Shredded Paper

This year'’s CICO project is to vermicompost the paper that arrives in my apartment.

Here is this weekend'’s effort.

I have been straining pasta water into my tank, so there is a rich stew of bacteria within. Frankly, it is beginning to smell, so I would like to dispose of the water and start afresh.

I place a rectangular sieve inside an old refrigerator drawer.

I tip a waste bucket of shredded paper in the sieve.

I hose from the water tank over the paper and leave it to soak for about an hour.

Finally, I tip it to drain back into the drawer for five minutes, and consign the damp paper to the tower vermicomposter.

I repeat the process until all the water has been transferred (and a lot of paper shredded!).

The worms get a rich source of nutrients in their fresh bedding.

The tower vermicomposter is not overloaded with water.

Finishing Chest 2

Meanwhile, back at the ranch …

A few weeks have passed. I started to skim the castings from the top of the chest and half-way down through the eight inches, discovered that I had a fairly sodden mass that was tending anaerobic.

Tipping the chest at a 45-degree angle allowed me to move the mass to one side of the chest. In the space I dropped a couple of bins of shredded paper, flipped the chest the other way (burying that paper) and placed another two bins of shredded paper.

I righted the chest, smoothed the soil over the paper, and have left it for a week.

My theory is that the paper will provide fresh bedding and help the mass to dry.

This morning I lifted the lid, removed the plastic sheet, and saw the worm colony going at it again.

I am optimistic that this will result in the remaining soil mass being rendered into top—surface castings, and I’ll continue to skim them on a weekly basis.

Here is the chest with the masonite lid removed. You can see some of the shredded paper poking up through the mass:

Here is a view of the mass, with the plastic sheet removed. Worms are scurrying away to avoid the early-morning light, but I can see that they are there, doing their productive thing atop the mass!

Here is a view of the underside of the plastic sheet. Worms are attracted here, I suspect for the moisture content.

Castings are in evidence and better yet – my worms are preggers!

Harvesting Castings 2

Once a week, sometimes once a fortnight, I remove the outfall of castings from the broom-closet vermicomposter.

Below is a photo of my kit.

With a trowel made from an old orange-juice bottle, I shovel the dry castings into a plastic sieve that sits in a plastic container of the same area.

Below I have shoveled the dry castings and some debris into the sieve

Below I have agitated the sieve. The dry castings have fallen through, undigested material remains in the sieve. Today most of that debris is paper, so I tip it back into the top of the vermicomposter.

I pour the sieved castings into a clean plastic milk bag. Below you can see that the big is about half-full. Not bad for one week.

For this essay I decided to weigh the castings. About one pound, half a kilogram. Again, considering that the recommended dose for houseplants is one spoonful per month, I have harvested enough castings in one week to keep me going for six months!

Harvesting Castings

Harvesting Castings

I start fresh cuttings in a mixture of peat moss and vermicomposting soil, rich in castings.

And of course, there are worm eggs in the castings mix, so the eggs hatch while the cuttings are taking hold.

Worms in the house plants means that I have self-fertilizing house plants, and the soil is aerated, and it sometimes dries out rather rapidly.

My solution is to stand a collection of pots in an tub (an old refrigerator drawer shown below), and soak them with water from my pail. The water in the pail contains bacteria – it is where I strain my pasta – and so the soil in the pots gets a load of bacteria, which is what the worms eat.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch,…..

On the terrarium where I had stood my pots, …

… and on the margarine lids where I had stood my pots, you will see for each pot four small piles of pure castings.

Here is where the worms have retired to do their thing.

I can collect these small amounts in a plastic bag, and am amazed at how quickly the amount adds up.

This is, too, confirmation to me that each pot has a small but healthy population of worms, continuing to make my houseplants the most luxurious on the block!

Cupboard Love

This is the true story of a cupboard.

(Read the full article with images at http://www.chrisgreaves.com/SUFE/SecondUse)

Background

Yesterday I was offered some cupboard doors by the superintendent. I operate on the principle that you can never have enough bookshelves, because you can never have enough books.
It took me one trip to lug all six doors upstairs. I was coming up here anyway

Basics

I armed myself with a screwdriver and unscrewed each knob. Good. I need some knobs for another set of cupboards. They will clean up nicely.
I have an idea for a collapsible bookshelf – don't be silly; I mean a bookshelf that can be dismantled without tools, collapsed, transported, and re-erected.
The basis will be four doors hinged together in a chain, two doors making the back, one door for each side, and two doors as horizontal shelves.
I test the idea by propping the Cupboard Doors against my desks to see that the idea will work.

In the image below I rest one shelf across the top of the two sides and the two back pieces. I'll need to trim an inch or so off the length of the shelves.

That done, I wipe down each cupboard door to see which ones will look best for the outside ends, and which, the worst, will form the back. I stack the doors to dry.

To Work

Despite my best measurements, I've always been served well by tangible layouts. Here the six shelves are ;aid out. The two centre pieces will become the back of the new bookshelf. The outside pieces will become the "walls" of the bookshelf, and the two pieces propped up by my supervisor's pet basket and my fruit basket will become the shelf and top, respectively.

Continued supervision is an important part of any work project.

Here are the four panels with hinges dropped roughly into place.

