Minding My Worms

My worms seem to have their own seasons. In winter they get slow and lazy. Then one day in spring I lift the cover off their "worm hotel" and they've eaten all their newspaper bedding.

We started these worms about three years ago. They did so well, I took some to my daughter's charter school and built a colony there. Good thing, too, because one summer we went away on vacation and left the worms outside. When we returned, the worms were nowhere to be found--fried, apparently, with a few carcasses around the edges of the lid giving witness to how they apparently had tried to flee.

In winter when the outdoor compost pile is frozen solid we devote our kitchen scraps to the worms. A good-size worm colony will eat all our food scraps and turn them into a terrific fertilizer. When they eat through the newspaper bedding, I pull up a chair and start shredding more newspaper.

In fact, the newspaper is not so much bedding as a cover to the wormscape below where we place the food scraps. We use a small garden tool to lift the newspaper and find a fresh spot for scraps. Replacing the newspaper is a purely meditative act. I enjoy a few minutes thinking of nothing, just tearing strips of paper. I've found that the paper tears only in one direction--from the top of the page down. Trying to tear the paper from side to side just makes a mess. I suppose this has to do with the warp and weave of how newsprint in made. I now have a fairly efficient system for cutting whole pages of the newspaper in half, then tearing the paper into thin strips.

Normally I would not take the "worm hotel" outside as you see in this photo. The worms don't like bright light. As I lay the paper strips down, I give them a spritz of water to moisten. I build the paper about and inch high. A thick layer helps keep fruit flies away.

Then its back inside for the worms to munch on their little piles of potato skins and apple cored and melon rinds. They really like melon rinds. Maybe that's what they're waiting for all winter long.