On Tuesday, I shared my conversation with Randi Mail, recycling director for the City of Cambridge, about Cambridge’s new single-stream recycling program. In the process we touched on some general waste and recycling questions that I thought I’d share here. If you have any other questions or want to attend the recycling facility tour, let [...]

As someone without a yard and only one houseplant (Oliver decided the others were litter boxes), one of my major issues with vermicomposting is what to do with the finished compost. I’ve actually given a bunch of it to my family in Maine before. But now that warmer weather’s here my porch is an ideal [...]

We checked on the worm bin tonight, and—finally!—the flies are gone. It’s taken four months of no feedings to eradicate the pests, but it eventually worked. (The spider that we found inside may have helped, too.) It obviously wasn’t the ideal environment for the poor worms; the few dried-up bodies on the floor around the [...]

We checked on the old worm bin—the one we haven’t been feeding—and were amazed to see that it’s full of worms. Huge ones, too! Not feeding that bin for a couple months has completely eradicated the fly population living in the compost. Unfortunately, it looks like they’ve all moved to the new bin. This is so embarrassing!

The worms are snug in their new bin. The tally: 738 worms weighing 9.42 ounces. That includes a lot of baby worms, which is good, because growing worms eat more food than their adult counterparts. To harvest the compost, we first emptied the bin into piles. Worms automatically move away from light, so they congregate [...]