House plants

I'll swear in Australia we called them Pot plants. In North America I am learning not to use the term!

Here's a link to some of my musings on House Plants, especially as it relates to kitchen ecology and vermicomposting.

Monitoring The Balcony Vermicomposter

To see the images, visit one of my SUFE pages at http://www.chrisgreaves.com/blogkitchen/TaperedVermicomposter.html

I generally place a cover of a plastic bag over the tower vermicomposters when they are out doors to retard the loss of moisture.

Imagine my delight today to find that the plastic bags act as water pumps! Here i’s how it works:

Moisture evaporates from the heap and hits the plastic bag which is held in place with a length of wood and a house brick.

There being a slight sag in the bag, during the cooler night the moisture condenses on the underside of the bag and drips back into the heap.

It seems like a good thing ...

Tapered Vermicomposter

To see the images, visit one of my SUFE pages at http://www.chrisgreaves.com/blogkitchen/TaperedVermicomposter.html


Sometimes the composting material is reluctant to descend, even with a glissant garbage bag and some extra water poured down the inside of the bag.

The trick is to introduce a slight taper to the composter, narrower at the top than at the bottom.

This morning I took two two-foot sides (total four feet) of the large bin and rebuilt them as a four-sided, one foot per side, small-footprint tapered vermicomposter.

First off, A Second Use For Everything.

Simple as it sounds, I'm still re-using an earlier compost bin.

Here you can see the four panels lined up partway through assembly. I am moving one set of hinges from a point about ten inches down to a point flush with the edge. (The top edge. I've just turned the whole thing upside down to start work on the base).

Here is a wider view of four panels hinged along their top edge; all other hinges are removed. The base edge (right now up in the air) is unsecured:

I wrap the sides together to form a rough square. In this photo the edge resting on the ground has three hinges, but the fourth join is open.

I have used four small pieces of plywood to anchor the corners of what will be the base of the vermicomposter.

You can see that I have forced a one-inch-wide gap between each edge. Since the corners at the other end are flush, this base gap introduces a total of four inches of splay around the base. ItÂ’s not much of a taper, but it will assist the descent of material.

Here is a view from the outside. The taper is not terribly apparent in the photo, but it is all I'’ll need to encourage descent of material.

Finally, put-away time. Here are the tools I used: one screwdriver, and a one-dollar packet of hinges. The screwdriver goes back in the toolbox. The cardboard hinge packet goes into the cross-cut shredder for vermicomposting.

If you'’ve been tracking the date/time stamps in the photographs, you'll see that the whole project took me about fifteen minutes. It'’s eight minutes in the photographs, but I started work before the first photo.

Restocking The Balcony Vermicomposter

To see the images, visit one of my SUFE pages at "http://www.chrisgreaves.com/blogkitchen/RestockingTheBalconyVermicomposter.html"

Today I am priming the new composter (see "Rebuilding The Balcony Vermicomposter")
I have a large rectangular bin. OK. It's a laundry-tub that got tossed out during renovations. (A Second Use For Everything). The tub is full of sieved material from the large Balcony Vermicomposter together with some left-over peat moss, and the soil from a few dead houseplants.

First off, during the week I've added a garbage bag of shredded paper to the new bin, tossed in a scoop of compost material, and added a cup of water each day until I see fluid seeping from the bottom. That's enough water for now.
I have created a bed of shredded paper. It is moist (well, down-right wet at the bottom!), and is seeded with bacteria from a worm bin. Remember, worms eat bacteria, not garbage, so we need a healthy community of bacteria for our worms before we introduce the worms to the bin.

Here is my laundry tub. I scoop two dollops of material into the metal basket inside a pail, then sieve the material into the pail. Fine compost and soil drops through with worms. The basket retains a few scraps of undigested paper or cardboard, a few worms, and some 1-centimetre pellets of clay or soil. That little bit of detritus goes into the new composter, so already I'm adding worms, bacteria, soil and bedding. It's a start!

The pail of sieved material is emptied onto a plastic sheet, in this case a garbage bag in reasonably good condition. I make a flattened cone and leave it sit for five minutes. The worms shun the bright light and retreat to the lower layer.

Here is a close-up of the heap. You can see some worms that were in the base of the pail, and are now on the top of the heap. They will soon burrow down into the lower levels of the heap.

An even better close-up. Cute little critters, ain't they!

Having poured myself a fresh coffee, I began removing material away from the heap. I use a plastic spoon to drag away a few spoonfuls at a time. It is easy to spot the worms that are exposed from the side and edges of the heap. Most of them have retreated to the deep interior, but there are always stragglers.
Here is a straggler, posing for a photo alongside the Sundae teaspoon.

