EPA promoting vermicomposting
The EPA (USA’s Environmental Protection Agency) has a great starter page about worm composting, with links to some pretty good information sources:
Through this method, red worms—not nightcrawlers or field worms found in gardens— are placed in bins with organic matter in order to break it down into a high-value compost called castings. Worm bins are easy to construct (they are also commercially available) and can be adapted to accommodate the volume of food scraps generated.
It’s more of a ‘what is vermicomposting’ than it is ‘how do I start’, but I love the fact that the US federal government (as well as some local governments) promotes vermicomposting.
Add comment July 8, 2009
Durango Compost Company
Via the Durango Telegraph, I found this story about the Durango Compost Co, which details the genesis and progress of the Durango Compost Co, founded by Jennifer Craig. This company is built around vermicomposting:
[Durango Composting Company] offers three main services: household composters and worms; public education; and commercial use and consulting. The Composting Co.’s most visible presence is at the Farmers Market, where Craig sells 35-gallon buckets of compost for $35; “compost tea,” a compost-steeped liquid used as fertilizer and to prevent plant disease; and the “Can-O-Worms” home worm composters. In addition, Craig also gives presentations at local schools and works with businesses, such as Ska Brewing and Cyprus Café, interested in worm composting.
The key to the company’s founding was the partnership with a coffee shop: “[Durango Coffee Company owner Tim Wheeler] would pay Craig to take his grounds off his hands. In exchange, he would get a cut of the profits from the final garden-ready product.”
I love to see business models around vermicomposting operations, as I believe they’re key to making the process really sustainable in the long term. I found no website for the Durango Compost Company and I was unable to find a telephone number, but the contact info for the coffee company is here.
Add comment July 2, 2009
A Visit to John Anderson’s Worm Farm
When I was up in Fort Collins for the Rocky Mountain Compost School, some classmates and I were able to get a tour of the facility of John Anderson (aka, ‘The Worm Man’). I was able to snap a few photos, and you can see most of them below.
Here is a view of the entire Worm Man operation, including fridges, wormbulances, and windrows.
Windrow containing worms. Notice the carpet covering the windrow, and the bales of hay.
Carpet covers all Johns windrows, preventing light from entering and moisture and smells from leaving.
Protecting the windrows from freezing is key. John uses bales of hay to prevent the prevailing winds from stealing heat and moisture from the windrows.
Here is a better shot of a windrow with the carpet pulled back. John is using a pitchfork to move some of the bedding to better show the redworms.
On the right is a pile of bedding and worms, covered in carpet. I believe the left is an uncovered pile of bedding.
John uses fridges as a cheap, effective worm bin. They are almost water tight, insulate well, and hold a large number of worms.
Here are some happy happy worms in the bowels of one of the modified refrigerators.
Here is a fridge that John made early in his experimentation. You can see the plastic on the door was not removed, and it is starting to get squishy.
John hot composts a lot of his feedstock for the worms. He got these large square bins from an A/C company, and mounted them on an axis so he can rotate the compost.
Here you can see John rotating the tumbler, using rope and his truck. I wish I had gotten video!
John makes money selling castings as well as worms. He stores finished castings in these 55 gallon plastic drums.
This was a piece of old farm equipment that John had on his site. A classmate of mine is indicating how it could be used as a continuous flow harvester. You would scrape off the bottom of the worm bin periodicaly, getting most of the castings and few of the redworms.
John built a separator on an old gurney; here is his primary casting separation setup. Worms and castings and bedding are taken from the wheelbarrow and put into the upper end. The barrel is rotated and the worms and vermicompost fall to the lower end. Castings fall through the screen onto the tarp.
The back of the ever popular Wormbulance.
Add comment June 28, 2009
Red wigglers to the rescue
Boulder Organic, a new publication from the folks at the Boulder Weekly, have a new article about red worm composting, John Anderson, and rescuing a bad compost operation. John is his characteristic, no b.s. self:
“Our prime directive in this culture is to make more food to make more people to sell more shit to,” he says. “The system has to stop designing waste. We design things with waste on purpose because of somebody’s back pocket.”
