negative connotation of the word. Better: “distraction.” There wasn’t time, we always felt, for seeing through the life cycle of our food, really. Better toss it haphazardly in the yard. It followed what we did with all our other waste: send it away. Other things were to be attended to by the boys: TV, games, walks, runs, hikes, bikes, wrestling, sports….It was my mother who, with her garden, patiently introduced the family to composting.

The kidney-shaped vegetable and flower garden that each year encroached on the lawn like a growing paramecium was the previously absent answer to the equation that we boys needed for our life of logics. Composting had never made sense. Before, the bush had been the perfect place for food scraps to disappear without a trace–a zero sum proposition. But after a few seasons of gathering the kitchen scraps carefully in a passive compost bin–a few wooden pallets nailed together forming a cube–my mother showed that all those tossed away foods could be used to produce the rich black soil that made her (our) corn, beans, and squash grow large and colorful.

We could see and taste the results of all our work–and this is something that I believe is terribly important for any kind of composter, particularly an urban one. The act may begin as a curiosity, or as an attempt at a less wasteful lifestyle, or maybe as a way to help a friend out with a project of hers….but in the end the lifelong composter will be the one who sees his or her food turn not just into soil, but into food again. Then, of course, you ought to find someone who can teach you to cook it. But maybe I’ll leave that for another blog…

-Patrick

The first trap is an open bowl of half water, half vinegar, dish soap and a touch of alcohol. The flies come for the alcohol, but get stuck in the soap.

The second trap is a plastic bottle cut in half and inverted. Put something sweet like apple juice in the bottle. The flies go in but don’t have enough room to fly out.

Week Two:

1. This week, what did you eat? What did the worms eat? I have again, been running around quite a bit so lots of carbohydrates for me. My worms this week got four eggshells from the baking that my roommate and I have done at different intervals, as well as some of banana peels. Also, I have accidently been buying apples with textures I don’t like, so they have gotten some of those remains. This thanksgiving I am at home, but my roommate will be around to continue to feed them.

This past week the worms ate:

1/8 apple and its core

4 egg shells

2 banana peels

2. What’s going on in your bin? I am still amazed at how well the smell is kept inside the box. (Good job Miranda on the construction). Additionally, the smell of the box has changed from rotting ugliness to a more natural decomposition smell. That was exciting to discover as it reminds me of a farm or forest, not my urban apartment setting. It also was a relief because it seemed like the bin was working the way it should.

3. What if any problems are you facing? My one question is about cereal: if I have extra of something that is sweet, like Honey Nut Cheerios, can I put that in the bin? Will the artificial sugar be harmful to the worms?

Happy Thanksgiving!

-Katherine

The worms are doing well. This week I fed them quite a bit of apple cores and tea bags. I noticed that a large white chunk of mushroom that i put in last week was gone. There are still flies, but the worm bin health wise is doing very well. The dirt is dark and damp and smells earthy and rich.

-joanna

This is a photo of the bin I keep in the hallway of my apartment building. Most of the time, I think my neighbors are too shy to contribute, but the other day I found a bunch of leaves in there. For some reason, the bin also accumulates a lot of teabags and eggshells. The bin is doing pretty well, other than adding some more water to it this week. I had some early fears that the worms would escape and cause all kinds of problems with my relationship to the other tenants, but no such problems yet. I worry that I’m not feeding these guys enough, but I think they’re doing fine. I wonder how I can get more people to contribute.

-miranda

These bricks are maybe the size of three normal bricks. Seen outside the station building.

photo by zach genin.

Well them worms seem to done have gotten themselves bigga’, and they have made significant progress on the peach that matt and i put in almost two weeks ago. The banana peel is mostly still yellow, the end is browning a little, but the worms don’t seem too interested in it. The pieces of “pulpified” egg container seem to have been a nice contribution, little towns of worms are slowly forming and a nice and rich pungent earthy odor is seeping from the worm bin, without flies buzzing around. I have wondered if perhaps there would be better progress in the worm bin if it were summer when my diet would mostly comprise of farmers market produce, instead of the beans, soup, rice and oatmeal of which plays a significant role in my dietary habits these days. But lots of eggs too, only the eggshells for the worms though. Sometimes old carrots and cucumber rinds, but not so often.

-written by Isaac (uploaded by miranda)

Here’s a picture of a worm bin I found online. Notice how they’re using leaves, how they too have a good bit of sprouts on the sides, and as a plastic bin, they’ve also drilled a bunch of holes on the walls of the bin (not just on the top).

1. This week, what did you eat? What did the worms eat? This week was a busy week work wise for me, so I ended up eating a lot of grains and starches because it was a quick and easy way to get calories. My worms were able to have some dried grape nuts from the end of two boxes that I finished. Also my roommate Amanda made Chilli so they got some cut veggies from here. If I don’t eat anything that they get extras on, then I try to give them a handful of cereal or a piece of bread every other day or so at the minimum.

Sporadic Notes:
Nov 5 – A piece of bread, Newsprint, and a tea bag
Nov 6 – Handful of cereal (grapenuts), 1/3 pear, a tea bag, and some onion and celery scraps.
Nov 8 – 1 piece of bread, banana peel
Nov 9 – Handful of celery scraps
Nov 10-14 – Piece of bread, cereal handful (grape nuts), water, plus probably some others
Nov 15 – Small piece of celery scraps, and 2 half apples – chopped

2. What’s going on in your bin? This is my first worm bin ever, and it is a really nice wood bin. The bin is doing well, I am surprised that the smell (the decomposing onions specifically) does not get out at all. Which is great. Also, at first I was worried because the worms did not seem to be touching any of the food and just hanging out not eating. Apparently it is a slow process, I have been assured. But I was getting worried that we were feeding them wrong things, or that they were not eating, or I was doing something wrong, or the apartment was too hot (third floor apartment and we have no control over heat or lack of). However, that worry business is subsiding.

3. What if any problems are you facing? Mainly my challenges were my worrying. However, I am also wondering about some mold that I had spotted in a small section of the bin. But am not totally sure what to look for. Also, was lately just thinking about what would happen if I added more soil, or what that would do to the worms. Besides that all is well in this indian summer.

- Katherine