gardenweed_z6a: Yeah tomato plants love worm castings! I used them last year. I had no trouble with the blight I heard so much about. Of course I raise my own seedlings.. they are mighty with the worm casts! :) Nested 5 gallon buckets are super easy to use as worm bins. I forgot to put the lid on for a couple days on them and no worms tried to escape. They don't like light, so they dig down. No worries on that! I have not tried setting the buckets to meet so the worms crawl up, but that's a great idea if we can figure out a way to allow drainage and contact to the bucket above. Maybe a tall dual open-sided cake pan to create an inner worm compound and allow air space around the side of the bucket for so the center of the bucket will be more like a core of worm composts and the worms work their way up to the top into the top bucket. Maybe a 3 bucket setup is what we need so the bottom-most bucket is the be-all-end-all to collect the drippings. Now I am really interested in trying this. It's a bit of a chore to separate the worms from the casts, so if we can figure out how to do this same thing "on the cheap" (it's already cheap if you get free 5 gallon buckets) this will be even better. I recently emptied one of my bucket bins. Here's some photos: From 022810 One bucket after 1 year of constant feeding of primarily banana peels yielded 14 cups of casts! I have not harvested from the other bucket bin, but it is easily another 14 cups of castings! From 022810

A big thank you to EVERYONE! I really do appreciate the time and thought you invested in responding. My husband dug a hole this evening and installed one of those dog waste management systems: basically a 36" deep hole that perks with a box and a lid on top. The plan, as it stands right now, is to do what is described above: harvest the old bedding, put it in the bottom of the hole, wash the worm bin, rinse the worms with water from our rain barrel, put the worms into the clean bin with fresh bedding and with non-meat/non-fat/non-dairy kitchen waste that we've been accumulating. I figure we can use that mature worm bedding in place of the enzyme tablets that came with the waste management system, at least as a start. We'll see how that works out. I think I am going to try to compost the cat poop in the worm bedding in the 36" hole in the interim before Puppy comes home. That way we'll have a trial run. We'll either know we have a problem before Puppy gets here, and we'll know that we need to punt and try something else, or we'll have a good system up and running when he arrives. I figure that one of three things will happen: 1. This will work well as a compost bin for cat and dog poop. As the hole gradually fills with digested waste we'll harvest it for use in our ornamental perennial bed. Value added, the waste management system is actually buried in one of those beds. 2. This will not work well as a compost system. If the hole fills too fast we'll switch to using lots of water, the enzymes as needed, and let it work as a septic field. The hole appears to perk well. It's not near our water supply nor any edible plants. 3. This won't work at all and we'll have to punt and do something else. At any rate we have a deep hole into which to deposit the "contaminated" worm bedding- so that much is working out well! I also have an email in to Kelly Slocum to ask whether or not I've missed anything here. I wonder if 3 feet down will yield a stable enough temperature to keep the compost cool enough in the summer, warm enough in the winter? Per the instructions, my husband didn't dig the hole very wide in diameter. As hot and as dry as it's been, I'm surprised he was able to get the hole dug by hand (with a manual post hole digger) at all. I suppose the hole is wide enough for a little worm bedding and some cat poop. We'll see how it goes! Again, thank you one and all for your help!

You could glue wrapping paper (or scrapbook paper) to the big ones, using watered down white glue like elmers, or mod podge. maybe one paper on the outside and a contrasting on the inside. Or fabric might be nicer. Again you can use white glue or modpodge on fabric too. I'm not sure how to hang them on the wall. Could you stack them and hold them together with nuts and bolts? Offset, that is allowing the second row to go slightly between the first maybe? The smaller ones, I'm not sure. They may be strong enough to use as occassional table legs. Or legs for cardboard stools. You could google cardboard furniture for ideas. If you cut them down to say 6 inches you could tie a group of them together and use for storage of markers and paint brushes. Hmm. Be sure to let us know what you do. And post pics if you can. Kathy I'd like to think they have some use!

Sleevendog-- Thanks for the caution. I didn't mean to say I use only the thin bags in the freezer EXCEPT for the catfood which is kept for only a month and individual servings are wrapped tightly in plastic and then placed in a large bag. So far the catfood shows no sign of freezer burn since there is very little air in each small pack. I can easily repack into a ziplock freezer bag instead of the large produce bag if there is a problem. Just thought I'd try this and see. I also I didn't mean to say I don't wash the vacuum bags and ziplock freezer bags, which are the only ones I would ever reuse. When I empty them, there is sometimes a slight odor in them (a sign of some retained material, although slight), but I have yet to see any visible staining. I do ALWAYS wash vacuum bags and ziplock freezer bags with soapy water and a hot rinse after emptying them. I don't reuse any that show staining or retain an odor. It is just SO much easier to wash the expensive bags if they have been protected by an inner bag. I very seldom have to throw away a vacuum bag any more unless it is not the ziplock kind and has grown too small to use. Love the vacuum bags with a zipper for access and a "port" for sealing. Don't mind that they cost 80 cents or so if I can reuse them several times, and they are so easy to open, remove an item that is individually wrapped, and revacuum seal the remaining. You might consider them for your fish catches. No need to sacrifice that precious inch or after every opening. I don't know how often they can be resealed. So far, some have been resealed five or six times and are still holding fine in the freezer. I just packed 3 qts of turkey and chicken stock. First froze it about 1" deep in 8"pans, broke it into quarters, packed them in the penny fold-top sandwich bags, and then stored them all in two large vacuum ziplock bags. Easy to remove a single cup-sized block and re-vacuum-seal. So much more space efficient and accessible than freezing liquids in 1 qt plastic containers, which I used to do. Much better than pouring the liquid straight into a vacuum bag, which I also have done in the past. Again, a GW idea for which I am grateful. I am sure the idea of using protective inner bags is widespread. But it never got into my thick head until dcarch posted it. And, by the way, wish I had access to an occasional catch of fresh fish. My brother fishes summers on the Pacific, out for several days at a time, and my father was an avid recreational fly fisherman. Many, many great means from those two! This post was edited by Bellsmom on Mon, Dec 9, 13 at 19:03