The article also discusses other important aspects of home wormkeeping, including how to feed and harvest red wigglers, and provides a list of things that can be vermicomposted (one which is slightly different than the one I’ve provided).
Add comment June 22, 2009
‘Boulder Worms’ Newsletter Archive Available
I publish a monthly newsletter called ‘Boulder Worms’. Feel free to subscribe–I’ll never send you spam. I have made my previous newsletters available on this site. I cover a wide range of topics–excerpts of interviews, article commentary, tips and tricks I’ve discovered in my worm keeping–in my newsletter. Most of the content will be drawn from my blog, but often I’ll send the content to the newsletter list before I post to my blog. The content will just be more folksy, timely, and delivered right to your email.
I also switched my hostname from vermicomposting.wordpress.com to bouldervermicomposting.com. The content will remain the same, but the name more accurately reflects what I’m trying to achieve. I really do want to create a place where people from Colorado can find answers to their vermicomposting questions. That doesn’t mean that I won’t post the occasional article about earthworms in Minnesota, but I do want to be a local resource.
1 comment June 18, 2009
Interview: Oak leaves, getting started, prosyletizing, and aims for their bin
This is the final part of my interview with Linda and Mark, home worm keepers. Part 1 is here, and part 2 is here.
M: So, Dan, what’s your educated eye tell you about our worm box?
D: I think your worms are doing fantastic. I love the shredded newspapers bedding. I guess you guys have a regular office shredder you put your stuff through?
M: Yes.
D: Is [the box] insulated on the bottom?
M: No, there is no insulation on the bottom.
D: It was kind of a worry, right?
M: It’s a compromise, right? You have to have ventilation but at the same time I didn’t want it to turn into Swiss cheese having holes all around we wouldn’t have a prayer of keeping it warm other than moving it indoors. I think, with this setup, the way it sits right now, we should be good for about 8 months out of the year. In other words, November, December, January, February, and sometime in March, probably go back outside, because usually by March were done with the sub-zero.
L: And, I’m considering maybe putting bales of hay around it or moving onto plastic. If we don’t we need to get something to catch the worm juice that comes out of the bottom. It just goes down there now.
D: It didn’t stain your deck, or anything, it looks like.
M: Well it sat there from day one.
D: The only thing I would say is I would have the whole thing covered with bedding, I wouldn’t have any food on top. And when the leaves fall [you'll have a] source of like a ton of bedding. It might keep the smell down a little bit. I think that’s more of a difference of opinion, and like you said, if you guys aren’t bothered by this right now. I guess that’s kind of what the carpet serves.
L: In general, I think part of the smell is because by the time we get [the food scraps] out there [they are nasty]. We should rinse [the compost keeper] out.
M: Its fermenting.
D: Yea, well plenty of anaerobic activity happening, right?
L: In general, this box hasn’t really smelled anything other than earthy.
D: Even now it doesn’t smell. I mean it smells a little bit funky because you stirred it all up.
M: The nice thing about the carpet is that its [covering the smell].
L: And I usually do cover it. It’s just that they have eaten it down so much lately, they‘ve eaten it all away so now I need to start saving papers again
M: But fortunately, as Dan pointed out, fall is coming and we are getting a lot of leaves. There’s an Oak tree in the front yard…. Those leaves are bigger than my hand and there brown and so I could see us laying down a nice [layer] of oak leaves
L: Yea, that was my plan. Well actually I’ve read if you have the insulation in the winter you want it filled up to the top.
D: Oh, interesting. So there’s no dead space. No air.
L: I don’t know, it just said to fill the bedding. I just recently read that.
