Harvesting worms!

This summer, for the first time we "harvested" the compost from our worm composter !
There are many types of worm composters on the market today, some are very fancy and look nice, but a simple Rubbermaid container with some holes drilled in the bottom has worked for us for a number of years.

The compost in this container needed to be separated from the worms. This is quite simple but time consuming. I enlisted the kids to help and they were happy to save the worms for me!

First you need some newspaper or garbage bags, or both like I used. You simply take out the compost and the worms make their way to the bottom of the pile. This is best done on a sunny day in the backyard. Once the compost is spread out you remove the worms,(you could keep some in the compost you are going to use in the garden) We took them out very carefully and returned them to the container.

In the end we were left with many buckets of beautiful compost to add to my garden!
This was in June, and things sure have grown since then! Gotta love those worms! They eat your garbage (food scraps) and give you compost! yeah!

One small change

I have taken up the challenge put forward by hipmountainmama to make one small change for the planet each month between now and Earth Day (April 22, 2010)

I already have a pile of idea's of things I will try and incorporate into my routine, but this months idea has been needed for a long time.
- to compost food scraps!

I had my worm composter going strong for the past year. While we were apartment dwellers it was very important to me to keep it monitored. However when we moved to a house this summer I left the worms outside in the backyard and didn't really drain it properly and check it the same. I know I am a worm murderer. but maybe not. I will check it tomorrow and see what the damage is.

I am going to empty out the old "earth machine" read big black composter the city sells each spring, that was left here by the previous tenets and see if I can use it!

One thing I don't understand is why the spell-check does not recognise the word composter??? How environmentally unfriendly! - but it also doesn't accept homeschooling as a word either- go figure :)