More about worms and worm farming

After having our worm farm for a little while, here’s the information I found most useful. It’s a list of commonly accepted practice, and has an Australian slant.

Feeding:

Foods that are suitable for worms including most fruits, vegetables, cereals and grains, and other organic items like coffee grains and tea bags. It is best to cut food scraps into small pieces before placing them in the bin. The smaller the pieces the more surface area there is for bacteria to start breaking down the food, making it easier for the worms to consume. Some people put their food scraps, including eggshells, into a blender and make a slurry. The worms seem to love this, but it is not necessary. {link}

Odd things worms eat:

• hair clippings
• vacuum cleaner dust
• cardboard

Things you didn’t know worms dislike:

• Banana peels: Some banana peels are heavily sprayed, can kill everything if added to a small bin.
• Citrus, Oranges, lemons, limes: citrus has a chemical substance (limonene) that is toxic to worms.
• Rice and pasta (apparently worms are on the Atkins diet..): feed in moderation.

We have a small flip-top bin we keep in the fridge where we dump all our kitchen scraps. We feed the worms weekly: I go out there with a pair of tongs and add food scraps evenly across the top our farm, chopping up the bits and crushing the eggshells as I go. The key is never overfeed them. We made that mistake and there were lots of flies and bad smells, so we stopped feeding them until it settled down.

Can you add dog and cat feces? We do put small amounts of cat poo in, and some recycled cat litter too. This website agrees that it’s fine, and other websites in the links below will disagree. I think it’s ok if your pet has not been recently de-wormed and is regularly treated for parasites.

To bury or not to bury? Burying seems to be ok: it will prevent fruit flies and bad smells, but at the same time you have to be careful digging them in as a trowel can harm the worms. Also, you have to keep track of where you last buried the food! In general, North American references recommend burying while Australian ones don’t. To me, the easier (and less disgusting) thing is to cover it.

Covering the farm: You can also cover over the food scraps with soil, mulch, large sheets of wet newspaper or cardboard. The aim is to prevent vermin from getting to the food and keeping the worms comfortable. We found a farm that was covered by an old brown door mat. Much easier than newspaper!

Links:

1. Constructing your own farm:
   • Recyclezone has instructions on how to build a simple worm farm and feeding basics.
   • SustainabilityVictoria and the ABC have slightly different instructions.
   • EPA NSW has good cross-section pictures of a worm farm.
   • A great blog with some excellent photos.
2. Feeding worms:
   • Sustainable gardening australia: looking after your worms.
   • Recycleworks, California: detailed information on feeding worms.
3. A printable page that is a good reference once you already have a farm.
4. My first post about our worm farm, where you can find more information about our experiences starting a worm farm, and a few more links.
5. Wikipedia vermicompost page if you like to know the science behind worm farming.

There seems to be a few places (like nurseries, eco centres and council/city offices) where you can view a worm farm if you are not sure about starting one. Just google your local city area to check. Of course, you can also come see the one at our place if you know us!

Our free camera upgrade

We have an Olympus 725 that we bought in Singapore less than a year ago and have take lots of cool shots with. I still wish I’d found it before we went kayaking in Baja California, it would have been excellent to get some underwater photos…

Anyhow, today we got a brand new Olympus 790 thanks to my cat Oscar, who batted our old Olympus off the mantelpiece straight onto some tile. The LCD went white, even though the rest of the camera worked just perfectly. It is drop-proof up to 1.5m and the mantelpiece is about 1.2m, so we sent it in for repairs under warranty. After being repaired, it was sent back to us but the courier lost the camera! As a result, we have a brand spanking new camera!!! Olympus asked us to pick a colour: so we picked orange, but the warehouse only had black or silver ones and we decided on black but they sent us a silver one instead! I know I should be happy but I’m still dreaming about my bright orange camera…

First Impressions: The software, LCD screen and image quality is better, but the camera doesn’t feel as well-made. The buttons are plasticky even though they work well. The interface is better though, and there are some very cool tools to help casual photographers take better photos, like the face recognition technology (even works on cats) and this cool grid that splits the screen up into 9 squares so you can follow, or play with, the rule of thirds. Very cool!

I’ve only had the camera for about 2 hours now, so stay tuned for updates.. I start work again tomorrow so we’ll see when I can find time to play around with it.

Men!

What’s up with men when they get together?

Yes, I married one, and most times he is divine, but he does turn into such a Monty-Python-loving, corny-joke-cracking bloke around other men. I have a dear friend who is a great guy, and my husband is also a great guy. Put them together? Theoretically you get 2 great guys, right? No! You get 2 blokes!

Yeargh…

I enjoy spending time with them both individually, but together, there must be some ancient instinct compelling them to band together against women. Or at least unite to annoy us. Because they make stupid jokes, toss around dumb ideas and generally try and poke fun at me.

Not cool. And I don’t know if I should tear my hair out, cry in laughter or just grin and bear it.

Any advice??

(or should I just keep them safely apart?)

Chocolate week

First we had the best hot chocolate we’ve ever had (these are the words of my darling husband and he does not exaggerate) at Xocolatl in Canterbury (123 Maling Road, 9836 3100). He had an orange chocolate and I had a Belgian, and I could smell the orange from the other side of the table. We can’t wait to go back.

Actually, this takes me back to a yummy hot chocolate at the Budapest zoo cafe in 2003. It was a fun afternoon with Sarolta and Mike, we fed a Snicker bar to a hippo, went to the Sezchenyi baths and I had a divine hot chocolate. I’m not sure if the Xocolatl one was better, it’s too long ago. Too bad you can’t preserve a taste!

Then later in the week we participated in a chocolate murder mystery that was great fun, but frustruatingly hard and strangely involving! Good chocolate mousse though. If you live in Melbourne, you can taste more chocolate from this list of best chocolate and this 4 page story.

Oscar, the cat

One of the coolest everyday things about my life is our cat Oscar. Most of you have met my husband, but only a few have met our cat, as he’s quite hard to transport and doesn’t like being away from home! Anyway, here’s a small section about my (other) favourite housemate.

I adopted him from a colleague who got a job with a lot of travel involved and didn’t want to torture him. Guess what??? He ends up with us, flying halfway around the world anyway, spending about 50 hours in a cat carrier and 7 months in quarantine. Oops. If he was human he would have a lot of frequent flyer miles!! He was born in Texas, moved to Mexico City, then Singapore and now he’s here in Australia. That’s too much travel for a cat!

He was named for the boxer Oscar de la Hoya because he likes to scratch mirrors and glass. Other than making a very annoying squeaking, he also looks like he is boxing.

And this is why I adore him:

1. He’s the sweetest cat I’ve ever come across, and he is cuddly with everyone, even people he’s just met. I have had people saying he’s a dog that just looks like a cat. I’m just lucky he’s mine.
2. I can pick him up and swing him on my shoulder, and he will ride there around the house with me. He is perfectly calm when we clip his nails, clean his eyes and ears and listen to his heart. Really. He does not try to take your skin off. Ever.
3. He will eat out of your hand. Guaranteed. He eats out of everyone’s hand. Even the vet’s, after she gave him his shots.
4. He likes to fall asleep on our clean, black clothing. And leave a big pile of fluff. Annoying, but cute.
5. He will crawl under the blanket to sleep on my stomach. And snore. Loudly. I’ve tried to record it, but it never seems to work. Stay tuned. If I succeed it will definitely get online!