M: Well it is interesting because air is an excellent insulator if it’s still. That’s the trick – it you can keep it still it’s a wonderful insulator. If you can’t then maybe having something like an oak leaf, which I don’t know what the heat transfer coefficient is through an oak leaf. Probably less than moving air. So you can go ahead and do that. And I’m guessing the worms would probably love a few oak leaves
L: Well, they’ll love it but it takes forever, but its really hard to break down. I have given them oak leaves before. They do love them. They have access to maple leaves and then the apple leaves. We’ll probably mix them up
D: You said you wanted to experiment with this one. Are you going to have something in reserve? Would you just experiment in terms of just leave them out over the winter and see if they survive?
L: Well that was my plan and maybe start an additional bin. We haven’t decided if we are going to bring this one in or start a second one. How do yours work out?
D: They survived last winter just fine. Although maybe that’s why they aren’t as happy as yours is I take much less care of them than you guys do, I think. I don’t harvest them. I pull out casting compost when I want but I don’t do anything else to make an excellent environment for them. I haven’t really put in much bedding; I put in leaves but that’s about it.
M: So, we could probably slack off, a little bit, on our worm care taking duties and still have reasonable compost .
D: I think you could, yea. I think you guys right now are maximizing probably the amount of compost you’re going to get.
L: I really like the idea. I really want to have the maximum amount of compost because it does go quickly. There’s a big yard.
M: In addition to putting it in a garden, Linda went around our house and she gave our houseplants some samples. They seem to enjoy it.
L: So, yes at this point normally I would have a cover [layer of bedding in the bin]. Normally this would be covered with another layer.
D: Because I’ve read that some people throw all the food that there going to put in the worm bin in the freezer because it kills flies and after it defrosts easier for the worms to eat but you guys just throw it in there; and cover it up.
M: Cover it up; [the keeper has a] charcoal filter; cap and that’s it. Yea, there’s no freezing of it and this is the end result.
Food scraps bucket
L: Can you explain that again?
D: Now I haven’t done it myself but they say they have something like your gallon container in the freezer they just throw stuff in there; it freezes and kills any fruit flies or other kinds of bugs that might be in there.
L: That’s a great idea for the summer – fruit flies are a problem.
D: Yea, let me know how it goes. What have you found most of your knowledge from? Just experimenting or have you read books? Or, have you called John and asked some questions?
L: Not yet. I thought about it.
D: What books have you read that you found were useful?
L: I’ve just read our handout and then the “Worms eat my garbage.”
D: That’s the little book by Mary Applehoff?
L: Yeah. I just recently read that though. So I would say I read 2 handouts, the one from John and the other one from our class. And that’s how I got started. We used John’s handout as a guideline to build the bin. And I did do some searches; Google searches.
D: Overall it’s been a positive experience, it sounds like? You’re super happy with it?
L: Oh yea, super happy. I’d like to get my kid’s daycare to start doing a worm bin.
D: Yea, you think that’s a possibility?
L: I think it would be because they just recently started a compost for all of their paper. There was someone I spoke to about it; they were super excited. They are not presently working there anymore; they’re on leave. So, I need to bring it up again.
D: If I was interested in introducing worm composting into a club I’m a member of or anything like that, how are you going about doing that? Are you saying I will provide the worms; I will provide the expertise or are you saying you guys should do this or, I mean, how are you approaching that?
L: I haven’t approached it yet.
D: How are you thinking about approaching it?
L: I would probably provide the worms and expertise.
D: OK, and expect them to provide the box and maintain the box after you taught them.
L: Yea, I would be willing to check on it.
D: Sure, add one more worm box to check on, that’s cool.
L: Yea, I would babysit them for 6 months.
D: OK. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve put it here, do you think? Has it pretty much all been pretty standard stuff you get out of the grocery? Have you put in any cuttings from other plants around your garden or anything that sticks out in your mind; jeans like John did?
