From Trash to Treasure

I have been thinking about how I can get more boxes/bins for my worms. They double in population about every month! If you leave them in the same container and keep feeding them some will eventually die off, but you can keep them in that same area for a long time. Since I've been collecting the castings and adding them to the garden (and making compost tea as a fertilizer) I've been wanting a way to be able to collect even more. I've been keeping my eyes out for bins on the side of the road (Isn't it amazing what people throw away?) since I knew I didn't want to buy any new materials for this project.

A few weeks ago, while driving to a friend's house, I spotted this big blue bin. When I stopped to take a closer look I noticed it smelled terrible--like someone was using for a garbage bin and instead of dumping the garbage out, they decided to dump the whole bin. (can you imagine how long it would take something like this to decompose in a landfill?) I almost just left it there. But I got my guts up and used a plastic bag to pick it up, dump it and put it in the back of my car. It barely fit! When I got home I hosed it off really good and cleaned it out. Since it was going to be for my worms it didn't need to be that clean, right:) I drilled air holes, loaded it with bedding (soil and moist newsprint and cardboard) and added the worms. After that I thought that it was looking a little faded and sad so I asked the girls to come out and help me make it pretty. It's so much nicer to feed the worms and collect their poo when I have the girls beautiful artwork to look at!

I didn't get a picture of the bin before cleaning, but here it is right after I loaded it with the bedding.

The girls first primed it with some leftover kilz then painted it with some acrylics.
Here are my newest 2 bins. All together I have 3 bins that I keep in the carport. Notice the new bin is bigger and has wheels. I saw a new one at Lowe's the other day priced at $16.99! Maybe others wouldn't consider this trash turned into treasure, but when you consider what a bag of worm castings or bottle of compost tea costs, plus the cost of the bin--this is surely a treasure to any gardener!