Mary Appelhof - helps us compost our produce scraps
Dateline: Kalamazoo
Wendell the Worm here with my good
friend Mary Appelhof, otherwise known
as "The Worm Woman" of Kalamazoo,
Michigan. She's been working with us
worms for the past 25 years. Her book,
"Worms Eat My Garbage," was originally
published in 1982 and has sold over
90,000 copies - many of which are in
local libraries. Based on that number,
she believes there are over a million
people with worm bins in the US, as of
1996.
So why are worm bins so popular? And
what makes someone study us worms in
the first place?
Here's her story.
WENDELL: "Mary, how did you first
become interested in worms?"
WORM WOMAN: "Well, I started with
worms by ordering two pounds of them
one winter. I set up a worm bin in my
basement which had manure in it, and
peat moss and leaves. And I found that I
could bury my garbage in it too, such as
apple cores, coffee grinds, etc., and the
worms would eat it and turn it into rich
potting soils without having any smells. It
was amazing to find that out!"
WENDELL: "Yeah, don't just judge us
from the worms who shrivel up on the
sidewalk! Take a look at us in our
natural habitat - or in a worm bin."
WW: "I think that having a worm bin, for
instance, where you've got worms and
you can look at them on a regular basis
everyday, and see the changes in the
bin and watch them move, see them lay
cocoons or see a cocoon which a worm
does lay, and then see the baby worms
hatch from these cocoons, these are the
kinds of things that are just fascinating
to watch and it always changes."
Inside a Worm Bin
WENDELL: "Mary, what is it like inside a
worm bin?"
WW: "Basically, it's a system which has a
container. And that container has to have some
provision for aeration or for oxygen (air) to get
into it, either by holes in the side or the bottom,
or perhaps lacking a top or perhaps in tubes,
which make it possible for air to get inside the
bin, a bedding that every often can be just
shredded newspaper for the worms to live in.
This bedding needs to be moist, because
worms need to be moist in order to exchange
gases across their skin. And add a little bit of
soil. The soil helps to provide grit for the
worms' gizzards and a source of bacteria for the decomposing which goes
on in a worm bin. And of course it contains worms."
WENDELL: "Yeah. My relatives wrote me about this once. When you start
adding garbage to the bin and the bacteria start to break it down and
make it soft and mushy, then this becomes the kind of food my relatives
can eat. So they suck up the juices of the decomposing garbage, add
bacteria to it in their own bodies, absorb the nutrients they like and
excrete the rest. And then you humans can use their poop."
The Right Worms
WW: "But you need the right kind of worms, and there are two general
categories of worms, one is composting worms, like redworms, which live
in leaf litter and manure heaps and compost piles, and soil-dwelling
worms, like nightcrawlers, which live in the soil. Now if you're setting up a
worm bin, you need to get the composting worms. You can't just go to the
garden and get worms and expect them to work! Worms for composting
need to be able to live in high concentration of organic material. They
don't like living in the soil and they reproduce well and they can tolerate
being stirred up all the time. So you gotta use the right worm for the job -
redworms."
WENDELL: "Yeah, you bet. I'm a nightcrawler and I just couldn't deal with
people messing around with my burrow - or dumping vegetables on my
head for that matter. Well, Worm Woman, we're running out of time now,
so any last words about worm bins?"
WW: "People who hear about worm bins very often will just turn up their
nose and say, 'No Way,' but these same people who come to Earth Day
and somebody can show them that there really isn't anything there that's
going to hurt them, and that it really doesn't smell as much as they expect
it would, and they can learn to live with it. When they realize being able to
turn the most repulsive part of their garbage into something useful,
sometimes that will be enough to make them do something that they
thought they might be afraid to do."
WENDELL: "Thank you Worm Woman for joining us. And good luck with
your worms! This is Wendell the Worm reporting."
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