L: I did throw some jeans in, or cloth. I’m trying to remember. It was with the first batch. And, I think what I found is that it was whatever I threw away it must have been partially synthetic because it wasn’t eaten and I had to remove it. Maybe it was some kind of a bag. That was the weirdest thing I’ve put in so far. I considered putting in my daughter’s leather shoes.
D: Oh, that’s interesting.
L: It was just last night. I’m like “should we throw these in to the worm bin?”
D: Because she is done with the shoes.
L: There are some little holes in them.
D: Interesting, wow! You should; it would be interesting to see how long it would take. That is natural fibers, right. Bury it at the bottom and see how long it lasts. What advice you would give to anybody who is thinking about doing one of these? You guys did not start small; this is a very large bin. It was quite a bit of commitment. How much money was it to build this?
L: Scrap wood and then a $3 plank from Resource 2000.
D: So it wasn’t a ton of money.
L: We even had the insulation.
M: It was a half day of mine on my chop saw.
D: Still, this is not starting small. You are definitely jumping in with both feet; would you advise that for other people or do you think that based on your experience you might start with a smaller bin or a commercial bin?
L: Everyone that I have spoken to that has a small bin I think they feel somewhat limited; at least the folks that I have spoken with.
D: They are [saying] “I can’t put as much in there as I want; it smells”.
L: And “I can’t feed them all of our kitchen scraps”. So, my goal in this was to [compost all our waste] and I think this worm box will support it as soon as we get enough worms in here and I think it’s getting close. I would like to be able to put 100% of our scraps in here and have them consume it. That would be my goal. My recommendation is if you have the motivation and you have someone to build you a box I would say go big. I would call this a medium box; you call this a large box?
D: What’s the square footage of the surface, because that’s the thing that tells you how big it is, right? It’s not so much how deep it is.
M: The square footage of the box is … (measuring) … let’s say it’s 20” x 40”; that would be 800 square inches; … its about 5 square feet.
D: My understanding is that when I was building my first worm bin they said 8 inches is deep enough or 12 inches is deep enough. You can have it deeper, but I think once you get past 3 feet they don’t go down there; they don’t go down below a meter. But, to get back to your original question, I don’t know whether this is big or small. I haven’t seen a ton of worm bins; if it requires 2 people to move it, it seems like it moves more towards the bigger size. As you’ve said you have found that it doesn’t eat all of your kitchen waste for 3 people. Did you guys say you eat at home a lot?
L: We’ve been eating at home a lot over the last year.
D: Would you say that is 20 meals a week; is that 10 meals a week?
L: We’ve been going out maybe once a week
M: Once a week we go out for dinner. So, if you believe that you have 3 meals a day, which isn’t always the case, that will be 21 meals a week, we probably are good for 15 or 16 meals easy, at home
L: And we often skip one meal. We’ll eat breakfast & dinner or lunch & dinner. But [our daughter] eats; she’ll eat 3 meals a day. I think this box, from everything I’ve read, this box should be able to support all of our scraps. And then it’s just a matter of the worms doubling and doubling and I think we’re getting there. I think we have the most amount of worms that we’ve had.
M: I think there was a little bit of a set back when we actually harvested. They didn’t quite bounce back as much as we thought. But, looking today Dan, this is the best I’ve seen the worms in a while. Easily since end of August, when we came back from our trip on the east coast, because we had that worm compost in that blue cooler there for a long time because we were trying to separate. But, anyway I think they are bouncing back now and so we should be able to give them more food at this point.
L: I have a question, Dan. This one right here which is bigger than the other small ones, is that a baby worm?
D: On this right here? I don’t think so, I think that’s a different type of worm, because you can see those are mites. I bet you it’s a different kind of worm. Small worms I’ve seen look red.
L: OK, because he said in our class these could be white.
D: Well, John obviously has a lot more expertise than I do; the ones I’ve seen that were small were about that size but they had a pointy tip and were red.
L: We have a good variety of other things in here.
D: You have started with what Juliette and I each gave you a quart of vermicompost – not just worms.
