Worms Eat Our Inlanders

If you like the smell of the forest freshly covered in dew on a crisp morning during a camping trip, then you will like the smell of a worm bin. Yes, that is right. A bin full of slimy, wriggling little red worms is worth a whiff or two. Vermicomposting is a recent hobby of mine that is turning into an obsession.

It all started when my neighbor down in Peaceful Valley showed me the bin he kept in his kitchen for table scraps. His students at West Valley City School were selling these bins as a fundraiser, so I purchased one along with a $20 can of worms. This was all fine and good until I accidentally froze the critters during a winter season move between apartments. Determined to set things right, I poached a pile of new worms from my mother’s compost and started over. To my surprise, the half-processed material I dumped next to my porch in a (failed) attempt to grow beans yielded a pumpkin vine,  a squash plant and several tomatoes that actually ended up producing fruit. This stuff is like the miracle whip of soils, it is so fecund it literally grows itself!

I heard it said that Spokane spends much more money per capita on gardening and yard supplies than most places. Now I haven’t done the research to corroborate this claim, but if you consider our love affair with lawns and our water usage compared to other cities, it seems plausible enough. Combine these “yard people” with winter, frugality, a burgeoning interest in growing food and treading lightly on the soil, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for a worm bin explosion in Spokane.

The missing ingredients are information and encouragement to overcome the “Ew!” factor associated with worms. Taking my own advice, I set out to do just that by hosting a worm bin workshop during a Community Roots Market at Fresh Abundance.  Where I thought I’d be lucky if a few of my friends showed up, fifteen eager workshoppers sat around for over an hour while I improvised the curriculum and assembled a new bin. While DIY bins are easy to make, I had to go around to three different hardware stores to find the right components for my preferred design. Miller’s on 29th was the most helpful by far.

By Slide Sideways with a penchant for birthday designs.

Not wanting all those dark, loamy coffee grounds to go to waste, I’ve also set up a worm bin in the office. This took some care to convince my co-workers that our clients wouldn’t be grossed out by funky smells or fruit flies, but now that the bin has made it past the one month “equilibration phase” the population is well established and the worms are multiplying daily. After a while you start thinking of them like pets. It is comparable to the maintenance of a fish bowl with the intrigue of an ant terrarium. The result of all this poking around is a rich, dark substance with the consistency of a half-baked brownie and the texture to match. In the colloquial words of my father, this super soil can “work wonders and crap cucumbers.” In this case, quite literally.

The next worm bin workshop will be held on December 12th at 2015 N Division from 2-4pm. To RSVP or inquire about purchasing bins/worms, please contact: mariah[dot]mckay[at]gmail[dot]com.