Earth Worms on Earth Day
About a month ago, I got a little spring fever and the urge to improve my garden, upgrade the soil and grow some more asparagus (had some for many years, but never quite enough spears for a meal). I thought that composting with earth worms and adding them to the garden might improve my soil. I had it a little wrong but I think it’s going to work anyway. I bought some red wigglers and then reading as much as I could, realized that they will probably not do well in our dry soil here. But they do well in a worm composter and since we eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, we have the perfect food for them along with newspaper and cardboard which is also in plentiful supply.
So I got my worms and made them a temporary home in a bucket with holes, most newspaper and cardboard, some soil and veggies. The worms didn’t look too active at first but within a few days, they were moving about. I added food from time to time and they really dug into a cooked artichoke heart (the good part of course eaten by us humans). I may need to pre-cook and grind up my scraps a little more before feeding them to the worms.
Since we’re in California and it gets hot in the summer, I was concerned about my home made bucket being too small and too hot and not conducive to the long term longevity of my worms. After a few weeks of contemplation, I decided to spring for a Worm Factory 360. It’s the newest model from Nature’s Footprint and with its convenient set up and air flow, I think it might work in our hot summer days. And what a nice coincidence that it arrived on Earth Day! It’s set up now and the worms are in their new home and I’ve got lots of veggie & fruit garbage for them to eat.
I do think that wanting to grow worms seems a little wierd but wanting to have a healthy garden and do something for the environment is not and I am hopeful that I will accomplish both. I’ll check in later and let you know how it goes.