Boulder Vermicomposting

How to feed an existing worm bin?

I’m helping a local community garden with their worm bin.  They use it primarily for educational purposes, mostly for children.  Boulder Compost set up the bin a few years back.

I wrote up this how to feed one page pamphlet for them.  I think it’s useful for anyone who inherits a working worm bin, so I’m sharing it here.

Add comment August 28th, 2009

A visit with the Worm Ladies of Charlestown

While on vacation in June, I had a chance to visit one of the Worm Ladies of Charlestown.  Lois was kind enough to show me and my fiancee’s family around.

Worm Ladies of Charlestown Logo

She has an integrated operation–growing rabbits and red wrigglers.  The rabbits Lois raises are sold for pets (her partner raises angoras and sells the hair, hence the domain name).  The redworms are sold by the pound, or in kits.  They also produce castings for sale to gardeners.  She mentioned that they have an industrial worm separator (purchased used from a fellow who used to sell castings), at her partner’s place, so I didn’t get to see the castings separation process.

Worm bin underneath rabbith hutch

Above is a rabbit hutch with a worm bin (the blue plastic bin).  Hay placed in the hutch for food and rabbit bedding falls into the worm bin, as does the rabbit poop and pee (I also noticed other vegetable and leafy matter, so there may be auxiliary feeding).  The redworms convert that waste product into more worms and castings–what great synergy!

However, it is not a totally sustainable operation–the ladies have found the best redworm bedding is coir from Sri Lanka (there are husks available from Mexico, but these are laced with salt).  Lois said they switched from peat moss to coir for bedding because “it is much easier to hydrate.  [It] is not as acidic as peat, [and is] easy to ship in a kit because of it being in block form.”

Coir that the Worm Ladies use

Lois said she used to keep the worms in cinder block squares under the rabbit hutches, but has converted to the rubbermaid bins because it is easier to bring them inside during the harsh winters.  She has a workspace where she keeps the worms during the winter, and does other various Worm Lady activities.

Winter worm storage and workspace

In addition to the bins underneath the rabbits, Lois also has standard compost bins, like mine, that she uses for extra worm habitat.  You can see her in front of these bins–she had about four that I could see.

In front of compost bins (extra worm habitat)

She also vermicomposted chicken manure, like Forest did in Hawaii, and mentioned that neither the rabbit manure nor the chicken poop smelled after the worms had been at it for 24 hours.

Lois also mentioned doing a lot of outreach–talking to home school groups and elementary school kids, and educating people in how worms can turn garbage into gardening gold.  She certainly did a fine job of showing us around her operation.

As far as the business end of the wormkeeping goes, Lois had no complaints.  The worm ladies incorporated in 2009, but have had tremendous demand for years (since 2003, when a newspaper interview sent her and her partner “reeling into business”), for both castings and worms.  She has done some exploring of other business models (eco tourism, bed and breakfast) but after looking at the numbers decided to focus on worms.

The Worm Ladies have sold redworms as far afield as Canada and Alaska (they had a request from Jamaica, but weren’t sure what import/export hurdles were present).  She guestimated they sell about 600 pounds of redworms a year.  They have a buyback program started, where they will pay you $5/lb for unseparated worms and $8/lb for separated worms–which sounds like a good intro into the vermiculture business.  (If this piques your interest, I’d contact them for more details.)

Inside a small kit

In addition to selling castings and worms by the pound, the worm ladies sell two different sizes of kits.  In the kit, they have created habitat in a plastic bin suited for redworms–just moist enough, aerated holes predrilled, and with just enough bedding.  They sell you the bin, instructions and an appropriate weight of worms, and you can use the bin to ‘test drive’ worm keeping with little fear of failure.  (She also mentioned wormkits.com.)

Larger Redworm Kits

(I’m doing the same thing with a shiitake mushroom kit).  This is an exciting product to me because it lowers the barrier to entry for worm keeping–instead of having to spend around $100 for a full worm composting system, you can use one of these kits to see if you enjoy it.

Outside of smaller worm kits

All in all, it was a pleasure to get a chance to meet someone who loved worms as much as Lois obviously does (she signed an email to me ‘Wormly, Lois’!).  Reforming the waste stream that is currently in place is not going to be easy, but education and business ventures like the Worm Ladies of Charlestown are part of the effort.

