Wooden Stacking Bin-08-06-10

Last week I wrote about setting up my wooden stacking flow-through bin, after a very loooooong period of sitting idle down in my basement (see “Wooden Stacking Bin – The Return!“).

Well, today I decided to add the worms so as to really get things rolling with this experiment. As you will likely recall, I will only be adding coffee grounds and shredded cardboard to this system in an effort to see if this approach will work. If we were also adding food waste to this system I probably would have waited a little longer before adding the worms, but in all honesty, the grounds don’t see to be going through much of a “rotting” process at the moment, so my hope is that the addition of the worms, and the “compost ecosystem” material that comes with them, will help to get this moving along.

I’m not overly focused on EXACT quantities of worms being added, opting instead for a quantity that “seems appropriate” (you just kinda get a feel for this sort of thing after awhile). Basically, I filled a small tub with very worm-rich material (from one of my productive outdoor beds) and then added a bunch more worms by hand.

Before I added them, I made sure to water the cardboard and grounds quite thoroughly. Moisture is definitely going to be something I’ll need to keep an eye on – and I suspect that I’ll be adding water regularly (unlike with a plastic enclosed system). Adding the worms simply involved making a shallow depression in the middle then dumping in the contents of the tub.

I ended up having to spread the material around a fair bit so as to get the lid back on in a reasonable manner (i.e. not teetering on top of a mound of compost material). I’m not impressed at all with depth (or rather the lack thereof) of these trays – but hey, the show must go on, right?

That’s basically it! I will likely leave the worms alone for a few days (other than peeking in side to see how they are doing) – I won’t add any more coffee grounds (not that there is any room – haha) until sometime next week. The material the worms came in will certainly still have some food value, so I’m not exactly worried they will end up starving to death!

I will provide another update in a week or so!

Written by Bentley on August 6th, 2010 with 6 comments.
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