L: I look at this and I see they’ve definitely multiplied several times. I guess this is a large box considering we probably started out with just a little tiny amount yea, and it was compost, it wasn’t pure worms.
M: It wasn’t just pure worms.
L: I’m guessing we probably started out with maybe a hundred worms?
D: It’s a thousand worms a pound, roughly. It depends on the size of the worms. So, yea, maybe a couple hundred worms.
L: Yea, that’s what I think. Maybe two hundred worms at the most. There were more worms in this stuff – in your compost than there were in Juliette’s.
D: Sweet!
L: I think she picked through them.
D: What’s the most [time] you guys actually have left the worms without doing anything?
L: I was gone for 3 weeks.
M: During the 3 weeks you were gone, I was gone one of those weeks myself, so nothing happened during that week.
L: These are pretty self containing.
D: Apart from what you said, putting some food in, changing the bedding once in a while, and making sure the initial setup is ok.
L: Occasionally I do add water.
D: Oh really, you watered them?
L: The first load that we did, the first box, I never really had to add water. I almost never added water. But, on this one we’ve had a few drier scraps. The cornhusks are on the drier side.
D: So the food content isn’t as wet.
L: So that’s were I’ve been adding a little bit of water. If the food content is wet then I find I don’t need to.
D: Have you guys experimented with worm tea at all; the compost tea?
L: I haven’t.
M: We pondered about it because it’s a challenge to collect it. I want to try to get some trays, like some old baking trays.
L: Well no, worm tea is when you take the compost out and you let it sit in a pot of water, and then you just use the water.
D: Actually, I did a little research on that because I was confused myself. The stuff that comes out of the worm bin is actually called ‘leachate’ which doesn’t really have any benefit.
L & M: Really!
D: This is what these books that I was reading say.
L: It seems like it would be the same.
D: If you take the castings and put it in water, that’s much more beneficial than the leachate.
L: The couple times I did water it pretty well and it started to pour out, I figured that was worm tea. So, the reason why I haven’t is because, since we have a medium size box it’s been just as easy to use the compost and I figured if you water it each time its going to run through the compost then the plants will end up with the same benefit or greater, so I haven’t done it just out of laziness. However, when I recently read that when you use the compost you can bring things into the house. Have you ever considered that?
D: Of course, makes sense. Because that compost is crawling with other critters, for sure.
L: The stuff I looked at seemed to be fairly inert. After reading that I might [reconsider doing it indoors].
D: This is right out of “Worms can eat my Garbage” but the other thing I’ve read is that you can cook [the castings] or have it in plastic.
L: It seems like that would kill things that you might want.
D: I guess cooking would kill the bacteria as opposed to being in water probably wouldn’t kill the bacteria.
Add comment June 9, 2009
Worms vs Bees
Via the_worm_bin, I found this article about the differences one gardener found between worms and bees. The post starts out provocatively enough: “When it comes to small livestock, I’d rather be a worm wrangler than a beekeeper any day.”
Note that you should read all the comments; there are some rebuttals to the idea that bees are tough to keep. I found it especially relevant, since one of my interviews was with someone who kept both worms and bees.
Add comment June 8, 2009
How many worms do you have?
I was asked by a friend for some worms. I have previously handed out vermicompost with worms in it to friends for free. I was considering trying to sell worms, but really had no idea how many I had.
To figure this, out, I filled a tray with vermicompost. Then I manually separated the worms from the compost, using sunlight and time. I ended up with a ball of squirmy worms.
I estimated the weight of the worms at 1.5 oz. Then I measured the cubic volume of vermicompost I had separated, which ended up being 120 cubic inches. This means that there was one ounce of worms for every 80 cubic inches.
