These projects are fun AND help the environment! All projects require adult supervision so ask a grown-up to help you out.

Worm Box

Worms hard at work compostingWorms can turn your kitchen scraps into compost, which is the best food for growing flower and vegetable gardens! Instead of sending your family’s kitchen scraps to the landfill, feed it to the worms!!!

Materials Needed

• Box for the worm house
• Bedding to keep the worms warm in their house
• Soil
• Water
• Worms
• Kitchen scraps

Directions

Building a worm house

Build a shallow box that measures 1x2x3-feet out of plywood or untreated scrap wood. You also can use plastic boxes as long as the boxes have not contained chemicals and that you drill holes in the sides and bottom to allow air to flow through the box. Worms need oxygen just like us. They breathe it through their skin! Worms also need to stay warm so keep the box in your garage, kitchen or basement or anyplace to keep the temperature inside the box between 55 and 77 degrees.

Making bedding to keep your worms warm

Worms need a lay of moist bedding to keep their skin comfortable and some of the best bedding for your worms is strips of newspaper. All you need to do to keep your worms cozy is rip newspaper in 1x4-inch strips. Then spray the newspaper strips with water to make it moist for the worms. Be careful not to make it too wet. A good way to test it is to squeeze the moist newspaper strips. Only a couple of drops of water should come out. Next, add a handful of soil to the bedding. Worms do not have teeth so they need soil to help them “chew” their food. After a few weeks, you will notice the bedding has sunk down in the box and has become dark. This means the worms are doing their job—making compost for your flower and vegetable gardens! The best part is, you don’t need to clean your worm house every week. Instead, change the bedding only every four or six months. That’s all!

Moving your worms into their new house

Two types of red worms will make good residents for your worm house:

• Lumbricus rubellus
• Eisinia foetid

The amount of worms you should use depends on the amount of table scraps your family creates every day. A general rule to follow is two pounds of worms for each pound of kitchen scraps you family creates each day.

Feeding your worms kitchen scraps—yum, yum!

Worms are vegetarians! Never feed your worms meat or dairy products!!

Their favorite foods are:

• Vegetable peelings
• Fruit cores, stems, peels and rinds
• Eggshells
• Coffee grounds
• Tea bags

Bury the kitchen scraps in the bedding. Choose a new place in the box each time you add scraps so their food is spread around the box.

For more information about keeping worms, go to:

http://whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/compost/Redwormsedit.htm