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The Worm Condo

One of the most fun and satisfying things I ever did in my garden evolved into an ongoing tradition and a treasured memory for my grandchildren and me.

I read an article about building a "Worm Condo". A "Worm Condo" is a compost bin where you put leaves, grass, kitchen scraps (no meat products) and red worms to turn all of this into "worm castings", or rich soil to use in your garden. 

This was at a time in my earlier days of organic gardening when I was learning about composting, mulching plants and building up a good, healthy soil base for my gardens.

My grandchildren were quite young, about three and four, and I was always looking for ways to involve them in my gardening experience, as well as tapping and channeling that unlimited and endless source of raw energy! We had already planted their own small garden plot with vegetables and that was great fun. Now, we were going to build a worm condo and learn about composting.

My husband is more interested in and capable of building a wood structure than I am, so I convinced him that a good thing to do with the boys would be to build This "Worm Condo".

The "Worm Condo" I read about was a plywood box, about 3 feet long by about 2 feet wide and about 1 foot high with holes in the bottom for drainage. There is a dividing board through the middle lengthwise so you can rotate batches and there are holes in the divider so the worms can move from the first batch to the newly filled side.

My husband read the directions and cut the plywood to size so that it was all ready for the boys to help put it together. Then they spent an afternoon in the  garage assembling it. Once that was done we waited for just the right day to paint it.

It was a warm spring day, perfect for painting outdoors in the sun. I spread an old sheet on the grass. The boys and I brought our new worm condo outside and set it on the sheet. I rummaged around and found some old white paint and some old paintbrushes and I also found a couple of colors to use for doors and windows and other detailing work. We were all set to paint the new building they had just created. 

 

When the paint was dry we moved the Worm Condo to a shady spot behind the garage. We put a layer of leaves and sticks in the bottom of one half, watered it and added grass clippings, kitchen scraps (no meat or dairy products), peat moss and some more leaves. Then we soaked it again. Of course, the watering became an adventure with the hose and water was soon everywhere as a water fight ensued. 

We Got dried off, put dry clothes on and were off to the bait shop to buy worms. You really need red worms in compost because the regular earthworms go to the bottom, but the red worms tunnel throughout and are much more efficient at turning our human cast-offs into worm castings, that is, worm poop. Not all bait shops have red worms, so you might have to look around. 

So, we dumped the worms into our compost mixture spread them over the top and waited. I checked it every day or two. I watered it when it was starting to dry out and turned the whole mixture to allow air into the bottom for the worms and to mix the whole thing up. When the boys were around they would help tend it.

After a couple of weeks we started new compost on the other side of the Worm Condo. The worms would eventually crawl through the holes in the dividing wall to the new side and do their work there. 

In a few weeks the mixture looked like dirt, smelled like dirt and I decided it was dirt. I read that the thing to do is to spread the compost out on a tarp to allow the remaining worms to crawl out of the dirt so you can put back them into the new compost mixture. I didn’t want to do that, so we shoveled the new dirt into a wheelbarrow. We picked some of the worms out and put them on the other side where the new compost mixture was. The boys enjoyed this part more than I did.

We brought our new dirt to the vegetable garden and spread it out on top of the soil around the plants. We watered it in and watched our garden grow. 

The whole experience of building the Worm Condo, painting it and creating compost was very fun, educational and memorable for my grandchildren and me. Every year we look forward to the ritual of starting up the compost in the Worm Condo and putting that new, rich soil in the vegetable garden.