Eggin' the worms

One of the things I do for my worm bin is save egg shells. I put them back in the carton, then when they're all gone I put the carton on the fridge or somewhere to dry. When they're thoroughly dry and I have a couple dozen, I mash them up for the worms. They help give the worms grit so they can digest their food, since they have a gizzard like birds. They also improve the calcium content of the compost, which will be great for my tomatoes! Another benefit I've heard but haven't verified is that they can help control the acid level in the bin. Whatever benefits they have, I'm glad to be able to put them into the bin instead of the trash and know at least in part that they'll be recycled.

My favorite eggs to use are nice brown ones, which come in a recycleable cardboard carton and are laid by vegetarian fed hens. The shells are a bit thicker, so they're easier to crack without it crumbling pieces into the egg. I only get those when they're on sale about the same price as the white ones. Sometimes I get massive jumbo brown eggs too - yum!

To get the shells ready, first I put all the dried shells into a gallon size ziplock bag. A reused bag is just fine! Then mash them up with your hands, or use a bowl or plate. Be careful not to poke through the bag with sharp edges! When the pieces get small, you can use a rolling pin to finish pulverizing them. The smaller the particles, the better. They don't get eaten and disappear when added to the worm bin, so keep in mind if you add big chunks then there will be big chunks in your compost. If you add tiny ground up pieces then some will be eaten, some will be there to add texture, and eventually they'll break down to give calcium to your plants. You can use a food processor or whatever you'd like to turn the shells into tiny pieces, this works for me and it's a lot less cleanup than using the food processor.

All I do to put them in is sprinkle them over the top when I need to mix up the bin anyway. Right now is a good time to stir things up since I've deliberately not fed them in a week or two, letting them use up some extra food because I overfed them. I still have a few fruit flies in there so there's wet newspaper on top. It seems to be working, there are only a couple fruit flies left. I just folded that out of the way, scooted some of the shredded cardboard bedding off to the side then poured the eggshells over the top. I used my hands (wearing gloves!) to mix up the bin a bit, trying to pull things from the sides towards the center, and bottom up to the top.

Always really interesting to see what is going on in there! I found some baby worms, part of a sweet potato growing, more melon sprouts and a bunch of fat worms. I love seeing the baby worms, a good sign that things are working as they should be and my worms are happy. When I was done, I just spread the reserved bedding back over the top, put the wet newspaper back over everything, and put the lid back on. A well kept worm bin doesn't smell bad unless you happen to uncover something you've recently added, it has too much food at one time or it's too wet. The rest of the bin smells like good potting soil, earthy but not rotten, so once you get past the ick factor of it being full of worms it's pretty neat!

Can you see the baby worms in the picture above? There are two adults, there's one baby between them at the bottom and another on the left by my glove. These are older babies, they look like red threads. I'm sure there are others but those two are easy to see. The photo quality isn't great since these guys don't like to be out in the light long and my camera takes a moment to focus. I've been looking for worm egg capsules but they must be pretty tiny, I haven't been able to spot any. These guys are on a piece of newspaper that has been in the bin a while, it's just coated in good castings. When I stir the bin up, I try to fluff up any compressed clumped bits of newspaper. I'm trying to use more shredded cardboard, dried leaves and cardboard egg cartons for bedding and less shredded newspaper since the newspaper clumps so much more than the other materials. I'm looking forward to being able to use my castings, and seeing if my tomatoes do well this year! I have tomatoes sprouting in peet pellets indoors. I never have much luck growing tomatoes from seeds, but these sprouts seem to be doing well, so hopefully the combo of strong seedlings and some rich castings for their soil will help them out this year!