Guess what one of my most recent Amazon purchases was. Your hint is in the title of this blog post. According to Google, the root word vermi is defined as "relating to a worm or worms, especially parasitic ones".
Yup - I ordered 500 red wiggler worms.
Before you 1) get really freaked out, 2) start judging me, or 3) a bit of both, please take 4 minutes and 29 seconds of your time to watch the following YouTube video:
Yup - I ordered 500 red wiggler worms.
Before you 1) get really freaked out, 2) start judging me, or 3) a bit of both, please take 4 minutes and 29 seconds of your time to watch the following YouTube video:
I've mentioned this before, but it's worth saying again so you can understand how I justified purchasing 500 worms over the internet. Dan and I are trying to reduce the amount of waste we produce. We recycle as many materials we are able in our county, and have taken various steps to avoid single-use materials and items that will not break down naturally in a landfill or our water systems. We even made the switch to biodegradable poop bags for our walnut/corn cat litter collections. Oh my gosh, that last sentence made me sound like a crazy person...Let's just accept it, and move on, shall we?
That Ted-Ed YouTube outlined our reasons for starting to vermicompost really well:
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I found this relatively cheap vermicomposting unit on Amazon, but now that I've assembled it I bet Dan and I could've saved a little money and made a cozy little worm house ourselves with some hardware store materials and lots of YouTube videos. That said, this little worm hut seems really nicely thought out, easy to clean and maintain, and even has cute little worms on top :) It's also made from 100% recycled plastic!
Our VermiHut (real name) came with a few extra components other than those needed for assembly, including an instruction manual, some cloths to prevent the worms from escaping, and a block of coconut coir (the "byproduct" husk material from coconut harvesting). We rehydrated our coir, added some shredded newspaper for our 500 red wigglers to hang out on, and mixed in some finely chopped worm food (AKA food scraps). Then we sort of unceremoniously opened our bag of worms and welcomed them to their new home.
We've been letting our worms get acclimated to their new environment for the past two weeks. We started our vermicomposting bin in the garage, but since winter just WON'T END this year, we moved the bin back inside. A nice benefit of vermicomposting is that if you do it properly there's no odor or fruit fly problem!
If you're looking for some updates about our vermicomposting system as we go along adding bins and generating some black gold, leave a comment or message me :) I'd also be happy to share some of our materials, tips, and tricks with you so you could try this out for yourself. In the meantime, remain conscious about what you are eating, but also consider what you are not. Cheers everyone!