- What do you think Naomi?
- He smiled!
- It smiled?
This looks very challenging.
What did I get myself into?
Hi, I'm Aurora.
And this week I'm going to be doing
a worm compost challenge.
I am gonna order a compost bin,
and I'm gonna order worms,
and I'm gonna set it up in my apartment.
I'm gonna feed the worms food scraps from my kitchen
and I'm gonna see if they eat them up
and see what happens.
I have no idea what I'm getting into.
I've never done anything like this before
and it all seems a little bit daunting.
So let's see how this goes!
Now let's get the worms at unclejimswormfarm.com.
(squeal)
Oh my god, I don't know if I'm ready for this.
(high-pitched sigh)
They look really kind of creepy and crawly.
The reason I'm doing it is because
we eat a lot of fruits and vegetables here,
and it feels like a shame to throw the fruits and vegetable
scraps into the trash.
When you put your scraps into the trash,
they go straight to the landfill.
They suffocate in the bag,
and then they let out methane,
which is a greenhouse gas.
All around it just doesn't really seem to make sense
to throw our food scraps in the landfill
when they can be repurposed into
very nutritious and rich fertilizer.
I'm gonna call up my friend Jonathan.
I know you're kind of the expert with this
so I wanted to see if I could get some advice from you
because I'm a little overwhelmed by the whole idea.
- Well I love worms, I live and breathe worms actually.
(laughter)
- They're sweet, they don't bite?
- They are really friendly.
In fact they don't even have teeth.
Were you thinking about making one yourself?
Or buying one?
- I was looking at maybe making one myself
but I don't know if I really have the time
and I don't know if it's gonna look very nice
in the middle of my apartment.
I was looking at some of these nice wooden ones
that you can get online.
- I hear you, mine are in my carport.
I made my bin myself.
I literally just bought two plastic tubs
and stacked them on top of each other.
I think they were like $8 each.
I did it really on the cheap,
but really what's great about worms is
as long as we keep them happy,
they will live in pretty much any container that you'd like.
- Okay, so we've come here to sacred-resource.com
and I'm gonna see the different options.
I'm still figuring out what these tiers all mean.
And why there's different levels.
These are the ones I want.
Red composting worms.
(Excited squeal)
We're gonna need a little bit of
this thing I read about called coconut coir
to make their worm bedding, but then apart from that
we can use paper and newspapers.
All right, this is it!
Hi everyone, Aurora and Naomi here
with our worm composting challenge!
- Challenge go!
- This is the compost bin, let's open it up.
- Let's open it up.
- Instructions, woo!
We can't really see in there,
but the worms are in there, okay?
Time to put the bin together.
What did I get myself into?
Getting there, getting there.
We did it!
Here you have a beautifully built verma compost.
This is so exciting.
So we've learned a lot the last couple days.
We learned that the worms are gonna
eat up our scraps of food.
And then they're going to make
dirt.
The soil is really rich.
I don't know what I'm gonna do with the soil.
Okay, let's take it one step at a time
before I get too overwhelmed.
The first step is that we are going to do
the bedding for the worms
to give them a really nice place to be.
And we are going to do the bedding with
little pieces of paper.
We are going to add a little bit of water
to rehydrate it.
Now can you mush it a little bit?
Now we are going to put this into the bin.
Whoa, so dirty!
So now comes the really fun part.
Okay, here we go.
Common worms!
Welcome to your new home.
Oh my...
god.
I am really happy Naomi's in the other room
or she would not be able to handle this right now.
I can barely handle this.
Okay, I'm the mom.
I'm the mom here.
Oh my...
god.
I def have to keep my cool here because
I'm the mom and if I freak out, she's gonna freak out.
Woo...
They are creepy crawly.
Let's get them covered up.
(paper rustling)
Okay, guys.
Here Naomi do you want to put a little apple in there?
Okay, I'm gonna go like this
and gonna kinda tuck it in a little bit.
And then we will cover it up so that we don't
attract other bugs.
I really hope I'm doing this right.
I think we are just sort of supposed to
tuck them in here.
Yeah we can kind of tuck this little onion in.
How about our little carrot scraps
from the other day?
Put little carrot scraps in here.
Gentle Naomi.
We want to be really gentle.
Okay, I think that's enough
because remember the instructions say
we don't want to overfeed them.
Okay you want to say goodbye little wormies?
- [Naomi] Goodbye little wormies.
- And then we are going to get the other layers on
and we are going to go up up up.
- [Naomi] Doing it together.
- Yeah, together.
I would like to address my little meltdown earlier.
I was not expecting to see as many worms as there were.
I am very grateful for them for taking care
of my food scraps for me.
That's awesome.