Here are the two wing or wall panels, with peg-holes drilled out at 3-inch intervals so that I can adjust, insert or remove shelves at will.

I screw each hinge onto only one side of a panel, not both.
I'll fasten each panel to another while they are standing vertically; in this manner I can be sure that the panels will sit flush with the floor.

We already talked about supervision. Here you can inspect the four panels. The wings have peg holes drilled for shelves; the three pairs of hinges are screwed in place.

I have trimmed the fifth door and placed it on pegs about half-way up the walls.
At this stage I found myself wondering why I wasn't making a bench seat for my balcony.

The top will be held in place by pegs. I have drilled two holes in each wall and placed pegs in place. I am about to mark the corresponding position, very carefully, on the underside of the top shelf.

The holes are drilled in the top shelf and the top is placed over the pegs. The pegs fit into the top which acts as a rigid brace for the entire structure.
Bingo! A lovely storage unit 30 inches tall, 30 inched wide, and 15 inches deep, from six kitchen cupboard doors tossed out, twelve inches of ¼ inch dowel, and some spare hinges left over from dismantling closet doors!

The measure of success!

True to design, the unit collapse for removal or storage into two shelves (top right corner) and a folded-in package (on the left). In the photo below the four hinged pieces are not folded flat because I have left the shelf pegs in place while I move the unit across the room

Thanks for reading this. I hope that you are inspired.

Finishing Chest

((Read the full article with images at http://www.chrisgreaves.com/sufe/vermicomposting/FinishingChest.html)

I ha’ve titled this "Finishing Chest", but I a’m not really certain .. it is the old laundry tub, about two feet square and fifteen inches deep. It has a plug-hole dead centre in the bottom.

In this tub, six weeks ago, I stashed sieved material from my efforts at re-assembling the tower vermicomposters. The coarse undigested paper is held back and fed back into the towers. The laundry tub receives worm castings, soil, small pieces of paper and of course, scads of bacteria.

My theory was that the mass would continue to generate worm castings, and by the end of summer I could mix it with peat moss for my winter program of house plants.

Last week I cut a piece of white-painted masonite to fit as a lid. I sit on the bench and drink my morning coffee.

With the lid raised you see an old garbage bag, folded, following on from my discovery of condensation of moisture in the tower vermicomposters. In the laundry tub, the plastic and its condensate seems to attract worms.

As you can see! When I remove the plastic, I see the surface of the bin is covered with worms and castings.

The white mass is a batch of bean sprouts that was left too long in the refrigerator.

Moisture Level

(Read the full article with images at http://www.chrisgreaves.com/sufe/vermicomposting/MoistureLevel2.html)

After a day or two I reasoned that the worms should be attracted to the bacteria in the moist soil. Sure enough, here they are.

I have placed the pot outside the bin to take a better shot.

There’s a possibility that the pot might serve too as a harvesting mechanism for worm droppings.

Moisture Level

(Read the full article with images at http://www.chrisgreaves.com/sufe/vermicomposting/moisturelevel.html)

How to maintain a decent level of moisture in a tower vermicomposter? Too little moisture and the worms die. Too much water and you get nasty seepage from the base.

Here’s a technique I use that, coupled with a plastic-bag cover seems to work well right through summer on my south-east facing balcony.

Remember that I drape a plastic bag loosely over the top. Moisture condenses on the underside of the plastic and drips back into the centre of the pile, so moisture is circulating all the time.

Here is a photo of a tower vermicomposter. You can see moist patches on the sides of the plastic liner, and you can see traces of worm castings on the sides, too. The worms are warm, moist, and active.

You are looking at the latest batch of shredded paper dropped into the bin a day or two ago.

Here is a broken plastic pot. I have filled it with stale soil. The soil looks moist because it has been put to the use I’ll describe below.

The pot of soil sits on the top of the shredded paper in the bin, in the centre of the pile, equidistant from the sides.

Here I am with a pint of vegetable water, at room temperature, in a small plastic pail. A Second Use For Everything.

I tip the water onto the soil. You will see below that the water is bubbling down and up through the soil. The soil acts as a reservoir and releases the water over a period of five minutes. This gives the water time to seep sideways through the paper without coursing down the sides of plastic and directly out of the bin.

The worms get a drink of bacteria-laden water. The soil breeds bacteria. The worms can rise into the soil if they prefer.

When I have a batch of shredded paper, I lift out the pot, dump in the paper, and replace the pot atop the new batch of paper.

Salad Days

Summer is upon us, and that means Iced Cappuccinos and expensive Romaine Lettuce.

Don't give up hope. Save and clean the cute clear-plastic coffee cups with their covers (large hole in top!) and start sprouting.

I obtain Mung beans from my local bulk produce store and start a fresh batch every three days. I've found that about two tablespoons do me for three days. You will experiment until you find the small cup that measures just the right amount for you.

Soak a small quantity of beans in cold water overnight. In the morning, rinse and soak for the remainder of the day. You should see the seeds germinating after 24 hours, 36 at most.

Rinse gently twice a day. By "rinse gently" I mean to flush them with fresh water and drain off. Don't hold them under a strong kitchen tap - you'll do damage to the roots that are forming.

I have found that lidded, there's enough circulation of air to promote germination. If the beans appear to be drying out, cover the lid completely.