I scoop him up in the plastic teaspoon.
Why a plastic teaspoon? Not for my sake – I'm too big and robust to be harmed by the worm. It's for the worm's sake. I want to minimize their contact with whatever might be on my skin (harmful bacteria - harmful to the worm, soap, coffee, cat hair etc.)

The worm joins a few of his friends in a margarine tub. With every worm that gets scooped comes a small amount of compost. This little bit of soil accumulates quickly to provide a haven for these worms-in- transit.

I'm nearly done with the heap. The heap has been spread to the outside edges of the plastic sheet.
The margarine tub is almost full of worms and material.

Here are seven worm eggs. Think "Shape of a lemon; size of a grape pip".
I used to separate eggs too, but now I realize that the worm eggs are pretty good at looking after themselves. Read on, dear reader, read on.

Here is another view of the exhausted heap. Yes, that's restful sitar music playing on the speakers.
Harvesting worms provides me with a relaxing hour or so on the weekend.

I pick up one edge of the sheet and gently nudge the edges of the distributed heap to the other edge of the sheet. In doing this, I uncover a couple of worms I've missed.
Here are two more stragglers. I'll teaspoon them into the margarine tub with their buddies.

By the time I'd finished I had five shopping bags with material.
Each bag contains about 50% worm castings and 50% soil and peat moss. It is still too rich for most houseplants.
As well it contains some baby worms (too small and easily missed) and a host of eggs.
I'll store the bags in the broom closet next to the Broom Closet Vermicomposter, where it is dark, warm and reasonably moist. After all, if the worm colony is thriving in the broom closet, the climate must be suitable for a nursery of five bags.
In six week's time I'll take out the bags and quickly extract any worms.

If you've been tracking the date/time stamps in the photographs, you'll see that the whole project took me under two hours.
The new Balcony Vermicomposter has bedding, is moist, has a colony of bacteria and a small colony of worms added today.
My plan is to use this vermicomposter exclusively for shredded paper, so excepting for the material primed today, only paper and nitrogen-rich sources such as coffee-grounds will enter it.
I plan on putting no kitchen waste in there, so that as best as I can I'm simulating an office environment.
Let's see if the worms can survive in, and digest all of, the shredded paper I produce in my home office.

Rebuilding The Balcony Vermicomposter

(You can see the complete article with photographs at http://www.chrisgreaves.com/blogkitchen/RebuildingTheBalconyVermicomposter.html)

I have now emptied the large (four square feet) balcony vermicomposter into a small (one square foot) vermicomposter to free up space on the balcony.
This morning I took two two-foot sides (total four feet) of the large bin and rebuilt them as a four-sided, one foot per side, small-footprint vermicomposter.
First off, A Second Use For Everything. I found an old table I’d used as a drinks table

On turning it over I discovered a one-foot wide channel:

Exactly one foot wide!

I decided that the channel would house my one-foot wide vermicomposter, so I removed the legs and one end of the table top

And waddya know! I ended up with a nice collection of wood-screws. A Second Use For Everything, right?

Here are the two panels ready to be hinged. Each panel consists of a three-foot high (half the original vertical height) section of a folding closet door.

And here they are linked together with a pair of cheap hinges, one hinge at the top, one at the bottom.

Next I decided against hinging the fourth corner. This time I’m using a piece of metal strapping which I can un-latch when it’s time to empty the vermicomposter en masse.
The right-hand end of the strap (there’s another piece at the bottom) is secured to one panel with two wood screws; the left-hand side will be dropped over the heads of raised screws on the left-hand panel. Easy to unhook, space out, and so on.

Here’s the vermicomposter turned upside down while I fasten the bottom strip. You can see the two raised wood screws which will serve the latch the strip.
You can also see some of the muck from this past winters efforts. Don’t worry, it brushes off …

I have un-latched the strip while I cut away the eight-inch door in the bottom of one panel. I make the vertical cuts with a hand saw, and score the plywood with a small kitchen knife. The plywood then snaps away by hand.

Here is the vermicomposter completely rebuilt. I have it standing on a piece of Masonite which will absorb most of any excess fluid and help evaporate it, rather than have it drip off my balcony.
The eight-inch doorway faces away from the edge of the balcony. It will be shielded by the balcony door, just visible to the left.
That’s a grocery-store bag (A Second Use For Everything) slowly collecting non-degradable garbage – old bones, small pieces of window envelope plastic (I shred the lot and sort it out later).

