Worm poop makes the best compost!

A couple of years ago, I started a worm composting bin with my fourth graders.  The bin is a simple plastic box with air holes which you fill with damp newpaper strips and red wriggler worms.  The wrigglers are easy to care for, they just need to stay damp and be fed everynow and again.  They are not picky eaters and will devour vegetable and fruit peelings, grains, coffee grounds and filters, newspaper and other organic materials.  They eat up and then 'cast' out beautiful, rich garden compost.

Since I've been at home, I've kept the worm bin on the porch. Sometimes I pay attention to them, most of the time I don't.  In fact the last time I peeked in the box I was frightened away by a large infestation of soldier flies.  They look like giant wasps.  So I screamed, and closed the lid, deciding that the worms could just fend for themselves from now on.  After I calmed down, I discovered, that though nasty looking, these flies just meant I had damp, organic material in an advanced stage of decomposition.  Basically, I needed to empty out my worm bin and give my wigglers more to eat.

Thanks to a little prodding from Douglas, we decided to have a family night centered around harvesting our worm compost.  We emptied out our bin and found it full of several pounds of dark, rich compost and a healthy colony of worms.  The compost went on the plants and the worms went back in the bin. (Mostly.)

Here's what our beauties look like.