Capitol School

Hi All,

So...We are the group working on the Capitol Scool garden project. We originally decided that we were going to try and compost at the school site. What a great idea you might say! We thought so too. We figured that we could get the students to use the leftovers from their meals and add with some grass clippings and leaves and make a wonderful compost pile that would be interactive for the kids and also teach them that their waste can be used to make some pretty awesome organic ammendments for the soil. Well...this couldn't happen. Once we thought it through, it would be extra work for teachers to have to deal with for many reasons: (1) making sure the kids put the right ammendments in the pile (2)making sure the pile stays the right temperature and gets turned (3) making sure it is put into the soil and worked in. Granted, we would do all these things for this semester, but this project should be a gift we give to them. So if we leave them with soo much work, it totally negates the thought of giving them something. After these revelations, we decided we would do some vermicomposting (composting with worms). Camille decided she would do this at her place of living ( a dorm I think) and she ordered about 1,000 red wriggler worms from Uncle Jim's worms. Her idea is to make a worm hotel. The picture here shows a plastic chest of drawers like she is going to be using. She is going to drill holes in the bottoms of each drawer so that the worms can move up and down in the drawers and so that the "compost tea" (essentially the water that goes through the whole compost from top to bottom and collects the nutrients as it goes through and then can be used as a yummy "tea" to be poured over the crops) can make its way through. These drawers were free to her from a friend. Under the drawers, will go a rectangular collection pan so that stuff doesn't leak onto floor and so anything that comes out is caught. This whole "hotel" will be placed in the closet so it is in a dark place. So far, there has been shredded paper (found in a bag outside of a school building) added to the compost, along with : coffee grounds and filters, used tea bags, banana peels, veggie scraps, dead plants and flowers, and some organic mix topsoil. We hope that this operation will be fun and healthy for our worms and our garden. The only things we are worried about with this type of composting is that our worms could somehow die, but theis isn't going to happen because we feed them very well!! The positives are that this can be done in the apartment and it is fairly hands off once the hotel is started. The only thing we have to do is put some scraps in there and emptythe bins when there is enough worm castings (worm poop). I hope this has been thorough enough for everyone to understand...If you have any questions, SPEAK UP and ask!! We are happy to elaborate!!