2 comments August 17th, 2009

One year on

This is the one year anniversary of Boulder Vermicomposting!  My first post, “How I got started with worms” was published one year ago today.

In between then and now, there have been over 60 posts, ranging from short to long, picture heavy to text only. If you look on the right hand side of the blog, under ‘Archives’, you can see every month I’ve published something.  My commitment to myself was to publish something at least every 10 days, and I believe I’ve kept to that.

And that’s not all.  I’ve learned tons about keeping redworms in the course of this blog.  I created an Amazon store focused on redworm stuff (that I’m slowly working on), had over 8000 views, had over 40 comments published on my blog (some were from me), sent out an email newsletter every month since January 2009, and created a worm weight calculator.

In general, I’ve had a ball.

Thanks for reading!

2 comments August 16th, 2009

Cat litter composting

Bentley, over at redwormcomposting.com, has a new post up about cat litter composting, and his experiences with it.  He started out trying to compost cat poop, but also wanted to know if the compostable litter he was using could be processed by redworms.

Initially the composting seemed to proceed at a very slow rate, with the volume of material in the bin remaining relatively stable. Strangely enough, after my last big addition of cat litter waste (I tend to let it accumulate for awhile before adding it), the level of material in the bin seemed to go down quite quickly all of a sudden. I also noticed a lot of mushrooms growing in the material (as you can see in the image above) just afterwards.

Yesterday, when I was taking some pictures for this blog posting, just for the fun of it I decided to have a peek at the material in the bottom of the bin. I was curious to see how well decomposed it might be. When I pulled up the compost access door I was shocked to see a bunch of fat, vigorous Red Worms wiggling away. Upon closer examination I discovered that the material was not only loaded with worms, but it’s also contains countless cocoons!

Good stuff!  Read the whole article.  Also, you may be interested in my interview with someone who composted dog and cat waste.

Add comment August 11th, 2009

Interview: Tips from an indoor vermicomposter and master composter

I had the good fortune to interview Melanie Nehls Burow recently.  She has been teaching the Basics of Backyard Composting and Worm Composting in Boulder County for 9 years through the County’s Master Composter classes and other compost workshops.  For an updated schedule on where and when she is teaching next, or composting questions, contact her at andrewmel at yahoo dot com.  She has been worm composting for 7 years.  Melanie recently dealt with a setback (more on that below) but is headed back to worm composting full bore.

I like that she shares a couple of tips for dealing with fruit flies, talks about how to deal with John Anderson’s worm buckets (after she raves about the quality of his worms) and keeps her worms in her dining room!

Dan: When did you start worm farming?

Melanie: I started worm composting (I like that term instead of farming, I compost with my worms and do not grow them to sell, etc) with an indoor bin about 7 years ago.  We have always lived in an apartment or condo, so it works well for us.

D: How many people does your worm bin support?  What percentage of your food waste would you say goes in there?

M: Our worm bin just supports 2 adults, can’t do much more than that.  I’d estimate that at least 50% of our food waste goes in there (except for the last few months…see below), but that is a rough estimate.

D: Any factors to worry about in Colorado?

M: Not if you are doing it indoors.  I do a bin inside my house and it works great year round.  The biggest worry I would say is to get worms grown in Colorado and not mail-ordered from California…I find the Colorado worms do better overall.

D: Where did you get your worms from?

M: John Anderson, the “worm man” in the Fort Collins area.  I only buy my worms from him because they are hardy (they live outside year round) and they are used to Colorado and all that means in terms of soil, weather, etc.  And he, or a friend, often come to the Boulder area so its easy to hook with him and get them without having to drive up and get them.

D: Cool.  I visited his worm farm in April and it is quite a place.  Did you buy the 5 gallon bucket?  If so, did you separate out the worms from the vermicompost they were in (I realize this was 7 years ago, so no worries if you don’t remember it)?

