Jane’s Compost Yard and Worm Condo

No VitaMix green smoothie today – instead I’m taking you behind the scenes and showing you my compost yard and worm condo. I received a request for this after mentioning compost in yesterday’s video: How To Cut A Pineapple and Instant Lunch.

Hi, I’m Jane from http://www.BlenditandMendit.com where I show you how I turn my VitaMix blender into my #1 anti-aging tool. Welcome. And sometimes I turn it into a vase.

OUTSIDE

After yesterday’s video when I mentioned composting, I had a request: can we see your compost bins? Sure you can! So, let’s go out to the side yard. I want to show you what’s going on out there. Then I’m going to show you my Can ‘O Worms.

On the west side of the house, I have accumulated 2 earth machines and a composting tumbler, which makes it easy on the back. The earth machines are the covered black domes to which I add the daily refuse – no animal products go in there. No meat, no bones. We have a lot of wildlife where I live so I have to have covered compost bins, otherwise the javelinas, coyotes, bobcats and mountain lions would drag it all around and I don’t think the neighbors would appreciate that.

This is the tumbler composter, which definitely saves your back. It’s a terrific machine. I also want you to note that I have this nifty little stick that was made for turning compost. I have tried everything, the pitch fork, shovels, nothing works like this, it goes right into the compost and right up and automatically turns it and mixes everything together. It only cost me I think 9 or 10 dollars. Worth every penny.

INSIDE

So come on inside now, I want to show you what I keep in the laundry room. Here is my Can ‘O Worms condo with 3 active levels for your worm’s happiness. The bottom layer is a catch all for the water and other drippings. I keep the spigot open so that the ‘worm tea’ collects. I use the worm tea on my trees and plants inside and outside. Houseplants and everything else you’ve got growing around your house.

Worm castings and worm tea are considered the ‘black gold’ of compost, the best you can get – they have a perfect neutral ph of 7. They will not burn or harm your plants or trees in any way. When I open the can of worms condo to add scraps, there are no bugs and it smells like the forest after a rain, fresh and earthy. Now, it’s not always like that. You will get fruit flies and bugs if you over feed, over water or over anything. Better to underfeed your worms than to overfeed them.

I started with a 2 pound bag of 2000 worms and by now estimate around 10,000 or more with a capacity in this condo for between 15-20,000 worms and that’s after they have grown and that takes 2,3, 4, sometimes even 5 years. We’re at about the 2 year mark right now, so I’ll betcha there might be 8 – 10, 1000 worms in there. You want to create a stable, moist environment for your worms, kind of like a wrung out sponge, not a sloppy, drippy wet environment. So when I soak the newspaper that I use to cover the additional food scraps with, I wring it out so it’s not too wet.

Covering scraps with moist newspaper also helps prevent fruit flies. The worms like their food to be in the dark. The worms like moistness, not over wetness and they will eat the moist newspaper so it is also food. Worms don’t like light and they begin to scatter when I fling open the blinds on their living space.

When it is time to harvest some of the black gold compost that the worms are now creating, I will make another video and show you what it looks like. You can’t believe how beautiful it is and how fresh it smells. I compost my food scraps because I pay for all the food we eat and just because I don’t eat the rinds and peels, etc., that doesn’t mean I want to throw the rest of that money down the drain. You don’t have to. You can compost inside and out and create new soil from which will grow new food.