I then measured the height and width of my worm bin. It is 24 inches by 24 inches. I then estimated how far I’d seen worms down in the bin. Redworms typically stay in the first meter (approximately 36 inches) of soil, but I had recently dug out some castings from the bottom and hadn’t seen any worms there. So I estimated the worms were in the upper 16 inches of the bin. Multiplying these together gave a volume of 9,216 cubic inches.
Dividing the number of populated cubic inches in the entire worm bin by 80 gave me the number of ounces of worms in the bin, and dividing that by 16 indicated that there were approximately 7 pounds of worms in my bin. Given I started with one pound two years ago, that is quite a return on investment (especially given that all the materials I’ve added to the bin were free).
Caveats: if I were serious about this, I would pull and harvest multiple samples, as that is the key calculation. The above assumes that worms were distributed throughout the bin in the same manner as they were in the sample.
But, hey, it was fun to figure out–I was surprised!
Add comment June 1, 2009
Interview: Experiments, banned egg shells, trash reduction, and compost benefits
Here’s the second part of my interview with Linda and Mark. The first part is here.
Linda: The last time everything smelled great by the time we harvested. Actually, most of the time we’ve had the worm box it smelled great, but this time we’ve really been feeding the worms a lot, although I think there starting to catch up. Actually they’ve eaten quite a bit. And on this side I’m doing an experiment.
Dan: On the new side.
L: I layered shredded newspaper with bark.
D: OK, I see some big chunks of bark.
L: There are big chunks and small chunks. I read that the chunks can often help provide oxygen and air space.
D: Oh, interesting…What kind of bark is that, just whatever you have laying around?
L: Yes, we heat with firewood a lot.
D: OK, gotcha.
L: So it’s usually leftover; actually we have a whole garbage pail full of it.
D: I see you are putting carpet across the top. Is that insulation and smell control? Or keeping the worms out of the light so you can open the box easier? What’s the point of the carpet?
L: Well, the point of the carpet was that ‘John-the-worm-man’ said that worms absolutely love carpet. And, I will totally agree, they love it. They will come all the way to surface and just hang-out on top when the carpet is there. And I think it helps keep the moisture in. I think it also helps keep the heat in and it’s like them being under a little rock.
D: Is it natural carpet or synthetic? They’re not going to eat it, right?
Mark: No, they’re not going to eat it.
L: That’s what he had recommended. We just happen to have that synthetic scrap of carpet.
M: And, last Saturday when we had the cool, rainy weather there, when I pulled that up there were worms actually on the back side of the carpet. They had actually come up to the top and they were everywhere, there was almost like a highway; more like a parking lot. It’s kind of interesting to see how the worm’s behavior would change with the weather, and that’s when I got the idea that I should put in the insulated top. I noticed our temperatures did much better.
D: What were they doing before the top was on?
M: Before the top was on it was within 2 or 3 degrees of ambient. With the insulation in there it was a solid ten degree difference, in fact this morning it was 57 and the outside air temperature it was 44. It does make quite a bit of difference if you can believe these little instruments that were using.
D: It’s not scientific precision, but it’s good enough for this kind of experiment.
L: And, definitely, letting it capture some heat during the day.
M: Yesterday, we hit in the 90’s in fact.
L: Just the air [in the bin].
M: I think the soil temperature – you need a soil thermometer, but you’ll find, at least now, it’s cooler, but of course at night time it gives it up, so to speak.
L: So, one thing that we haven’t done, and I wonder if we should do, is that they recommend that holes be drilled all along the edges.
D: On the sides of the edges or the bottom?
M: The bottom is drilled.
D: So, like midway or 2/3 of the way down the sides of the worm box?
L: We don’t have that now, and we can see the worms seem to be multiplying and pretty happy, but I know I’ve read that you should have more holes.
D: Just for oxygenation?
L: I do open it and stir it. I think those worms are doing well.
D: Yea, they look pretty fantastic
L: I can’t believe how much they’ve eaten on this side; this was solid newspaper.
D: Have you guys noticed your trash doesn’t go out as often? Has it affected your life other than to come and check out the cool worms?
