Not all of my past projects have met my minimal standards for success. Last year, during those beginning days of the pandemic when I was not even leaving my apartment, I decided to start a worm bin. I normally take my compost to a super-secret location, but I was trying to limit my trips out of the apartment. I thought this would be the perfect time to start composting in my own apartment.

I was inspired by my aunt who keeps a worm bin in her basement. The supplies and instructions were quite simple. I ordered some 5-gallon buckets and a drill from Home Depot and purchased some red wigglers from a bait shop. I won’t go through the particulars of constructing the worm bin because there are plenty of helpful tutorials all over the Internet. The whole process was quite simple and took under 30 minutes.

Keeping the worm bin operational was a different story. As a newbie to composting, I was unaware of the sheer volume of browns I would need to balance out all of the green waste I was creating. I did not have easy access to freshly raked leaves as an apartment dweller, and newspapers are becoming more and more difficult to come by. I also did not take into account that my worm population would need some time to reproduce to accommodate the amount of vegetable waste I produced. My bin quickly turned anaerobic and filled my apartment with a foul smell. I was able to briefly correct this by filling it with household cardboard and grocery store circulars and turning it often to get some oxygen into the parts that had become an anaerobic slime.

Everything seems to be going okay until it came time to sift out the finished compost. I had to drag my bin out to the roof of the parking garage, use my poor excuse for a homemade sifter, and pick composted bits of eggshell and onion skin out of the dirt that I hoped to use for my house plants. Once I had a sizable amount of finished compost I just covered something even worse. Despite my best efforts to get all of the worms out, my compost was full of bugs. I appreciate those little guys helping me break down my discarded vegetable matter but I did not want them in all of my house plants. I thought leaving the dirt outside in the sun to entice some of the bugs to leave, but really it just enticed one of my neighbors to use it as an ash tray.

I thought maybe I could continue to use the worm bin and gift my compost to friends who had outside gardens. I did have at least one taker who took about 3 gallons of dirt from me. But then my bin went anaerobic again and I decided it just wasn’t worth it. By then we knew it was no longer a Covid risk to be outside away from other people, so I donated my worms to my super-secret compost pile and started taking my compost there again. Maybe one day when I have my own basement, I will start another one. Or when I have a yard I will start my own compost pile. But for now I am just glad I have a way to compost at all.

-Erica

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