Human Hair Composting, part 3
May 15th, 2009
Worms in hair bin
It has been a while since I posted about my hair composting experiment (you can follow all the fun here). I have made some changes. I moved the bin outside, since there was no danger of freezing (and since my fiancee was not a fan of the previous location). I added some more worms. And I also have mixed in some more bedding.
More than anything, this experiment proves to me how hardy worms are. Consider the environment:
- a plastic bin so wet that when I take the top off, it drips on the ground
- no feedstock except human hair in clumps
- bedding in chunks I ripped up, and not evenly distributed
- no care except a look see every month or two, and the occasional additional bedding added
As you can see in the above picture, they are still alive; there are at least two worms in that picture, and as I dug in the bedding I added today, I saw others as well. The worms in this bin are definitely not thriving like those in my main bin, but they were never expected to.
This experiment was all about how easily I could turn a plentiful unconventional feedstock like human hair into a valuable product–castings and more worms–with a minimum of effort and space.
Given that it has been almost a year (I started in June of last year), I’d say the verdict is pretty grim. The worms are trying their hardest, and surviving, but it’s slow going.
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3 Comments Add your own
1. End of The Human Hair Com&hellip | March 2nd, 2010 at 10:09 am
[...] checked in on my human hair + paper towels + negligence worm bin. Here’s part 1, part 2 and part 3. To review, I wanted to see if worms could survive and/or thrive on a diet of just human hair [...]
2. raul | July 15th, 2010 at 2:23 pm
This is a cool experiment. I want to try it myself.
Where did you get the worm? in your garden?
I wonder what happens to the un-decomposted hair if you add more worms.
Raul
3. vermicomposting | July 24th, 2010 at 8:18 pm
Hi Raul,
I used redworms, which I bought from a redworm provider.
I think that more worms wouldn’t help–I think that hair just takes a long time to break down, and that mixing it with a number of other feedstocks would be a better approach.
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