M: This weekend [this was a few weeks ago], I will be separating the worms out, yes, as I get mine going again (Have them in my bucket from him, ready to go!).  I like to spread the contents of the bucket out on a tarp, and do a mix of hand sorting them out and tossing them into the new bin (on top of the newspaper bedding I already put in there).  Then, besides the worms, I add back to my bin about 2 inches or so what they were living in, the castings, (to get all the babies, etc, too)  The rest of the castings left in the bucket from John is just fabulous worm castings that I will use to make compost tea and use selectively in my garden (again, because its valuable precious stuff).

D: What do you do with your worms/castings/vermicompost?

M: I have used the castings mostly on my garden plot.  They are a precious commodity, since not a lot is produced and I have a large garden.  I have also used mine to make a compost tea.  The worms I have used to start a second bin at work.

D: Have you done any experiments on how worm castings help your garden?  Have you noticed how it helps the plants?  How much do you put on plants, and how often?

M: I have not done any experiments with this.  However, I find that worm castings is the best stuff for plants, better than even regular backyard compost.  Since worm bins don’t produce a lot of worm castings, I use mine mostly in the spring and mix it into the soil before I plant.  If I get some out when its not that time, I save it for the spring when I’m adding compost to my garden soil or use it to make a compost tea (great to apply anytime to plants!)

D: Any particular challenges to keeping worms?

M: I think the biggest challenges are overfeeding, and this leads to the second challenge, fruitflies.  I think because its so easy to toss things in (our’s at home is located about 10 feet from where we are chopping veggies, etc) that there is a tendency to overfeed the worms, plus you start to see food scraps as something valuable that you don’t want to throw away, even if the worms already have enough food.  This extra means fresh food is left sitting on top of the pile in the worm bin for a while and so this attracts fruitflies.  Easy enough to deal with, but still annoying to have them buzz out at you when you open the lid.

D: so, if you try to avoid over feeding, what do you do with the extra scraps you can’t feed the worms?  How much does a week’s worth of scraps weigh?  How do you deal with fruitflies?

M: The extra scraps we have put into a ziploc bag (gallon size) in the freezer to add to the compost collection at our garden plot ([at the] community gardens).  Also, sometimes, they do just go into the trash (I know, bad!).  A week’s scraps are about 4 pounds or so, I’d guess.  As for getting rid of fruitflies, we typically just take the bin outside, and open the lid and let most fly out and away.  Let the bin sit out, lid off for 10 minutes or so, and that gets rid of most of them.  To help avoid the fruitflies, we often nuke in the microwave whatever we are putting in (banana peels, veggie trimmings, whatever) for 1 minutes.  That brings it past the fresh point enough that the fruit flies aren’t interested.  It just really works.

D: Where is your worm box?

M: In our dining room, on hardwood floor, underneath our antique hutch and just about 2 feet away from our table.  It is fun to scare our guests and say “Did you know we have worms in the house?” and point to the box.  They often think the worms are going to jump out of there or something at them.  Makes for a good opener on educating that they can do worm composting, too.

D: Any pictures of it?  What does it look like?  Where did you buy it?  How big is it?

M: No pictures of it, as I am just getting it going again.  My husband kind of went overboard adding things to it and it became too wet and fruitfly-ey even for us. That was several months ago and we are just now getting it going again (I know, bad me!).  However, what we are using is a 10 gallon roughneck Rubbermaid tote, bought at McGuckins for $12 or something.  It is about 8″ H x 30″ wide x 12″ deep.  Has a tight fitting lid.  I have drilled the holes in the lid and upper part of side. Wouldn’t buy [a commercial system] as they are expensive (like $100+) and in my experience, these homemade ones just work much better.

D: What do you feed your worms?

M: Mostly fruit & veggie scraps, egg shells.  We have found that they don’t like herb trimmings.  One time while making pesto, I tried to put the herb stems in the worm bin and by 2 days later, all the worms were on the ceiling of my worm bin (to get away from the herbs).  Once I took the herb stems out, they were fine.  That is something I love about worms, they will tell you if they don’t like something (by crawling away from it).

D: Raw eggshells, or just egg shells from cooked eggs?

M: I would feed them both kinds, doesn’t matter!

D: Any advice for new worm farmers?

M: Feed your worms gently at the beginning…we are usually enthusiastic to start and we tend to overfeed them right away, which leads to fruitflies, which leads to frustration on your part.  Better to underfeed than to overfeed in general.

2 comments August 7th, 2009