I was asked by a friend for some worms. I have previously handed out vermicompost with worms in it to friends for free. I was considering trying to sell worms, but really had no idea how many I had.
To figure this, out, I filled a tray with vermicompost. Then I manually separated the worms from the compost, using sunlight and time. I ended up with a ball of squirmy worms.
I estimated the weight of the worms at 1.5 oz. Then I measured the cubic volume of vermicompost I had separated, which ended up being 120 cubic inches. This means that there was one ounce of worms for every 80 cubic inches.
I then measured the height and width of my worm bin. It is 24 inches by 24 inches. I then estimated how far I’d seen worms down in the bin. Redworms typically stay in the first meter (approximately 36 inches) of soil, but I had recently dug out some castings from the bottom and hadn’t seen any worms there. So I estimated the worms were in the upper 16 inches of the bin. Multiplying these together gave a volume of 9,216 cubic inches.
Dividing the number of populated cubic inches in the entire worm bin by 80 gave me the number of ounces of worms in the bin, and dividing that by 16 indicated that there were approximately 7 pounds of worms in my bin. Given I started with one pound two years ago, that is quite a return on investment (especially given that all the materials I’ve added to the bin were free).
Caveats: if I were serious about this, I would pull and harvest multiple samples, as that is the key calculation. The above assumes that worms were distributed throughout the bin in the same manner as they were in the sample.
But, hey, it was fun to figure out–I was surprised!
June 1st, 2009
Here’s the second part of my interview with Linda and Mark. The first part is here.
Linda: The last time everything smelled great by the time we harvested. Actually, most of the time we’ve had the worm box it smelled great, but this time we’ve really been feeding the worms a lot, although I think there starting to catch up. Actually they’ve eaten quite a bit. And on this side I’m doing an experiment.
Dan: On the new side.
L: I layered shredded newspaper with bark.
D: OK, I see some big chunks of bark.
L: There are big chunks and small chunks. I read that the chunks can often help provide oxygen and air space.
D: Oh, interesting…What kind of bark is that, just whatever you have laying around?
L: Yes, we heat with firewood a lot.
D: OK, gotcha.
L: So it’s usually leftover; actually we have a whole garbage pail full of it.
D: I see you are putting carpet across the top. Is that insulation and smell control? Or keeping the worms out of the light so you can open the box easier? What’s the point of the carpet?
L: Well, the point of the carpet was that ‘John-the-worm-man’ said that worms absolutely love carpet. And, I will totally agree, they love it. They will come all the way to surface and just hang-out on top when the carpet is there. And I think it helps keep the moisture in. I think it also helps keep the heat in and it’s like them being under a little rock.
D: Is it natural carpet or synthetic? They’re not going to eat it, right?
Mark: No, they’re not going to eat it.
L: That’s what he had recommended. We just happen to have that synthetic scrap of carpet.
M: And, last Saturday when we had the cool, rainy weather there, when I pulled that up there were worms actually on the back side of the carpet. They had actually come up to the top and they were everywhere, there was almost like a highway; more like a parking lot. It’s kind of interesting to see how the worm’s behavior would change with the weather, and that’s when I got the idea that I should put in the insulated top. I noticed our temperatures did much better.
D: What were they doing before the top was on?
M: Before the top was on it was within 2 or 3 degrees of ambient. With the insulation in there it was a solid ten degree difference, in fact this morning it was 57 and the outside air temperature it was 44. It does make quite a bit of difference if you can believe these little instruments that were using.
D: It’s not scientific precision, but it’s good enough for this kind of experiment.
L: And, definitely, letting it capture some heat during the day.
M: Yesterday, we hit in the 90’s in fact.
L: Just the air [in the bin].
M: I think the soil temperature – you need a soil thermometer, but you’ll find, at least now, it’s cooler, but of course at night time it gives it up, so to speak.
L: So, one thing that we haven’t done, and I wonder if we should do, is that they recommend that holes be drilled all along the edges.
D: On the sides of the edges or the bottom?
M: The bottom is drilled.
D: So, like midway or 2/3 of the way down the sides of the worm box?
L: We don’t have that now, and we can see the worms seem to be multiplying and pretty happy, but I know I’ve read that you should have more holes.
D: Just for oxygenation?
