Wriggly Friends

"Hello, little guys!" Thus I'll often greet the worms when I open the lid to my "Worm Factory 360" composter. When they're exposed to the light, the wee hermaphrodites move around trying to flee from said light. (They prefer things to be dark — along with damp.) 

In Brooklyn, I used to collect scraps of food (vegetable scraps, egg shells, and other non-dairy/non-meaty scraps) and take them to the farmers market where it was collected for compost. Here in Jersey we have more room and thus I keep the worms in the composter I mentioned above. They live in a comfortable area out of the sun and elements and basically make fertilizer out of the scraps of food we give them on a mostly daily basis. I say "mostly" because I started out with about 200 worms and they didn't need as much food as I thought they would. That didn't keep them from producing a good amount of fertilizer but they did so fairly slowly given how many of them there were. So this spring, I bought an additional 500 worms (you can, believe it or not, order these online and they come in a carefully packaged box that says, "live product," and off you go, carefully transporting said fragile package to their penthouse Worm Factory.) 

They're worms, of course, so they can't hear me refer to them endearingly and lovingly. Worms don't have a nose, ears, or eyes, but they do have a nervous system that makes them sensitive to light, temperature, and vibrations. Their castings (their poop basically) are what make for great fertilizer. They've taken in nutrients from the already nutritious scraps you've given them and their castings still contain much of what they've taken in, just processed. So your plants will benefit from their work and so will the environment, as you've reduced waste (even by a bit!) 

Kids dig the worms (no pun intended) because well — they're worms! They're wriggly, somewhat slimy, and (kinda) gross, depending on the kid (or adult) you're talking to. I personally think they're kinda cute, in an invertebrate-y sort of way. Because they're easy to handle, they make for great interaction possibilities with the kids. And they provide a stepping point, so to speak, onto other science subjects — for example, fertilization, seed germination and plant growth, environmental responsibility, animal care, etc., etc. And even genetics: worms are apparently genetically complicated enough that figuring out their genetics can help us figure out our own! (The Worm Lab link by the way, is via Zooniverse, a Citizen Science site that allows anyone (I'm thinking of the older kids for our purposes) to volunteer while helping scientists classify anything from galaxies to potential planets to World War I documents. I encourage you to check it out.) 

Compost bins, by the way, are not just available online. You can certainly build one of your own (great classroom project!) or use other methods to compost! Best of luck!