But yeah, it took a bit of adjustment to get used to
all of those worms.
Can you say verma compost?
- Verma compost.
- Would it smell to have a worm bin in my apartment?
- No as long as you keep the conditions
in the worm bin okay,
then it doesn't really smell like anything.
- Okay what do you mean if the conditions
are okay in the worm bin?
- You want to make sure that the bedding,
which is what they live in,
like shredded up newspaper or
leaves is damp enough.
And the rule of thumb is like you can wring it out
like a damp sponge.
You want to make sure you have great airflow.
You want to make sure that they are fed properly.
And by properly you don't want to overfeed them.
You want to avoid using too much citrus,
or something that's too acidic or too basic.
They really like neutral.
- You can also put your mate grounds into the worm bin.
Okay we're on day three.
We're gonna check out how the worms are doing.
Oh there they are!
Hi guys!
I guess it's okay to put maybe just a little bit more.
I don't know, I'm gauging.
I'm just getting to know these guys, you know?
Have some of these scraps.
Just try to maybe disperse them around I guess.
I'm not gonna to lie,
this is super, super new territory for me.
I've been thinking a lot about if I'm gonna keep
the compost bin after this challenge is over
and I don't really know at this point.
It's just like...
We're just getting started here.
- Worms breathe through their body
and they are mostly moisture, mostly water.
So if your bin is too dry, they'll shrivel up.
But if you put in a little too much water,
as long as it flows through,
they'll be okay.
- I realize the newspaper I waws gonna put
on the worms was suppose to be a little bit wet,
so I put just a tad bit of water over everything.
Hi everyone!
We are on day four.
The truth is we're starting to feel
a lot more confident with the worms.
- Let's see!
- At first I was feeling a little bit nervous
to have worms.
Were you feeling nervous Naomi?
- Yeah.
- But do you feel more comfortable now with the worms?
- Yeah
- You do, do you like them?
- Yeah.
- In a few weeks, we're gonna to fill this one
in the same way that we did the first one
with that coconut coir,
that big brick remember?
And then also the worm bedding.
And we are going to let the worms climb
up up up up up.
And then what's left,
is going to be all the worm castings
we can use for a garden.
Does that make sense?
What happened to that apple core?
Well they're eating it.
They're going for it.
So the apple core-
oh look at them, they're so happy.
What do you think Naomi?
- He smiled!
It smiled?
They look like they're doing great.
I would say they look like they're thriving.
Look how confident I am now.
I am straight up sticking my hand in here.
And I was so afraid before.
Do you remember how we saved these earlier
from our dinner?
- [Naomi] Here you go.
- Nice, exactly.
Great job.
Did you know that the worms are gonna
have other babies and pretty soon we are going to have
double the amount of worms we have now?
Whoa!
I was both concerned that there weren't enough
worms to eat all of our food scraps.
But then I was also concerned,
well hey they're going to reproduce at some point
and they might double.
Both of these things are less of a concern now
because I actually learned that
you can't ever have too many worms
because they are gonna self-regulate
to the environment.
Meaning that they are going to lay less eggs
when they have less room.
Let's cover them up.
Goodbye worms.
- Goodbye worms.
- Did you know that worms have 5 hearts?
Whoa
And they don't have eyes.
Whoa.
So now they've been in here about a week.
Oh, wow.
Oh my god.
They're doing awesome.
And I think they're growing,
what do you think, Naomi?
Does it look like they're growing?
- [Naomi] Yeah
- So one big complaint from people who
do these worm bins in their apartment
is that they can attract fruit flies.
But we make sure to cover up
all of our food scraps with paper.
So we haven't had any problems
with fruit flies or anything like that.
And there's been no odor too.
A healthy worm bin should not have any odor to it.
Look they're really doing great I think.
Would you like to keep the worms?
You like them?
I think about three weeks we will be able
to put more bedding and
food scraps and then the worms will travel up
and then they'll leave their really good fertilizer
down here.
When we first got the worms I was really nervous
because they were creepy crawly.
(squeal)
But then I got a lot more comfortable
and it was awesome that they were able to
eat a lot of our food scraps this week
and they're kinda cute
and they've sort of become our pets.
So I think we are gonna keep them
and it might just be a fun thing for us.
Our goal is to have a garden.
And one day we'll have a garden
and we will be able to-
- Yay, yay, yay
Garden, garden, garden.
- Yeah,
garden.
One day we'll have a garden and we'll be able to
use these worm castings as fertilizer in our garden.
So far all I have is my little basil plant
It's been two weeks since we've had the worms.
We've learned that actually
the worms don't like to be disturbed too much.
And that we should only feed them once a week.
So once a week we are putting in our food scraps,
and it's become part of our routine.