L: I do open it and stir it. I think those worms are doing well.
D: Yea, they look pretty fantastic
L: I can’t believe how much they’ve eaten on this side; this was solid newspaper.
D: Have you guys noticed your trash doesn’t go out as often? Has it affected your life other than to come and check out the cool worms?
M: Our daughter loves to come and say “see’em, see’em, see’em”, and show her friends. Prior to getting a worm box we were composting. Of course it is a little bit different with that kind of compost. Whereas the first load that that we got in the worm box we put it over there and within a week we noticed almost an immediate effect. Yea, a basil plant that wasn’t that great, it turned into a prize. And then the pile started to attract wildlife.
L: We saw a huge snake wrapped around the pile.
M: It was a 3’ garter snake just sitting in there. The pile is over here and in fact I just poked around in there and found a bunch of baby worms
D: Sure, cocoons that you moved have hatched.
M: Its been out here for about a month… probably a raccoon or something digging around for scraps. You can see when I dig down, there’s a lot of tiny worms, there just picking up scraps. The richness of the soil is what really impresses me, because to the layman’s eyes, someone would just look at this and maybe say oh you got some compost or you got some potting soil or something like that. This was food and newspaper, and now it is this incredibly lush rich looking soil, which looking at the basil and the eggplant it really likes the flavor.
Basil plant near vermicompost
D: So how is that different from the compost that you guys have done in the past, in terms of speed, in terms of quality?
M: I’d say that speed is one. it’s just amazing just how quickly it actually turns it into something that you can use, as opposed to the compost that we did in the past we would say compost for a season, say in the spring, and then the following spring we would take that, depending on how it was broken down, we would move the highest quality portion of it over to our garden.
L: Seems like it would take a year. And now we get the stuff in 3 months
M: And there’s something different about it. I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s different that the compost.
D: I sent in a sample of worm castings to a soil lab and got a bunch of numbers back and it would be very interesting to look and see what compost has for potassium, for all the vital elements that plants need.
M: It would be really fascinating because the results, I mean, this compost ‘rocks’. It’s much better than what we’ve been using before. And, the speed, again, at which the worms work are very impressive and their robust, I mean, the temperature drops down to 40 degrees, its chilly, and how much activity you can see today, they are a happy bunch in there.
D: Sure, they are bouncing back.
M: I kind of wonder what’s going to happen to [the worms outside of the bin] if there just going to burrow in the soil, or is this the end?
L: I think this is the end.
D: My understanding is that the type of worms, the red wigglers, need a lot of organic matter, so if your not providing that for them, maybe if you got straw and whatnot.
M: It was actually pretty neat because when we divided up the bin we actually moved this to one side and we didn’t feed it any more at that time and we just fed the new side. It was amazing. There was always a few stragglers left, and we just tossed them over there [to the new side]. For the most part they all sensed it, or smelled it, or whatever. They bee-lined it to the food. What was left were these little tiny cocoons.
L: I did leave it like that for 2 months, though.
D: 2 months is a long time.
L: And part of it was, I just happened to be gone. I thought about doing it before I left and I just said I will just give it some extra time.
Worm closeup
D: Now, when you moved it to the one side, one of my concerns would be that the side you’re putting food in would get over fed. Is that kind of what happened?
L: No, it didn’t happen. I’m not really sure why. I think there were enough worms to consume what we were putting in.
D: I guess you have a certain amount of worms, roughly, in a smaller space?
L: Yea and I think they are multiplying more now. It has taken awhile.
D: Mark, you said you were surprised by the fertility. Were there any other surprises you guys have had in terms of what works?
L: It’s been fun
M: [Our daughter] likes it. Its one of those things we like to encourage with her, because she’s getting to see the workings of the earth. And she‘s ecstatic, even more so than Linda and myself. After the worm box was built, Linda was looking at it almost everyday.
D: I certainly did that with my first worm box.
M: But, I think now we’re down to 3 times a week. We worry about the worms sometimes, like when it gets cold. I went out and bought another temperature transmitter because you put all this attention to them it would be a shame for them to perish.
D: Are you planning to do anything with harvesting the excess worms like giving them to friends.
L: The surprise that I have had is just about every one I have asked has back out.
D: Taking worms from you for free, essentially?
L: Yes, they got scared.
