Via the Durango Herald, I found this article about a greenhouse at Escalante Middle School. From the article:
A photovoltaic system installed at Escalante Middle School will make a campus greenhouse operational and allow students in Sharon Orr’s elective “greenworks” class to do more than grow vegetables.
…
The class of 24 students will be doing a lot more than greenhouse work, Orr said. She plans to introduce vermiculture, composting, pollination, plant identification and food preparation before the year is over. In inclement weather, the students can investigate what’s happening on the Fat Spaniel network.
March 24th, 2010
I received an email from Jim McIntyre at Covered Bridge Organic, in Ohio. He’s another worm bin vendor, but with a slightly different take. His focus is on outside worm bins, as well as hot composting. Currently, he is running trials on keeping worms outside during the Ohio winter, using a two shell composting system, with leaves or other insulation in between. I was able to ask him a few questions about his experiences.
Dan: How long have you been doing composting? How long have you been doing worm composting?
Jim: I’ve been composting, though not continuously, for 20 years. Began with windrow composting of dairy and horse manures used in growing produce as a member of Covered Bridge Organic Farms Coop. The Wishing Well composter I developed is a spin-off from the ag coop. At a recycling trade show nine years ago I bought the working display model from a vermiculture exhibitor and kept it working in the basement, then in the garage when we moved.
We’re an independent distributor of the smaller Soilsaver Classic compost bin along with our larger Wishing Well design. When I needed more room in the garage two years ago, I dumped the worm bin contents into a Soilsaver that was set up outside by the back door. As fall came, the worm bin’s indoor space was gone. I had to figure a way to leave those poor worms out in the cold. I made a blanket of leaves stuffed between the larger Wishing Well bin surrounding the Soilsaver containing the worms. Easy, an off the shelf fix, or so I hoped. After a cold northern Ohio winter, I opened the bottom gate on the Soilsaver to find hundreds of worms in the very first shovel full.
D: Why do you prefer outdoor worm composting to indoor worm composting?
J: Worms belong outside. No flies, odor, chance of spillage while moving, floor space taken up, nor mess on the floor while cleaning.
D: What are possible upsides/downsides of outdoor vermicomposting that people should consider?
J: The two factors to affect outdoor vermicomposting are weather and volume. Temperature extremes need to be avoided: summer’s heat and winter’s cold. The volume of the bin’s contents needs to be of sufficient mass to allow for migration of the worms to a favorable environment.
D: What particular challenges of indoor vermicomposting does outdoor vc overcome?
J: As above–Worms belong outside. No flies, odor, chance of spillage while moving, floor space taken up, nor mess on the floor while cleaning.
D: How do you use your vermicompost/castings?
J: Mid-spring, as weather warms, I remove the Wishing Well enclosure from around the Soilsaver worm bin, open the bottom access doors and begin to shovel out the finished material onto a 2 foot by 3 foot piece of plywood placed over a wheelbarrow. As worms avoid light by migrating into the pile, the top layers are pealed into the wheelbarrow until remaining worm mass is saved. Continue to harvest, then place the worms back into the bin. Wheel barrow contents is then used in spring planting.
D: How is surrounding a soil saver with a wishing well and stuffing leaves between superior to using hay bales or bags of leaves?
J: Makes a more visually attractive outdoor appliance that is easy to assemble. Offers an insulated winter worm composter that can be separated into a spring through fall yard waste composter, the Wishing Well, and a separate worm composter, the Soilsaver, for 9 months of the year. Leaves are free, hay bales can be hard to find and costly in urban areas.
D: Any advice to starting worm composters?
J: Worms are not tender creatures with exotic needs. They can ingest a wide range of organic materials, survive in a temperature range from 30′s up to almost 100F, migrate to find food, avoid light and pH extremes. Composting worms are native to Europe, and have been introduced to every other continent except the Antarctic. They’re hardy creatures which are native all over the world. Keep them outside where they belong.
D: As far as your business goes, have you found people receptive to worm composting? Is outdoor hot composting an alternative or a first step towards worm composting?
J: This is the second year of field trials. Although I’ve found much supportive data on the Net, we’ve not yet developed a product package. Outdoor hot composting during the summer in the Wishing Well could be a preliminary step to worm composting in the Soilsaver during winter.
March 22nd, 2010
Via Bentley at redwormcomposting.com, I discovered vermiponics. Basically, vermiponics is similar to aquaponics, but instead of using fish as the animal portion of that system, you use some kind of composting worm. Here’s an introductory article talking about Bentley’s experiments.
This kind of integrated system fascinates me (which is why I drew up a chicken chart for redworms), so I went looking for other information. Someone has registered vermiponics.com, but there’s not a lot of information on that website. (His thesis, “Ecologically Engineered Primary Production in Central Queensland, Australia – Integrated Fish and Crayfish Culture, Constructed Wetlands, Floral Hydroponics, and Industrial Wastewater”, does look very interesting, as PhD theses go.)
Someone named Phill from Australia has posted some diagrams of vermiponics systems, on his blog and in a powerpoint presentation (starting on page 18). He’s also posted a video about it.
There also appears to be some discussion about vermiponics in at least one of the Aquaponics forums: here’s a thread about redworms for solids removal and a general vermiponics thread.
I haven’t had time or space or weather to experiment with this type of system. Do you have any experience? Success stories or failure stories?
March 12th, 2010
It’s been a while since I 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 (gathered from a barber) and wet paper towels (from an office bathroom), and minimal effort on my part.
About a month after part 2, due to some subtle pressure, I moved the worm bin outside. After that, the only maintenance I did was to move the worm bin from flagstone to a garden bed when the weather got cold (so the worms had the option to find greener pastures, so to speak).
After a year of almost total neglect, the worms weren’t doing so well. I looked through the bin, and only saw a couple of them. I was also moving, so I added the contents of the hair worm bin to my large outside bin:
Human hair added to worm bin
You can see that the hair is partially decomposed, but definitely, 1.5 years after I started the experiment, not totally converted to castings, even though the environment looked pretty worm friendly (not too wet, not too dry, dark).
This leads me to the conclusion that pure human hair is not a good feedstock for worms. I think it clumps up too much, has difficulty absorbing water, and break down quickly (“[m]icroorganisms [need to] soften the food before worms will eat it”). However, I have added hair into my larger worm bin and had it get processed fairly quickly, so I think some hair is fine to add (for example, the hair seems to have disappeared from my outside bin, based on a brief inspection). Just don’t overdo it.
March 2nd, 2010