M: Our daughter loves to come and say “see’em, see’em, see’em”, and show her friends. Prior to getting a worm box we were composting. Of course it is a little bit different with that kind of compost. Whereas the first load that that we got in the worm box we put it over there and within a week we noticed almost an immediate effect. Yea, a basil plant that wasn’t that great, it turned into a prize. And then the pile started to attract wildlife.
L: We saw a huge snake wrapped around the pile.
M: It was a 3’ garter snake just sitting in there. The pile is over here and in fact I just poked around in there and found a bunch of baby worms
D: Sure, cocoons that you moved have hatched.
M: Its been out here for about a month… probably a raccoon or something digging around for scraps. You can see when I dig down, there’s a lot of tiny worms, there just picking up scraps. The richness of the soil is what really impresses me, because to the layman’s eyes, someone would just look at this and maybe say oh you got some compost or you got some potting soil or something like that. This was food and newspaper, and now it is this incredibly lush rich looking soil, which looking at the basil and the eggplant it really likes the flavor.
Basil plant near vermicompost
D: So how is that different from the compost that you guys have done in the past, in terms of speed, in terms of quality?
M: I’d say that speed is one. it’s just amazing just how quickly it actually turns it into something that you can use, as opposed to the compost that we did in the past we would say compost for a season, say in the spring, and then the following spring we would take that, depending on how it was broken down, we would move the highest quality portion of it over to our garden.
L: Seems like it would take a year. And now we get the stuff in 3 months
M: And there’s something different about it. I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s different that the compost.
D: I sent in a sample of worm castings to a soil lab and got a bunch of numbers back and it would be very interesting to look and see what compost has for potassium, for all the vital elements that plants need.
M: It would be really fascinating because the results, I mean, this compost ‘rocks’. It’s much better than what we’ve been using before. And, the speed, again, at which the worms work are very impressive and their robust, I mean, the temperature drops down to 40 degrees, its chilly, and how much activity you can see today, they are a happy bunch in there.
D: Sure, they are bouncing back.
M: I kind of wonder what’s going to happen to [the worms outside of the bin] if there just going to burrow in the soil, or is this the end?
L: I think this is the end.
D: My understanding is that the type of worms, the red wigglers, need a lot of organic matter, so if your not providing that for them, maybe if you got straw and whatnot.
M: It was actually pretty neat because when we divided up the bin we actually moved this to one side and we didn’t feed it any more at that time and we just fed the new side. It was amazing. There was always a few stragglers left, and we just tossed them over there [to the new side]. For the most part they all sensed it, or smelled it, or whatever. They bee-lined it to the food. What was left were these little tiny cocoons.
L: I did leave it like that for 2 months, though.
D: 2 months is a long time.
L: And part of it was, I just happened to be gone. I thought about doing it before I left and I just said I will just give it some extra time.
Worm closeup
D: Now, when you moved it to the one side, one of my concerns would be that the side you’re putting food in would get over fed. Is that kind of what happened?
L: No, it didn’t happen. I’m not really sure why. I think there were enough worms to consume what we were putting in.
D: I guess you have a certain amount of worms, roughly, in a smaller space?
L: Yea and I think they are multiplying more now. It has taken awhile.
D: Mark, you said you were surprised by the fertility. Were there any other surprises you guys have had in terms of what works?
L: It’s been fun
M: [Our daughter] likes it. Its one of those things we like to encourage with her, because she’s getting to see the workings of the earth. And she‘s ecstatic, even more so than Linda and myself. After the worm box was built, Linda was looking at it almost everyday.
D: I certainly did that with my first worm box.
M: But, I think now we’re down to 3 times a week. We worry about the worms sometimes, like when it gets cold. I went out and bought another temperature transmitter because you put all this attention to them it would be a shame for them to perish.
D: Are you planning to do anything with harvesting the excess worms like giving them to friends.
