I’ve had a number of requests for a ‘Creepy Pants Vermicomposter‘ update in the last few weeks, and it just so happens that I needed to take them down anyway.
My mother-in-law is coming to stay with us for a few weeks – and while she is truly a wonderful woman – I just don’t know how much she’ll appreciate the moldy, creepy pants hanging in the basement whenever she heads down to do laundry. Aside from that, they’ve actually been getting in my way and attracting fungus gnats, so I figured it was a good time to pull the plug on the experiment.
Unfortunately, like my ‘Four Worm Experiment‘, the pants suffered from some neglect, so the contents were quite dry. Nevertheless, I still managed to find a lot of worms and some fairly well-processed materials in the pant legs.
I still really like the pant-leg-vermicomposter concept, and think it offers a really inexpensive way to create your own flow-through bin. Finding a good location for it is definitely an important consideration however.
Down in my cramped basement office, I ended up finding them really annoying since they constantly seemed to be in the way. Aside from that, it wasn’t exactly the most eye-pleasing worm bin I’ve ever owned. The staining and mold on the pants were pretty unappealing to say the least.
If I lived out in the country and had a few trees on my property, I’d definitely try this again – I think this would be a fun outdoor project. I may also try a smaller funnel vermicomposter indoors again – perhaps with the leg from a synthetic pair of pants.
Now that my creepy pants experiment is over I will definitely focus on getting the video finished as well – hopefully it will provide a decent overview of the concept, and inspire others to give it a try.
Here are the previous posts in this series, in case you haven’t been following along:
The Creepy Pants Vermicomposter
Creepy Pants Update
Moldy, Creepy Pants
Love your video’s. do you have a video on how to harvest castings from the rubber maid system?
Thanks
I think you just found a new use for scarecrows! 🙂 Vermiposting right there in the field with all that nice goo dripping onto the corn. Excellent.
Bentley, long time no talk! I started vermicomposting in my studio apt in Honolulu in 2007 and a year ago married a great guy on the Big Island of Hawaii who co-owns a farm! I got to take over the worm bin and it’s HUGE! It’s also thriving and I want to expand but don’t want to spend a lot of money building something new. We’ve been thinking of places to hang pants but can’t come up with anything that is covered and not already used well. My area is VERY VERY wet – a rain forest – and I don’t think using pants as composters without covering would be great. My question: do you see any problem with using pants but lying them down on the ground to do their thing rather than hanging them up would be a problem? I’m thinking of putting the half done compost in them and then not adding anything new and let them sit for a month or two. I’d have to keep them moist but other than that I don’t plan to open them until they’re done and I’m ready to harvest. Then I’d prop them up, put food in the top, give most of the worms time to get up and then harvest. This will create more room in the main bin for me to add more food. P.S. I’ll try the tiny tub challenge with and without papaya seeds. Don’t waste good papaya meat! Just give them the outsides of the papaya – they love that. Susan B.