D: Have you asked them what they were scared of?
L: I think it sounded good to begin with, but when reality set in they just weren’t interested. One friend decided they now have the City of Boulder composting, so they preferred to do that. Other people are a little worried that it’s going to take too much work, although I don’t believe it takes work. And I think Sharon and Dave, some friends that were just here, I would suspect that they will do it next year.
I guess the other surprise is I thought that the worms would have multiplied enough by now to eat all of our excess food. It seems like a lot of the worm advertisements show that worms eat about 7 pounds a week.
D: A pound of worms can eat between a half-a-pound to a pound a day
L: So I don’t know how many worms we have but I’m guessing were feeding this about 7 lbs a week and maybe they are eating it.
M: Here you go Dan, just a quick survey [of the contents of the worm bin].
D: Ok, I see some onions, I see bananas, I see, looks like turnip tops. Is that pineapple?
M: That’s spaghetti squash. We usually save the best for the worms. Maybe just a little bit of caffeine in the form of used coffee grounds, just to keep the guys motivated. Eggshells… we were actually banning eggshells, but now we are starting to put them back in.
D: Why would you ban them?
M: We were banning them because we weren’t consistent in our delivery. We were sometimes throwing in whole shells; other times we were breaking them up, and it was like ‘well were going to put all those items in with the other compost.’
D: Oh, so you’re still maintaining the compost [pile]?
L: It’s not a proper compost pile. [Looking in the box] I dug down in here the other day and I hadn’t dug down in a long time and I actually felt kind of bad digging down.
D: Cutting [the worms] in half or something?
M: Can you really kill a worm that way?
L: Yes
D: Yeah.
L: I think they are starting to multiply enough. You know if we have another decent month of weather I think we will have enough to eat all our food. We are not really putting that much in there now in the last few weeks.
M: We have been averaging one complete kitchen composter a week for the compost. It’s a one gallon stainless steel container. We make donations about twice a week.
D: Then in the winter time you’re just checking on the worms?
M: Yes, that’s the worm check-in schedule.
L: I don’t usually stir them up. Look at that!
D: Wow, what a mass!
M: I kind of like it because Linda is grossed out and amazed at the same time. They seem to be a happy bunch. The corn husks are pretty tough for them.
L: The ones that are buried, they love that stringy stuff…
D: What’s that called?
M: The hair, almost.
L: Wow, they moved over here
M: Never a dull moment when you’re poking around the worm box.
D: What other things; eggshells you mentioned they like and the cornhusks. Any other foods that they are huge fans of? Looks like the inside of that squash. That’s fresh.
L: That’s very fresh.
May 22nd, 2009
The Fort Collins city government has a page devoted to worm composting:
Worm composting or vermicomposting is a suitable composting option for apartment dwellers and homes with no yard space, and is also a great classroom activity. The worms stay in the bin and eat household food scraps, and the bin has no odor if properly maintained.
Everything from worm bin construction to harvesting to what to feed your worms is covered.
There is also a compost worm exchange page and a worm exchange Yahoo! group:
The Compost Worm Exchange is easy to use and provides a medium for those who want to obtain compost worms with those who have compost worms to give. The Worm Exchange also matches those who are seeking advice on vermicomposting (composting with worms) with those who have the know-how and expertise. All you have to do is ask!
Go Fort Collins!
May 12th, 2009
Last fall, I interviewed Mark and Linda, who keep a home worm bin. Linda was a classmate of mine. They have a largish worm bin on their back patio, and aim to create compost from their entire family’s food scraps.
Dan: I’m here with Linda and Mark; Linda was a classmate of mine. They now have a worm box. How big is the worm box?
Mark: 39 by 21.5 [inches].
D: And how deep is it?
M: The total depth of the worm box is about 17 in.
Worm bin with carpet on top
D: Ok and you guys are a family of three, right?
Linda: Yes.
D: And what kind of stuff do you put in here?
L: We put everything in here, everything but the meat?
D: Dairy? Yogurt? Cheese?
L: We put cheese. We haven’t put dairy or yogurt, but we haven’t needed to.
D: ok
L: And then all our greens. Corn husks, egg shells.
D: Do you crush the egg shells? Do you just put them in whole?
L: We do both.
D: What do you find works better? Or at the end it’s all just little shards of eggshell anyway?
