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Hands on nature experience
BY MCKAYLA BOELTER
STATESMAN STAFF WRITER
ISSUE: 78/28
TYLER SWEENEY / STATESMAN
Kelenna Onymere looks at worms from the
compost bin in the UMD Children’s Place last
Thursday.
The wriggling, string-like bodies of worms dip in and out of the soil as excited eyes follow their moves about the compost bin. This marks the first year that UMD has a vermiposting bin on campus. According to “Leverme’s Handbook of Indoor Worm Composting,” vermiposting is the scientific term for the homely art of harnessing the power of earthworms to increase the speed, ease and efficiency of composting.
With the help of the UMD biology club and the Children’s Place, UMD’s Office of Civic Engagement announced at the Children’s Place open house that a worm bin would be placed at the Children’s Place in order to promote environmental awareness and youth education. “We need to be educating children,” said Jonathan Tupper, member of the Office of Civic Engagement and the instigator of the project.
On Thursday, the Children’s Place introduced the new composting bin on campus. The 100 gallon gray bin filled with leaves, compost bedding and close to 8,000 worms has been the talk of toddlers and preschoolers for a couple of weeks. When asked what he thought the worms might eat, one child said, “Scraps of paper. I like eating scraps of paper. I like eating garbage.”
Each speaker at the open house talked about the importance of teaching children where their food goes and environmentalism in general. “It will be children-oriented,” said Jen Johnson, director of Children’s Place. Johnson pointed out that, for the most part, the children would be doing the feeding of the worms with little help from staff. The children will feed the worms their leftover scraps of fruits and vegetables about once a week and will get hands-on and visual experiences with the worms. “Children must know where their food comes from,” said international student Dorothy Tsikata, a member of the planning committee who helped bring about the vermiposting project.
As for what the Children’s Place will do with the compost made by the worms, Johnson said that they will use the compost and the juice gathered from the compost process to naturally fertilize their crop of sunflowers and pumpkins this year.
