Green living, Worm Farming #3

Or, how anal and tight-arsed I can be.

Everyone knows about my Divacup. If you use tampons and have a strong stomach, make tampon tea and pour it on the garden. At least it’s some form of recycling! BTW, when I tried to find a link to tampon tea (I found the tip in one of my gardening books), the Google results were downright odd: from drinking the tea, to how to improve your plant’s aura, to odd sex-sounding topics (I wasn’t curious enough to check).

We also have a worm farm. No more guilt trip from throwing away fruit & veg that we forget to eat! If you have a smaller home, try a Bokashi bucket.

More about worm farming, Part 3:

1. A useful collection of articles.
2. Appropedia summary of typical designs and common problems.
3. (read part one & two)

Guerilla recycling – I reuse my envelopes by:

1. Using them as notepaper. Their thickness makes them the ideal shopping list. Write on them and throw them in your bag, it won’t get lost.
2. After they are all scribbled on, I cut the corners and use them as bookmarks. Especially handy in cookbooks or reference books when you can scribble little notes in the corner. Doesn’t hurt the book and makes recipes very easy to find. Especially if you colour code them with a highlighter.
3. THEN (and only then) they are dumped in our recycling bin. By this point, they’ve been used 3 times.

Other great ideas:

1. Turning off the lights and assorted power points (obsessively). If you think it’s a waste of time, read this mental_floss article on power vampires.
2. Using grey water on our garden. I try to time my laundry and showers for the hot days so that I can water the same evening. We rarely end up using mains water for our plants.
3. Op shop shopping. Buying used rescues products from becoming landfill and spreads the environmental cost of manufacture and freight. Almost all of my clothing is from op shops. Once I’m done with my clothes I pass them on to a friend or sell it on eBay, recycling them once again.

Links and thinks:

1. Being Skeptical of Green – New York Times
2. With big biz jumping on the green bandwagon, should activists cheer or jeer?
3. Living beyond our means | Guardian Unlimited
4. Going green means forever | Herald Sun- interesting, read comments.
5. Lifehacker green links

Green cleaning

People who know me well will not be surprised that I went to a Chemical Free Cleaning workshop. Yes. I sat down (willingly) and learnt how to clean. The scary thing is, I managed to drag my darling husband along! Even scarier – he agreed it was time well spent and was thought provoking. Thank goodness knowledge is a turn-on for my man.

It was part of a free green living program run by my local council, and it was great. I learnt that contrary to”popular” belief, putting bicarb and vinegar together doesn’t work. They cancel each other out. If only I’d paid more attention in chemistry. The other “big” thing is that water is a solvent, and you seldom need more than water, heat and the right cloths/brushes + lots of elbow grease to get things clean in no time.

Our facilitator was Bridget Gardner, who was fantastic. Here’s a great article: 4 steps to green cleaning, which was clever and practical:

1. Wipe it – get rid of the detritus (loose crumbs, bits, insects) first.
2. Soak it – use water to lift and soften grime before wiping off (basically spray and leave all surfaces damp and then go back and clean them off).
3. Add it – use soap or bicarb to target any trouble spots.
4. Dry it – polish with a cloth and leave no damp spots for bacteria to grow.

I also loved her tips about buying carefully (check labels, buy concentrates and buy local: decreasing the environmental impact) and using less; and the systematic way she cleaned – from top to bottom, in grids, with a folded cloth. With 1 small bucket for rinsing the cloth in to save water. It’s nice to find someone who is more pedantic than me and proud of it! Have a look at her website and you might learn something too!

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!

Worm Farm photos

I wrote about our worm farm before, but here are some photos I have of setting it up.

It’s been going pretty well, but I think we are overfeeding it, so we might have to feed it less food. If worms were cheaper I’d have preferred to start with 2000 (rather than 1000), as the farm is barely coping with the small amount of food from 2 people who cook at home about 2-3 times a week. Although come to think of it, we throw in a huge mound of cat litter regularly.. I think that might make the difference!

Worm Farms

Being thoroughly Chinese, I hate wasting anything (especially food) so we got a RELN “Worm Factory” worm farm from the local council this week, and the worms are settling in fine (I think). I’m very excited to do my bit for the environment, and with the limited space we’ve got, a worm farm seems to be the best solution.

Why did we get a worm farm?

In Australia, over half of the household material that end up at the tip is organic waste, and when it is buried can lead to groundwater contamination and the production of greenhouse gases. This practice is environmentally unsound and also wasteful because through natural processes this organic matter can safely and easily be converted into useful soil-building humus.

One of the best ways gardeners can break down organic matter is to use composting worms to convert food scraps into nutrient-rich, pH neutral worm castings, which produce a high quality soil conditioner.

From the Gardening Australia website.

If you’re thinking about getting one, our worm farm cost about $55 at the local council, in comparison to about $100 retail at nurseries. So I recommend checking with your local council to see if they provide worm farms before buying one at Bunnings or the garden center. The well-designed Worm Factory is made from 100% recycled plastic, and has everything you need to raise your worms in it, including very detailed instructions.

We got our 1000 worms online for $25+$10 shipping from Joe at WormstoWaste who was excellent. You should get at least 1000, or 2000 if you want things to start up quicker.

More links here:

• Ecohouse
• EPA | Worm farming
• How to build a worm farm – Sustainability Victoria
• The Adventures of Herman the Worm

I’ve also written a newer post about my worm farming experience.