Pragmatic Environmentalism

An exploration of urban sustainability.

An Explosion of Worms . . . and Flies November 18, 2009

Filed under: Composting — Brenda Pike @ 11:15 pm
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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! If you remember, we had separated the worms from this compost and started a new bin with them. We were quite thorough—more so than I think I would be in the future—so these worms must have come from the few cocoons or baby worms that slipped through. We haven’t even fed them for over two months; they’ve just been finishing the old compost. (Which is looking pretty good, by the way, but I think I’ll let it go for another month or so in order to make it usable for our houseplants.)

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! I swear I’ve never had a fly problem before. We’ve been keeping the flies out of the rest of the house by storing the fruit in the fridge and the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, and putting out cups of apple cider vinegar.

To get rid of them completely, we’re going to stop feeding the new bin for a few weeks. It takes fruit flies 10 days at the most to mature from larvae, and as we’ve seen with the old bin, the worms can survive (even thrive) far longer than that without new food.

We’re also going to add a fly trap to the bin. We’ll make one by putting an apple core in a jar, snipping off a corner of a Ziploc bag, and attaching it to the mouth of the jar with an elastic. If we kill as many adult flies as we can and withhold food so they don’t multiply, we could solve this problem.

To prevent it in the future, from now on we’re going to freeze all of our scraps before adding them to the compost. That’ll kill any eggs that might stow away on fruit peels. Wish us luck!

 

Harvesting Vermicompost September 8, 2009

Filed under: Composting — Brenda Pike @ 1:42 pm
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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 at the center of each pile. Then you can easily sift through the compost until you get to the ball of worms in the center. Okay, maybe not easily—it took three hours for Jason and I to get through it all. It could have been a lot faster, but we were stopping to pick out every one, rather than tossing them into the new bin en masse.

After weighing the worms, we added them to the new bin, already filled with newspaper and food scraps. (Thanks for your contribution, Sharon!) We tore the newspaper into strips this time, rather than putting it through a shredder, in the hopes that the larger pieces will discourage the worms from munching on their bedding. Then we wet down the newspaper so the worms could breathe. (Very important.)

 

The old compost wasn’t completely broken down yet (and, in fact, had a few pepper sprouts growing in it), so we left a few little worms and some cocoons behind, to finish it up. I feel bad sacrificing them, but I think we’ve rescued more by starting the new bin now.

 

There was one casualty. Oliver snapped up a particularly adventurous worm before we could stop him. You should have seen him jump when it moved in his mouth!

 

 

A Fly Infestation August 27, 2009

Filed under: Composting — Brenda Pike @ 9:20 pm
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I’m embarrassed to say that when we opened the lid to our worm bin this week, dozens of fruit flies flew out.

 

The enemy

The enemy

 

The culprit was probably a melon from my fruit salad last week. (The seeds from the cantaloupe are the only things still recognizable in the compost, except for those darn cabbage leaves.) Not only did they attract fruit flies, but they made the compost too moist. Note to self: a balanced diet includes fruit and vegetables—for worms as well as humans.

 

So after we buried our food scraps this week, we piled on tons of shredded newspaper. It’ll absorb the water and (hopefully) prevent the flies from getting down to the food. We also put a small bowl of vinegar on top of the lid. We’ll see if that does them in. Flies are notoriously hard to get out of worm bins.

In any case, I think we’ll be harvesting the compost next weekend. The worms are eating everything so quickly that we’re having a hard time keeping up with them, and their waste to bedding ratio is out of whack. I think we’ll transfer most of them to a fresh bin, piled high with newspaper and food.

We’ll leave a few worms behind to put the finishing touches on the compost, but we won’t feed them anymore. As long as we keep the whole thing far away from the new bin, that should starve out the flies. I hope. I’ll keep you posted.

 

Corn Plastic August 18, 2009

Filed under: Composting — Brenda Pike @ 10:14 pm
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We were eating at Stone Hearth Pizza tonight, and I noticed a box on the menu that said their takeout containers were made of corn plastic rather than regular plastic or styrofoam. This started a debate about whether corn plastic was actually any better than regular plastic. Okay, maybe not as much a debate as Sharon telling me that I was just being contrarian. But the Ask Umbra column on Grist talked about this issue just last week, so it was at the top of my mind. Smithsonian magazine had a good article on the subject a few years ago, too.

I think corn plastic is just greenwashing, because, while it can technically be composted, only a tiny tiny percentage of it actually will be. Most of it will end up in landfills, where, without any oxygen, it won’t break down any more than other trash.

Not only that, but it won’t break down in my worm bin or in your backyard compost, either. It needs temperatures of 150 degrees Fahrenheit, which is only reached at large commercial composting facilities.

Here in Cambridge, we can take it to the Department of Public Works or Whole Foods for composting, but I doubt most towns have such options. So even most of the people who would compost it, can’t. It’s just misleading.

And while #7 plastics (the catchall “other” category that this falls into) are accepted by Cambridge for recycling, corn plastic in particular may not actually get recycled, because there’s not a large market for it. For that reason, most towns don’t even accept it in recycling bins.

Of course, we all agree that petroleum is not a good option, but neither is industrial corn farming. And at least regular plastic can reliably be recycled. So I think until municipal composting becomes commonplace, corn plastic just seems pointless.

 

Baby worms! August 11, 2009

Filed under: Composting — Brenda Pike @ 9:02 pm
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We were feeding the worms this week when I noticed something awesome—baby worms! There were tons of the little buggers, as well as a bunch of cocoons.

 

Isn't it adorable?

Isn't it adorable?

 

I find this reassuring, because it means that their environment is good enough for them to reproduce; it’s not too wet or too dry, the castings to paper ratio isn’t too high, and there’s enough food. In fact, I think they can handle even more garbage than what we’ve been giving them, since everything but the hardest veggies (cabbage leaves, celery) is completely unrecognizable by the time we feed them again.

 

You can tell this one is about to hatch because of the reddish-brown color.

You can tell this one is about to hatch because of the reddish-brown color.

 

These worms are so much more efficient than the first batch that I feel we really must have mistreated the first ones (before we killed them). We didn’t know that much about worms when we started out, just what we’d found out from some online research. At the time, I thought they were working out okay. They ate our garbage and they reproduced, but they did both very slowly compared to the new ones.

 

And the parents. Aren't they huge?

And the parents. Aren't they huge?

 

I think our problems were:

  1. We used regular paper instead of newspaper. Apparently, the newspaper absorbs more water, and I’m told soy-based ink (Boston Globe, New York Times) is less toxic to them than regular ink.
  2. We didn’t let it get wet enough. We knew moisture could be a problem, because if it got too wet they’d make a break for it. But we didn’t know that they needed a certain amount of moisture to allow them to breath through their skin. I think we slowly suffocated them.
  3. We let their poo build up too much. We didn’t know exactly what finished compost should look like, so we waited and waited until it looked like potting soil. Unfortunately, that meant that they were living in way too much of their own filth, and that’s what eventually killed them. This is actually a legitimate way to compost, if you’re looking for castings to add to your potted plants and don’t care if your worms survive.

This time, determined to do it right, we read a book on the subject (Worms Eat My Garbage) and went to a (free) class at the Somerville Community Growing Center (a great place—you should check it out). Now we’ve got a second bin all set up to transfer most of our worms into when this compost is almost done, and it seems like it’ll only be a few more weeks. These guys work fast!