Grass clippings as worm bedding
I have been on the hunt for alternative sources of bedding. I usually just use leaves, but last fall I didn’t pick up enough leaves to handle the three worm bins I have a hand in. So, given that I now have a lawn, I thought I’d try grass clippings.
First, off, I knew that fresh grass clippings are not a significant source of carbon–they have a C:N ratio of 20:1. But I figured I could dry them out and have a ready source of bedding for my worms.
I looked around the internet. The folks over at Redworm Composting say “yes but”. These posts on GardenWeb states that grass clippings never lose their low c:n ratio. However, this book on composting has dried grass clippings in the “brown” category, as does this article.
What to do? I decided to ask an extension agent: “How long do grass clippings need to dry before they are considered a ‘brown’ in terms of composting?” And the answer came back:
It usually won’t take longer that a week, depending on the environment. Getting them off the lawn, especially if it is irrigated, into a “holding area” would hasten the process.
Excellent. Now that I knew the grass clippings were really a “brown”, I needed to dry some out and try to use them as bedding.
I did this by laying some grass clippings out on a tarp (you can see some sticks that got caught up in the clipping gathering process).
Grass clippings on tarp
This location probably gets about 6 hours of direct sun a day, and by the end of 10 days, the grass clippings were pretty dry. I did end up turning the clippings every 3-4 days, and was surprised by how green the grass was under the top layer.
Then I added the grass clippings to a worm bin I had.
Grass clippings in worm bin
Thus far, I think that grass clippings are a substandard bedding. They take some time to prepare, and they definitely tend to clump in the worm bin. In addition, they don’t seem to hold water very well. The grass clippings dry out and get all white, as you can see below.
Grass clippings going white
So, the lesson to me is that I need to do a better job of picking up neighborhood leaves this fall!
1 comment July 30th, 2010