I am lining this vermicomposter with an old and holey garbage bag (A Second Use For Everything). I use thin strips of plywood (cut with the kitchen knife from the plywood I removed to make the eight-inch doorway) to anchor the edges of the bag to the vermicomposter with three two-centimetre pins each.
I have cut way the bottom of the bag – which now is at the bottom of the vermicomposter, so that my bag is now a cylinder.

Finally, put-away time. Here are the tools I used: A hand saw, pins (stored in a plastic hand-lotion bottle from my latest hotel stay) and wood-screws (stored in a plastic see-through milk bag); three screwdrivers, a hammer (lost its rubber-handle, but still works!) and a kitchen knife.
I’ll clean the knife and use it to eat my apple on the balcony while I admire my work.
If you’ve been tracking the date/time stamps in the photographs, you’ll see that the whole project took me fifty minutes. Under an hour.


It's about: Apartment Climate Cold Contact Dweller Ecology Error First Introduction SUFE Kitchen Local Post Site

Second Use For Everything (SUFE)

o What it is, why you need it

SUFE is a philosophy, but is not a mystic religion. It is a way of thinking.

Modern society is suffering from a mis-guided educational process suggesting that taking things out to the kerb is quite allright, as long as we put things in the correct plastic containers. Tossing out newspapers is OK, as long as they are put in the Grey Bin. Vegetable Scraps can be tossed as long as they go in the Green Bin. Jars can be tossed as long as they are tossed in the Blue Bin.

SUFE suggests that we should think, once more, before consigning a useful object to kerbside collection.

There is always a Second Use For Everything - SUFE.

You just haven’t thought about it – until now!

Please note that it is a Second Use For Everything, which is quite distinct from "Never throw anything away". We’re not collecting garbage here. True garbage should be, well, trashed.

Our philosophy will be "No matter what it is, If I’ve brought it into my life, I’ll find one use for it beyond its original purpose before I throw it out".

You need SUFE because without it you are unwittingly making extra trips to the kerb, lugging small mountains of stuff to where it doesn’t need to be, and worse, spending your post-tax cash on objects that you threw out last week. You don’t believe me? Read on, dear reader, read on!

Vermicomposting Cardboard

I am in the process of emptying the large (four square feet) balcony vermicomposter into the small (one square foot) vermicomposter to free up space on the balcony.

I have withdrawn many sheets of cardboard with which I had lined the large vermicomposter. I want to make a meal for the worms. The sheets are too dry and stiff, I'll have difficulty fitting them into the one-foot square vermicomposter.

Luckily ( Second use For Everything !) I have a crisper drawer from a cast-out refrigerator.

I place the sheets, roughly folded, into the drawer, weight them down with house bricks (did I mention Second Use For Everything ?) and pour in a lovely bacteria-laden pail of water – vegetable water, slurry from my water butt, all sorts of stuff.

Three hours later all the cardboard is well soaked and (rubber gloves!) into the small vermicomposter it goes.

Worms seem to love cardboard. I've heard theories that they go for the glue. I suspect that worms just carry on eating bacteria, but that the bacteria love the glue.

By soaking the cardboard in bacteria-laden water, I've given the bacteria a head-start on populating themselves, which will encourage the worm population to grow.

View this post with images at http://www.chrisgreaves.com/blogkitchen/blogkitchen.html

Vermicomposting Shredded Paper

Last August I built a Broom Closet Vermicomposter, and it has worked well, never more than half full.
I built a second Broom Closet Vermicomposter to serve as a receptacle for the output of my office cross-cut shredder. This provided me with a surfeit of large bales of shredded paper.
My apartment is a Carry-In Carry-Out apartment, so I built a Balcony Vermicomposter and charged it with about four gallons of material from the Broom Closet, complete with worms and eggs, and then spent the winter piling shredded paper in it.
Last weekend I opened it, and found to my delight a healthy colony of worms!
We have had a mild winter, and the worms survived.
I am now in the process of emptying the large (four square feet) balcony vermicomposter into the small (one square foot) vermicomposter to free up space on the balcony. I transfer about eight gallons a day, aerating and mixing as I go, and the material settles down in the smaller vermicomposter.

Kitchen Ecology and the Carry-In-Carry-Out philosophy

This series of notes describes methods for reducing disposal of matter from a single-family dwelling. The model described is a single-occupant apartment, but the model is extensible to a large family unit, and to multiple units.

I have based this system on my visit to Letchworth State Park and Mount Morris Dam in New York State. I am impressed with their "Carry In, Carry Out" philosophy, and decided to bring that philosophy into my home in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

If you'’ve read my notes on SUFE (Second Use For Everything) you'’ll recognize Kitchen Ecology as taking SUFE to the limit for a small group of items – food, paper and water. Every particle that falls within one of those groups is used again, and again.