Archive for October, 2008
A few weekends ago, I gave a few quarts of worms to classmates that had asked for them. Since I have plenty of worms in the bin, I was happy to hand them out. I didn’t bother separating the worms from vermicompost, I just dug around in the bin and found a bunch of worms chowing down. I took a couple of clusters and tossed them in yogurt quart plastic containers for easy transport.
One of my classmates was a bit surprised–I think he thought I would take longer to get him the worms. He asked me a question that put me back on my heels for a second: “What do you do with all the worms? What about the castings they produce?”
As far as I am concerned, there are four outputs of worms for the home worm keeper (as opposed to an industrial worm farmer):
- more worms
- vermicompost (the intermediate product of worm digestion)
- worm castings (the end product of worm digestion)
- garbage reduction
Each output has good properties, but it may be hard to achieve all of these outputs at the same time. For example, when I want to make worm castings, an easy way to do so is to put extra worms into a small bin with some food and wait. The worms all die, but I’ll have pure castings in the end. Worms may reproduce better when fed special worm food, which limits the garbage reduction, and they’ll certainly reproduce more if you replace bedding more often (not too often, but as the bedding turns into castings, the worms have to exert more effort finding food, and thus less making new worms). Vermicompost and worm castings are somewhat exclusive, since vermicompost eventually turns into worm castings.
Luckily, you can have more than one worm bin, and each can be set up to produce one or more of the outputs. However, I think it helps every worm keeper should think about what they want to optimize, as that affects box location, required amount of work, and size of box.
My worm experience has been focused on reducing my garbage production. That’s why I originally started keeping worms, and easily reducing organic waste has been what keeps me excited about worms. (That’s not to say that I don’t use the other outputs: I’ve put worm castings as top dressing on plants, gave worms to other people (obviously), and put vermicompost under transplants. But for me, the magic of worms is their ability to take smelly waste and turn it into dirt.
October 24th, 2008
Check out this article about worms, found at old mining sites, that eat heavy metals such as zinc and iron:
“These worms seem to be able to tolerate incredibly high concentrations of heavy metals, and the metals seem to be driving their evolution,” said lead researcher Mark Hodson of the University of Reading in England.
Via the_worm_bin.
October 17th, 2008
One of the great resources I’ve found on the internet for wormkeeping is a Yahoo! Groups mailing list. I looked around, and it was clear that the_worm_bin was the most active (95 messages in September 2008) and had the most members of any mailing list I could find (920). the_worm_bin also has a searchable archive of almost 10,000 messages (available to everyone).
There are also links and useful files, but I think the real value is in the conversations going on. Some recent subjects of discussion include “air travel with worms”, “harvesting methods” and “bin sizes”. I recently asked whether it was alright to put meat in a worm bin and received a number of responses. (The answer, in case you’re wondering is, ‘yes, as long as you make sure the scraps are covered, watch out for wild animals, and don’t overload the bin’.)
Membership is free, but must be approved by a moderator. So, if you are having a worm emergency, you’ll have to wait to post until the moderator approves you.
I joined the group recently and found it to be relatively low traffic and high in information. One of the great things about being a wormkeeper is that it is so easy to experiment, and this group makes it easy to share that, and benefit from other’s experience. (If you join and have a question to ask, please make sure you ask that question the smart way.)
October 14th, 2008
In mid June, I decided to experiment and see if I could create worm castings, a valuable product, out of human hair and used paper towels. The hair came from my barber shop, and the used paper towels were from my office. For my bin, I bought a 10 gallon rubber maid bin, drilled holes in the top and bottom. I wetted down the towels, tossed the hair in and dragged towels over it. I also added some melon rind, to give the worms some good food to start with.
Finally, I separated out enough worms to fill half a quart container. Here was my separating setup:
Setup for separating worms from their bedding.
It took about 45 minutes to separate the worms in the picture above. For reference, the trowel in the picture is 11 inches long.
Since I was using excess worms from my bin, my plan is to let the worms eat the hair and turn the entire bedding to castings, and perish. My investment in time and money was minimal, and both bedding and feedstock were free. If the worms turn the materials into castings, this setup could scale quite quickly. This is a summer only option for me, since these bins are water tight, but won’t keep the worms insulated in the winter.
I check on the worms periodically. As of early September, the worms are still going strong. The environment is a bit soggy, which I dealt with by leaving the bin lid ajar, and there’s still plenty of hair and paper towels. The melon rinds have almost fully decomposed, and the worms are spread throughout the bin.
As of late September, the worms are still doing their work, slowly. The hair is there clearly, but the worms are present in it. I’ve added some more wet newspaper and towels to the mix. The bottom is kinda wet, but the whole bin smells fine.
I will update as the decomposition progresses. When the weather turns cold, I may have to dump everything into the compost bin or bring it inside.
October 4th, 2008
