A Composty, Wormy Update on the Garden

This weekend I spent some time with my compost, both the regular bin and the worm bin. I wanted to share a quick update, particularly with the worm bin, which has really turned around and is looking better. I guess time does heal some wounds, or festering mold piles in this case (if you're curious about what I'm referring too, there's a previous post on the problems with feeding worms moldy tortillas)...

That's a photo of the finished compost harvested from the center of my big bin above. I have a pretty simple Earth Machine brand bin that I got for super cheap through the city. The Griffith Park composting facility hosts bin sales and workshops regularly. I highly recommend attending, if only for the deep discounts on the compost and worm bins.

I'm pretty laissez faire about my compost. I never stir or aerate it, I just try to throw in greens and browns in a reasonable ratio. If the bin starts to get a funk from too many kitchen scraps, I'll throw in a shovelful of dirt. The compost is kind of slow to form because I don't stir. But on the plus side, I never disrupt the worms that work the bin, so it's really chock full of worms, even though it's not technically a worm bin. When I harvest, I simply pull off the bin and set it up in a spot right next to its previous position. Then I throw back in the unfinished compost materials from the top and sides of the old pile. When I get to the center of the what had been in the bin, there's a mound of lovely black gold, as seen in the picture above.

This time though, I also harvested some of the worm masses I came across and threw them into my "worm bin proper" that's been on the side. The worm bin has been looking a lot better lately. I think just leaving it alone helped a lot. But the worm population was still pretty small because I started with such a small batch of worms (just 50 or so). So I thought I'd boost the numbers. You can see how the worm bin looks lately in the picture below. Much happier!

I think if I can really get my worm numbers up, I can justify buying a really nice wood outdoor worm bin like this cedar bin. Sooooo sturdy looking. One day. A girl can dream...

-J