L: Well you know, I just started this in May, and we’ve just had one harvest so far, and I guess the eggshells were mostly broken up. But you know, I may have had something to do with that as well. I’ve gone in there and mashed them around. I think it would be more ideal to break them up. But sometimes I just throw them in and a lot of times I’ll find them all sleeping inside if I don’t break them up.
D: And you were saying it’s on your patio right now, and you moved it from the shade where it was most of the summer into the sun, and you insulated it?
L: It was always insulated.
D: OK, you insulated the top more?
L: We insulate the top at night.
D: Oh, just at night?
L: So what we’ve been doing if it is sunny out is leaving this [the top] open during the day, just letting it really heat up, and then at night we’ve been taking this extra piece of insulation and putting it on top. We’ve noticed that the temperature…
D: Oh, you have a thermometer?
L: Yes.
M: It’s good for about ten degrees.
L: Yes, it seems it’s been ten degrees, but we’re only measuring air temperature, we don’t have a soil thermometer yet.
D: Sure. So it’s probably warmer in the soil.
L: Yes.
M: We’d like to think that it’s warmer in the soil.
L: I’m sure that it is.
M: The insulation sits up here, so this is dead air. So, in theory, eventually it should equalize with whatever the soil temperature is.
L: No, it stays quite a bit warmer in the soil.
Open worm bin
D: How do you know it is good to ten? I mean, we haven’t had a ten degree day?
L: No, no no, it’s a ten degree difference.
D: Oh, ok, a ten degree difference.
L: So if it is 34 outside, it is 44 inside.
D: Gotcha, oh, that’s great.
L: So the air temperature tends to stay about ten degrees warmer. I suspect that the soil temperature is staying quite a bit warmer than that.
D: Sure, so you guys are planning to get a soil thermometer?
L: Yes.
D: Ok, wow, are you going to put this on a website somewhere, so people can monitor the worm bin’s temperature from anywhere in the world.
L: I’ll let you know what Mark’s plan is for the winter, if we don’t move it into the garage, or even if we do move it into the garage. He has this idea of perhaps putting a little solar panel on top, and then…. Why don’t you describe? Some kind of heater inside?
M: A resistive element. You’d want to set it up so obviously it didn’t catch fire. But I think a ten watt panel, maybe twenty watt panel, either hooked up on the fence and then wired in, or we just simply have the panel sitting up. Because we get good sun in the wintertime here, and recline it back at a 45 degree angle there. We’d get power off it for six to eight hours a day and we would dump that power through a resistive element. If we wanted to get really fancy, we have it on a timer so that it actually feeds a battery during the day and then complete the circuit at night, from 8:00 o’clock at night to eight the next morning, it’s drawing power off the battery.
D: That’s very cool.
M: And then it repeats itself on a timer
L: It’s just kind of an idea.
D: Yea, holy cow
L: I don’t think it’s been implemented yet.
D: It seems like moving it to the garage might be an easier solution, but that would definitely be cooler.
L: Well if you saw our garage…
D: If you’re talking about that large of amount of dirt that’s not an insignificant amount of weight to move too, right?
L: It’s very heavy.
M: It’s heavy, I mean you can slide it on the deck easily with one person, but it would take two of us to actually, you know, move it into the garage. The garage would be safest because our garage is insulated and the temperature never drops below freezing there and Mother Nature and the worms do the rest.
D: For sure.
L: The other thing, Dan, I’m considering is, I’m considering getting another worm box for the garage, and I haven’t really determined which one to get – like the Can Of Worms…
D: Like a plastic worm box?
L: Or the Can Of Worms, you know the layered ones?
D: OK, so that’s one of the ones like multi… I don’t even know what they’re called, but the worms… they’re like layers?
L: You can put food on different layers
D: OK
L: We’re considering getting another one and then taking some of the worms out of here and then maybe using this as an experiment outside to see how it goes, but kind of having those reserve of worms in there just in case. So, we haven’t made any final decisions yet.
D: And you don’t have to yet for a little while, right?
M: Right, we still have, I think another month or so before it gets critical. After those few chilly nights, and we can show you, we can open it up and we poked around and the worms were as happy as can be, wiggling and there were big balls of worms enjoying whatever it was…something.
