Feed the Worms

I've been reading a great book called Worms Eat My Garbage by Mary Appelhof. The book is quite enjoyable. As the title suggests, the book really is about worms eating your garbage. The general idea is to set up a worm bin for the purpose of disposing of certain household garbage items in an Earth friendly manner.

Worm bins can be maintained indoors or out. If you provide the proper ingredients, there is no odor involved in the decomposition of your kitchen wastes. You can feed your worms as often or as little as you wish. Your worms will eat fruit and vegetable scraps, cooked pasta without sauces, eggshells, and other household garbage.

Well, while I have found the entire process to be fascinating to read about, I'm not quite ready to have worms living in my home. However, I have started a compost pile in my back yard thanks to The Green Cheapskate. I'm finding the process of composting to be a unique learning experience that has been quite a lot of fun for me. In an effort to increase my composting abilities, I added some worms to my compost pile. This is a happy compromise for me because the worms can live outside, and I can still feed them my garbage. Because the way my compost is set up, the temperature inside will not reach a very high number and the worms can live on top of the ground just below the massive pile of yard debris that I have accumulated.

Kira helped me free the new worms into the compost pile this weekend. She loved watching "her" worms crawl into their new bedding of shredded newspaper and piled up weeds and grass clippings. We even talked about all the stuff that is in that pile for the worms to eat. Then today while I was outside pulling more weeds out of our grass, she was very happy to help me out by taking all the newly pulled weeds over to the compost pile. She was making up batches of worm salad to feed her worms.

Now, I know that the worms won't really eat too much of the actual weeds and grass clippings until well after those things have begun to decay through the natural processes that occur in a compost pile, but Kira does not realize this. Far be it from me to inform her that all she is really doing is saving Mommy a bit of time and energy by taking all the yard waste to the compost for me.

If Kira wants to feed the weeds to the worms then I am all for letting her feed her worms, especially if it convinces her to help me out a little bit in the yard.

Now if I can just convince her that we really do not need to disturb the worms by digging in the compost (aka: garbage) to find them just so she can hug and pet them. Yes - my darling little girl just LOVES to hug and pet worms - and ladybugs - and rolly polly bugs - and just about any other bug that she can get her little paws on. **shudders from the Mom**