L: The surprise that I have had is just about every one I have asked has back out.
D: Taking worms from you for free, essentially?
L: Yes, they got scared.
D: Have you asked them what they were scared of?
L: I think it sounded good to begin with, but when reality set in they just weren’t interested. One friend decided they now have the City of Boulder composting, so they preferred to do that. Other people are a little worried that it’s going to take too much work, although I don’t believe it takes work. And I think Sharon and Dave, some friends that were just here, I would suspect that they will do it next year.
I guess the other surprise is I thought that the worms would have multiplied enough by now to eat all of our excess food. It seems like a lot of the worm advertisements show that worms eat about 7 pounds a week.
D: A pound of worms can eat between a half-a-pound to a pound a day
L: So I don’t know how many worms we have but I’m guessing were feeding this about 7 lbs a week and maybe they are eating it.
M: Here you go Dan, just a quick survey [of the contents of the worm bin].
D: Ok, I see some onions, I see bananas, I see, looks like turnip tops. Is that pineapple?
M: That’s spaghetti squash. We usually save the best for the worms. Maybe just a little bit of caffeine in the form of used coffee grounds, just to keep the guys motivated. Eggshells… we were actually banning eggshells, but now we are starting to put them back in.
D: Why would you ban them?
M: We were banning them because we weren’t consistent in our delivery. We were sometimes throwing in whole shells; other times we were breaking them up, and it was like ‘well were going to put all those items in with the other compost.’
D: Oh, so you’re still maintaining the compost [pile]?
L: It’s not a proper compost pile. [Looking in the box] I dug down in here the other day and I hadn’t dug down in a long time and I actually felt kind of bad digging down.
D: Cutting [the worms] in half or something?
M: Can you really kill a worm that way?
L: Yes
D: Yeah.
L: I think they are starting to multiply enough. You know if we have another decent month of weather I think we will have enough to eat all our food. We are not really putting that much in there now in the last few weeks.
M: We have been averaging one complete kitchen composter a week for the compost. It’s a one gallon stainless steel container. We make donations about twice a week.
D: Then in the winter time you’re just checking on the worms?
M: Yes, that’s the worm check-in schedule.
L: I don’t usually stir them up. Look at that!
D: Wow, what a mass!
M: I kind of like it because Linda is grossed out and amazed at the same time. They seem to be a happy bunch. The corn husks are pretty tough for them.
L: The ones that are buried, they love that stringy stuff…
D: What’s that called?
M: The hair, almost.
L: Wow, they moved over here
M: Never a dull moment when you’re poking around the worm box.
D: What other things; eggshells you mentioned they like and the cornhusks. Any other foods that they are huge fans of? Looks like the inside of that squash. That’s fresh.
L: That’s very fresh.
Add comment May 22, 2009
Article about worm composting in the Colorado Springs Gazette
Sometimes I’m a bit focused on the north front range region of Colorado (Boulder, Fort Collins, etc), because that’s what I’m familiar with (this blog is called ‘Vermiculture and Vermicomposting in Boulder’, after all). So when I see something from another part of the state, I try to highlight it.
Brad Boe, the man behind Colorado Earthworms, was recently featured in the Colorado Springs Gazette. I found out about this via his twitter stream. Lots of good tidbits of information there, including this about his worm bin (note that Brad sells worm bins, as well as worms–more sources listed on my ‘Looking for worms’ page if you want to comparison shop):
Boe keeps his bin in the pantry, and said a worm bin will smell only if something is wrong. If more waste is added to the bins than the worms can eat, then the trash will rot. But if that happens, set it outside or in the garage for a few days. The worms will catch up and any stench will be replaced by the smell of dirt.
Maintenance is fairly simple. Boe said once the bins are set up and things balanced, just add waste once or twice a week to keep the worms busy. Even a break of up to a month won’t starve the worms.
The whole article about redworm composting is worth a read.
Add comment May 20, 2009
