Hi friends! I uploaded another video on indoor composting (linked above) and here is the post version for those who prefer to read. 🙂

I used to have a worm bin in Singapore and finally got one again after living in London for 2 years. The idea of having a worm bin in your flat might sound crazy initially (to me as well) but now I am just totally in love with them!

Special call out – the worm bin I bought won the red dot design winner in 2017, which is quite unexpected! Link here: http://red-dot.org/project/the-urbalive-worm-farm-9558

What do I like about worm bins?

Worm bin is my favourite way to reduce bio-waste at home, including vegetable, fruit peel, coffee ground, tea bags, paper carton packaging, napkin etc. As a result, they produce worm castings, which is a great fertiliser and soil mix for your plants at home. So it also saves me money from buying compost for my plants. Also, I think it’s just a beautiful little thing to have at home to see how nature works.

How do worm bins work?

Generally worm bins are stackable worm bins. Taking mine as an example, there are two trays. I got mine a month and a half ago, so all the worms as well as food waste are still on the bottom tray. Every day when I cook, I just put some of my food waste in the bottom tray. Once it is full, I will then start to place food in the top tray, and the worms will eat their way up basically. After which, I can then take out the bottom tray and harvest the compost, clean it and place it on top again – that’s the idea of a stackable worm farm. You can just repeat a cycle over and over again, like an infinite loop.

At the same time, they also create something called worm tea, which is basically the liquid that’s produced from the whole process. It will be stored in this bottom of the bin, and there’s a tap at the bottom, so I can use it to take out the liquid when I want to.
Worm tea is also a great fertiliser for my plants. Sometimes I just dilute it and put it in my water-based plants.

Do worm bins smell?

One important question that my friends ask me is “does this smell”? The answer is no. You shouldn’t have any odour unless the food is getting mouldy and that means you’re giving them too much food. They actually smell really good to be honest (after my testing) – it smells like a park after the rain, like the fresh grass and soil. So yes there’s no smell and if anything, it’s going to make your house smell like a park. Very refreshing!

How to take care of them?

They’re pretty easy to take care of as long as it’s not too dry. I was away for a week last month and that’s still fine when I came back. I guess if you are really worried, you can just put some dampen napkin in your tray to make sure there’s enough moist. Temperature wise it might be a bit too cold if you leave them outside in the winter in London but I don’t have a balcony anyway. They can’t eat garlic, onion, animal product, and fat. They also self-regulate the population based on how much food they have so I think that’s really easy.

Compared to other popular indoor compost methods such as bokashi composting
I think worm bin is really the easiest. I tried bokashi composting a few years ago as well. You need to regularly purchase and refill the enzyme. That’s some additional cost. You also kind of need to have two bins because while you’re waiting for one bin to compost and do the process, you can only use the other bin. And that’s double the space, but for worm bin I just need one.

Conclusion

That’s pretty much it! It’s a really simple thing to have at home but can have a big impact on the waste you produce, and also the money you spend on fertilisers. Hope you enjoyed the post/or my video and let me know if you have any questions!