Worm Moon & a Brand New Way to Compost!

This past week marked the March full moon, also known as the "Worm Moon".
From the Farmer's Almanac website:

The Full Worm Moon was given its name by the Algonquin tribes from New England to Lake Superior.
At the time of this spring Moon, the ground begins to soften and earthworm casts reappear, inviting the return of robins. This is also known as the Sap Moon, as it marks the time when maple sap begins to flow and the annual tapping of maple trees begins.

Well, global warming or no global warming, it is beginning to feel like springtime here, with warm days alternating with raw, windy nights, and, of course, the hallmark of New England spring: MUD!

I love the feeling of this time of year, the energy shift that it brings.   The days and nights are equal length, the daylight lasts longer and the earth is coming back to life.   It's subtle, animal things that our body instinctively feels: more bird noises, more smells coming out of the wet ground.  Crocuses, daffodils and all my perennial buds pushing their way out of the ground.    Yesterday I saw a dove sitting on our front porch.  



It's a little frustrating that it is still at least a month away from time to put the earliest annuals out - but in my experience, with all the rain and cold in April, it's usually a wasted effort to do anything before then.

So my way of getting ready is to try to prepare the soil.   Last fall I decided I did NOT want to stop making compost over the winter.   Also, I noticed that red wrigglers, those short, bright red worms that love to break down compost, had taken up refuge in my compost bin!  Joy!  So, I sifted almost a whole summer's worth of compost into the exhausted fall beds, leaving the compost bin pretty empty.   This has allowed me to continue piling up kitchen scraps throughout the winter, combined with layers of  garden straw left over from mulching the beds.  The straw acts as an insulator and as a dry "brown" ingredient to offset the nitrogen from the wet "green" living plants and kitchen scraps.   However, I knew that food (etc.) decomposes slowly if at all over the winter ....so I came up with a plan B!

The Worm Bin
This past fall, I went to Target and bought myself the equipment to make a worm bin: two big purple rubbermaid bins with tightly fitting covers.   (pictures will hopefully follow- having trouble extracting them from my phone).   I washed & drilled holes in the bins, and presto: instant worm houses!   I filled one bin with shredded cardboard and newspaper, dampened it overnight, then added some food scraps and (mostly) finished compost.   Now for the worms.  Apparently you can buy compost worms, but all I had to do was dig down into my compost (it was already cold at this point and the worms were kind of....snuggling? close to the ground) and pull up a jackpot of wiggly red worms.

At this point Dawn, who hates rotting food in any shape or form (and is not such a huge worm fan, either), congratulated me on my project and told me she'd wait for updates inside.

The worms, finished compost, food & damp newspaper all went down into the basement for the winter.   One lid went on top of the bins (apparently worms can and will escape!), the other underneath to catch any drips.   Fast forward to now.   The worms, despite living in my super-cold basement all winter, managed to eat about a quarter of our monthly kitchen scraps.   They also were fruitful and multiplied, and by now have eaten through almost all the paper products + food and turned it into extremely dense, black compost.   Win!

I filled the second bin with more damp paper products (90% egg cartons - since going paleo, I now consume a ridiculous amount of eggs), some finished compost and new food and put it on top of the first, pretty-much-finished bin, lid covering the top.  The concept is that the worms will migrate up through the drainage holes, following the smell of delicious rotting food.   I'm not sure how many made the pilgrimage, but hopefully enough to get a summer wormbox going as a supplementary way to make compost (again, since going paleo there are SO many veggie scraps that the worms actually can't keep up!).

Today, I hauled the first bin of finished compost out side and added it to our winter compost heap.   I maybe should've saved some pure compost for starting beds, but my hope is that the new, super-active vermicompost will activate our lazy, winter compost, and, as the weather gets warmer over the next month and a half, provide us with some serious finished compost to kick-start our garden this spring.

All in all, I'm extremely happy to have inserted myself in this natural system.   Nature is a closed loop - the breakdown that occurs with death and decay are what makes new life possible. Vermicompost, like all healthy compost, is rich in the microorganisms, fungi, and bacteria that soil needs to produce healthy, resilient plants.  Healthy compost doesn't smell because it is breaking down  so efficiently.
I love producing the raw materials for next year's food - thanks, worms, for all your help!

For a website that does a decent job describing hows & whys of a compost pile, check out:
http://www.veryediblegardens.com/iveg/composting