Project Earthworms : How To Recycle Your Mailing Paper

You must have received many letters and promotional documents from the banks or from your telco company. Normally after reading it the letters thrown to the dust bin straight away. I received a lot of these mailing and sometimes took a lot of time sorting it out before disposing it. After much thinking, I feel all these mailing can be recycle in a way by feeding to the earthworms and turn it into earthworms casting. You may ask why not sell it to the newspaper man as some of the info on the letters may be confidential for others to read. So give it a try to save the environment in your own capacity.

First, you compile all the letters from the bank or telco which already read or outdated.

Cut it into pieces so that it can break into smaller pieces when soak in water.

All the cut papers soak into water in a bucket or metal container and left it few days to compost naturally before feeding it to the earthworms. If you have a blender it will be better to break the paper into pieces as it accelerate the compost process as I explained in my previous posting.

http://mybiebie.blogspot.com/2010/04/project-earthworms-how-to-process-food.html

Lastly, just spread the paper pieces into your earthworm bin and turn into black gold.

Project Earthworms - Update.

Hi, in my previous post:

http://mybiebie.blogspot.com/2010/03/project-earthworms-earthworms-castings.html

you can see I put some earthworms in the flower pot to simulate a natural habitat for the earthworms. To my surprise, after around 3 months I put in the pot, the earthworms turn into a gigiantic huge worm.

First I took out the plant nicely so not to kill the plant.

Then I empty the soil from the pot.

While I was searching for any life in the soil. This gigantic worm give me a shocker. I never knew life can be easy in a pot that can really make worm grow. This fellow feed on paper, dry leaves and other organic food. In conclusion, a healthy diet will make you grow well also.

Project Earthworms - How to Process Food For Your Earthworms

In my latest posting, I gonna share how to process your waste paper into easy digestive food for your pet earthworms that can transformed into good fertilizer for your plants.

The purpose to process this waste paper into tiny pieces is actually to increase the compost rate of the paper for the eartworms to feed on.

Preferable you use an old blender but if you don't have I guess you have no other choice. If you soak the paper in water for around 10 minutes, the paper will be soft enough to blend and not blunt the blender knife. After put in the paper, fill the blender around half cup of water then blend into small pieces.

The finish product.Yum yum for the earthworms.

Bon appetit my dear earthworms. Healthy recycle organic paper meal. 

A half compost paper that feed to the earthworms around 1 month ago. Still not fully consume by the worms yet. Estimate the pile of blended paper will take around 1 month time to dissappear from the surface.

Another experiment inside an used fish tank.

Close up of the final product.

Still some leftovers of the blended paper left compost in the container to be feed to the worms later.

Project Earthworms - Earthworms Castings

In this posting, I gonna share the sample of what earthworms castings look like. From my previous posting, I share the method of rearing earthworms in the plastic garbage bin http://mybiebie.blogspot.com/2010/02/project-rearing-earthworms-my-new-hobby.html. From the previous setup, it maybe difficult to see what the product of vermicompost. Therefore, I release some earthworms inside the flower pot and hope to create a natural habitat for the little fellow to breed and create its castings.

The dark brown silinder like earthworms castings.

More visible at the side of the pot.

Put some dry leaves and paper cuttings inside the pot for the earthworms to feed on. In about 1 month time, you will see the castings that can use as fertilizer for your organic farm.

All natural earthworms fertilizer ready to use.

This little fellow gonna enter the planeteer hall of fame for saving the earth from pollution and recycle waste into brown gold.

Project Rearing Earthworms - My New Hobby

Everyone got their own hobbies like rearing pets dogs, cats, fish and others but I tried leeches before and now going into rearing earthworms after my last project failed as you can read from my previous post:

http://mybiebie.blogspot.com/2009/09/project-leech-learning-how-to-rear.html

http://mybiebie.blogspot.com/2009/10/project-leech-learning-how-to-rear.html

I feel leeches can be tough to rear especially on finding the right food like eel or catfish ( for its blood ) and worrying not to contaminated the water as asidic waters will kill them.

As the current trend of saving the environment and going organic, I decided to go into earthworms rearing as the main reasons of getting its castings. The process of using earthworms to turn our households garbage like vegetables, fruits and other organics products into high quality compost is called vermicomposting, but most people just call it a 'worm farm'. Composting does not require the use of worms, but when they're added to the mix, it becomes much more efficient and complete.

First of all, I went to my friends house and dig out some worms from her gardens. Then before putting the worms into a plastic garbage container, I put lots of shredded paper into the garbage container and then put on the soils and tree leaves as illustrated below:

Standard garbage bin you can get from any hardware stores. Cost around Rm10.

After this, just water the container to make it moist as worms like cool wet conditions. The final process will be letting the worms go and monitor from time to time when the food seem to be dissappear and water the container if its too dry. The paper below will keep moisture and create a ideal condition for earthworms.

Look at the earthworms busy hiding from the sunlight as just managed to take a shot before its dissappearing act. More to update later as I will show the product of vermicomposting in my later post.

To be continue......................