An Act of Mercy: I killed my worm bin

As a bit of a disclaimer: I'm not going to go into great detail about the specifics of composting methods.  This is strictly my experience and should not be taken as expert advice.  There's a lot of info out there about how to properly do this stuff.  

I have no regrets.  Worm bin composting can be tricky and high maintenance in spite of what its proponents say so if you fail as I did, take heart.  You are not alone.

It started out as a bit of an experiment.  The man and I were looking for ways to compost in our small apartment.  We tried a Bokashi bin but found it too small for the amount of organic waste we produced, and then we had to find somewhere to bury our unfinished pickled Bokashi bits.  For those of you not familiar with Bokashi composting, it's basically a process by which your food scraps are "pickled" using microbe infused bran.  It's fairly mess-free and non-stinky, but the bins are small and you need to do something with your bin contents to finish the whole process off.

So the Bokashi bin was out.  Would a worm bin be our solution?  It seemed easy enough.  A colleague donated some worms (red wrigglers to be specific) and assured me that it was a no fuss deal.  I did a little bit of reading (but not enough obviously), bought a medium sized plastic bin, drilled some holes, and went to town.  My worms seemed happy enough for a while but it didn't last.

Kill Justification #1: It just couldn't keep up

So, it turns out that you can't just feed your worms all of your scraps.  They can only eat so much.  I understood this.  The man, not so much.  We started slow, but after the population grew he kind of went a bit crazy and it wasn't long before things got stinky.  Our poor worms couldn't handle all of the stuff we were giving them and the whole thing had turned into a rotting mess.  Bad smells are a major sign that all things are not well in your worm bin.  It took months for the bin to recover and then once it did we were extremely paranoid about how much we put in it.  This resulted in us not putting very much in it at all so it wasn't very effective for us reducing our waste.

Kill Justification #2: Space and maintenance

Some internet research showed that not only was our bin being overfed, but it was also waaaay too wet.  Our bin had lots of air holes but no drainage holes on the bottom.  At the time I made the bin I was assured that I wouldn't need them.  That is wrong.  Our bin needed drainage - big time.  Veggies are mostly water so when the worms eat them they produce water as a by-product.  We tried to counteract the problem by adding more bedding more frequently but then our bin was just full of paper most of the time which didn't seem to be really effective.  

I thought about drilling some drainage holes but then shuddered at the thought of the logistics of caring for the resulting runoff inside our small apartment in the winter time.  All of this stuff sounds so easy in the summer but what happens when you live somewhere where there is snow on the ground for half the year?  

Kill Justification #3: Backyard Salvation

We moved to a house with room for a backyard compost bin.  End of story.  The worms couldn't compete with the convenience of having the composting process occur OUTSIDE where it kind of belongs.

Our new backyard compost bin

At the end of the day, I'm willing to admit I just wasn't dedicated enough to be a successful worm bin composter.  And I don't think I'm alone.  It was so frustrating to be an apartment dweller and not be able to compost but I don't think I'd try it again.  Green living still has to make sense for your life, right?  

I buried my worms in the garden of our new house.  I know they won't live to see spring but at least they will provide a healthy snack for the earthworms?

July Garden Update, or, Lazy, Lazy Bones, or, Thanks for the Freebie Mother Nature

Well, I should have known better than to brag to the blogosphere that I was keeping up with my garden.  It pretty much guaranteed my imminent failure.  Now, under normal circumstances, I would be feeling really, really terrible, but as anyone in Alberta knows, this summer has brought anything but normal circumstances.  I think I can at least partially blame this garden failure on good ole Mother Nature.

Let me break it down for you…

July saw me start a new job with a daily hour round trip commute (that’s a green failure for another day…).  With said new job, my available garden time dropped dramatically.  But there was still time available.  Unfortunately, Mother Nature has a serious hate on for Alberta this year.  It’s been wet.  Really wet.  After years of near catastrophic drought conditions out here on the wide open praririe, we’ve had the wettest spring/early summer that I can honestly remember.  While this certainly has benefits (woohoo for recharged aquifers and easy watering!), it also has serious drawbacks (massive mosquito infestation).

Rainy weather and mosquitoes that swarm thick enough to form clouds that actually show up on weather radar have made for incredibly soggy and uncomfortable gardening.  One particular trip for watering had me wearing a hoodie in 27°C with mittens to avoid being completely drained of blood.  Another saw me almost lose a rubber boot to mud the consistency of quicksand (it looked solid, I swear to God).

To put it lightly, this garden season has been a challenge.

But things are growing alright.  Weeds.  Lots and lots of weeds.  And not just little ones either.  Giant Friggin’ Weeds.   And they are everywhere.

Before weeding - but after pre-weeding...

After 3 hours of weeding... it's better right?  Right?!

This has led to a whole new kind of guilt.  Forget green failure guilt.  Bad gardener guilt is 10 times worse.  The rapid expansion of my weed garden and a lack of viable weeding time combined to form an epic disaster.  I even resorted to visiting my garden under the cover of darkness to pre-emptively weed before having to show my face in the daylight among all the other, infinitely more responsible super gardeners.

If I thought I’d escaped Keeping Up with the Jones’ syndrome by my resolution to buy less stuff, I was friggin’ delusional.  Forget the Jones’.  Whoever these super tidy garden freaks are, I need to at least pretend I’m trying to keep up with them.