Digging through Worm Poop

This past Sunday I went through my worm bin for the first time.

Don’t worry, I had only begun using my worm bin last September, after being gifted with a free bin in my organic gardening class, which we prepped ourselves during our “final exam.” But, needless to say, it had still reached the point of overflowing – the lid didn’t quite latch like it’s supposed to anymore, and it was clear that the worms had been living it up.

So I spread out the tarp in the garage, got a few empty, flattened cardboard boxes, and a few yogurt containers for scooping. Then I began the process of scooping out the leftovers of the worms consumption and separating the not-yet-consumed food bits from the worms, from the worm castings. It was a lovely process – surprisingly fulfilling!

I confess I didn’t get as much “out of it” as I could have (in the way of actual worm castings), because, when I would spot a family of worms lingering together in a clump of soil, I would leave them alone and not bothering picking through them. The whole clump was just added them to the growing pile of “worms NOT to be disturbed.” And there were so many of them! Back in September, I started out with probably just 8 or 12 worms. Boy, have they been busy reproducing!

So now I have a lovely 3 gallons worth of worm castings, and another 2 gallons or so of compost “tea” (the liquid that filters out of the food decomposition/worm consumption/etc process).

The experience of digging through the work of my beloved worms reinspired me to make use of the containers I have out behind the house. In fact, visions of a flourishing container garden, out on our background concrete porch, with a trellis arching over it, came to me mind, and I found my senses tickled with a sense of longing and determination. Even though my attempts at growing food from seeds failed pretty miserably last season, I am now bound and determined to try again! Not from seed, though – not this year, anyway. I’ll “cheat” this time around.

If you haven’t tried digging through worm poop before, I highly recommend it!