Boulder Vermicomposting

55 Gallon Drum as a Worm Bin

July 10th, 2010

A few months ago, I moved.  Rather than try to move my previous worm bin, I decided to try a different type of worm container–a 55 gallon drum.  A quick google search found someone who sold 55 gallon drums, and I bought a couple.  I wanted plastic, but he didn’t have any, so I bought 2 steel 55 gallon drums previously used for holding orange juice.  (It’s amazing what you can fit into a tiny sedan.)

Basic setup: I filled the bin with a couple of bags of leaves I had retrieved from curbside last fall.  I put in some water.  I also drilled five drainage holes in the bottom of the barrel.  The barrel came with a steel top–I put that on top to protect the worms and retain moisture, but I leave a crack so that some air can get in and out.  And then I put in about 10 gallons of worms and vermicompost.  You can see the lid on the lower right–I put a rock on it to deter critters.

Barrel o worms

While it was chilly but not freezing this spring, the barrel seemed to work fine, as you can see from this photo:

Worms in a barrel

However, as we head toward summer, I’m a bit worried. The drum is black, so any sun really heats it up.  And the worms can’t easily retreat into the earth, as they could with my previous worm bin.  I recently moved it to a shadier area–I hope that helps the worms a bit.

Last I checked, the worms were doing alright, and I even found a cocoon:

worm cocoon

The reason I wanted to try this is that 55 gallon drums are pretty cheap ($20 each, I think) and readily available, and I thought these would be a fun container to use when vermicomposting large amounts of atypical feedstock.  That is, things like dog and cat poop, or human hair.  I want to play around with them, and yet be able to use some of my worm castings on food plants.  These containers seemed like a great way to segregate such feedstocks.  I still think there is promise in these, but do want to see how the worms survive the winter months.

However, the downsides of the 55 gallon drums are many:

• Unless I cut a hole in the bottom, I will have a hard time incrementally removing worm castings.
• They are hard to move around–even 30 gallons of worms and vermicompost weigh a lot
• They don’t drain well–although I could have helped this by drilling more holes
• Worms can’t retreat out of them–again, more holes and placement on dirt would help.
• As mentioned above, they heat up.

After a few months of worm keeping in a 55 gallon drum, I noticed the local recycling center was selling soil savers for half price, so I bought two.  More on that later.

Entry Filed under: Uncategorized