One of the cool things about the ‘blogosphere’ is that it provides me with a great opportunity to meet lots of interesting, like-minded people. I recently received an email from one such individual, who seems to share my interest in geeky, hands-on science projects, such as worm bins and hydroponics systems.
Unlike me however, this person (who refers to himself only as ‘Hydroponica’) is much more of a technically gifted problem solver, so he enjoys rigging up various contraptions and systems for himself - very often using items already present at his house.
One such rig, recently installed in his worm bin, is an LED night light - used as a means of discouraging the worms from crawling up the sides of the bin (and sometimes out on to the floor). To me it seems like a really nifty idea since it uses very little power, isn’t so bright as to stress out the worms, and won’t give much (if any) heat. As he points out, it does limit you in terms of worm bin location, since you’ll need an outlet nearby (or at least an extension cord), but that’ hardly an issue in most homes. I would imagine one could also find some sort of battery powered LED light to use instead if the bin wasn’t near an outlet.
Be sure to check out his blog post for all the details: Worm Bin Modification
He also chats about some other interesting techniques for keeping worms inside a bin, so it’s definitely worth a read. Oh, and he refers to me as “a genuinely cool guy”, so that never hurts either!
Technorati Tags: macgyver, worms, worm composting, led, worm bin, vermicomposting
Written by Bentley on July 19th, 2008 with 5 comments.
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End of the year harvest (fall 2006) from my tomato bed. I collected even MORE rotten ones, which went straight into my outdoor worm bin.
This post was inspired by a interesting reader discussion that seems to have sprung up on one of my recent blog posts (see: Apartment Vermicomposting - Revisted). One of the topics being discussed is that of tomatoes as worm food - i.e. should they be fed to your worms or not?
Tomatoes are a water-rich, acidic food item so some caution is certainly warranted. I’ve personally used them as worm food with great success - in my experience, worms seem to gravitate towards the moist, rotting flesh of tomato, the same way they would with various types of melon.
As mentioned in the caption above, in fall of 2006 when I was cleaning up my tomato bed I collected a huge quantity of leftover tomatoes (not the ones in the upper picture - those were eaten) and added them to my big outdoor worm bin. [ Just as an side - if you are wondering why so many tomatoes were still green, it is because they were started very late that year].
I also added ALL the tomato plant waste (pictured to the right), after chopping it up quite a bit. Not too surprisingly, the bin did heat up quite a bit, but neither that nor the large amount of tomato waste seemed to harm the worm population (not noticeably anyway).
Incidentally, it was the addition of all this material that led to the growth of my “compost bin tomatoes” last summer.
By the way, if you are concerned about the acidity of tomatoes, you might try adding crushed egg shells to your bins to provide some extra buffering capacity. Adding lime is an option as well, but keep in mind that composting worms generally prefer a somewhat acidic pH anyway, so you definitely don’t want to go overboard with this.
Anyway - just my 2 cents (not to be taken as ‘gospel’ by any means)! I would definitely be interested to hear about any negative experiences people have had with tomatoes.
Technorati Tags: tomatoes, composting, worm composting, vermicomposting, worm bin, composter
Written by Bentley on July 19th, 2008 with 3 comments.
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