D: OK
M: They seem to be pretty happy.
L: The other thing too, Dan, I noticed I started my worm box with some of your worms, a little less of Juliette’s worms.
D: Ok
L: A little tiny pinch of her worms and a good shovel full or 2 of your worms. The worms are not able to keep up with everything at this point.
D: There is too much garbage
L: There is too much food
M: There sitting on the top you see there dining on some banana.
D: Yeah.
M: There are some really big [worms] in there; see them all?
D: Wow.
L: I think they’re really staring to multiply lately
D: They are happy.
M: They are a pretty happy bunch there.
L: Ooh, even the white ones.
D: Wow.
M: We are kind of happy with the setup now. It would be sweet if we could leave it out all year and if things got really bad we could put in a battery powered light or something like that.
L: Look at that.
D: Wow.
M: There is a whole eggshell, Dan. There’s a couple of them there. There even actually loaded with worms.
D: Cool. Do you guys add bedding regularly?
L: Oh yes, I filled it all the way to here with shredded paper.
D: Initially or recently?
L: Yes, both.
D: So when she says all the way to here its like an inch or 2 below the top of the bin. It’s definitely fallen of 4 or 5 inches, I would say.
L: Yes, I do occasionally add [bedding] back on top. We have had one harvest so far and we use the, what do you call it, use the split method?
D: Where you put all the food and bedding over on one side and then you put in new bedding and the food on that side, basically?
L: And that’s what we did, and so we had every thing completely moved over to here, the left side, and then I had new bedding here and I’d say 90 % of the worms went over I left it like that way for a month or two, and then we eventually took out the compost. I picked through some it for worms and we weren’t sure if I got them all. I wanted to save some of the compost so I put it in our house plants and all of our outdoor plants and we just threw [the rest of it] into a pile over there because we are still going to use it for other applications. And then I came back and I added newspaper to both sides so now I’ve been trying to encourage the worms to go back over to this side and they are.
D: Yea, there they are.
L: And so they are coming and feeding on this side.
D: Yea a good chunk there.
L: Our worm box smelled fantastic toward the end of the last month.
D: I don’t think it smells bad, I mean it smells a little earthy.
L: It’s a little bit funky because we over fed them, but I think they’re starting to catch up now
D: OK
To be continued….
May 2nd, 2009
So, you’ve read the basics, and are looking to take the plunge? You’ve decided that you want to try home worm keeping?
Bravo!
If you’re looking for redworms to start composting with, and you want to buy locally, I’ve compiled a list of Colorado redworm suppliers.
I’ll be updating this page as I’m made aware of new sources.
Please feel free to contact me or leave a comment if you know of other Colorado suppliers.
March 25th, 2009
Michael, a classmate of mine, and I recently sat down at his place to talk about his adventures in worm keeping. He also works at sustainablevillage.com, which has, among other things, worms and worm bins. The transcript follows these images. Michael’s experiences with worm keeping are different than Forest’s. He lives on a semi rural property (a couple of acres) with four adults and one child. They grow a lot of their own food and use an outside worm bin solely for food scraps. We talk about the permaculture properties of worms, how he ignored his worms for 3 weeks post purchase, how he uses his worm bin currently, including what types of scraps, and how he built his worm bin.
Dan: Hi. I’m here with Michael who is a classmate of mine and he keeps worms and he’s going to talk to me about his worm keeping. So, how’d you get started?
Michael: I got started from permaculture class.
D: Ok. So you bought some from John.
M: I bought uh a 5 gallon pail from John Anderson and brought em home.
D: You took the whole pail?
M: Took the whole pail, yeah and when was that, May? I think it was our May class.
D: Yeah.
M: So in the 2nd weekend in May and it probably sat outside–it stopped freezing at this point–it sat outside for about 3 weeks just in the pail.
D: Because you just didn’t have time to deal with it.
M: Yeah, exactly, I didn’t have time to deal with it. But I did get a worm bin together. What I did was I saw a posting on Craigslist for a bunch of old wooden crates out in the back of a warehouse and I went over there and picked up a big wooden box that I found and I cut that down and retrofitted that into a worm box so it came out to be about 2 feet x 4 feet by 18 inches high. And drilled a whole bunch of holes in it and I painted it.
D: Holes in the bottom?
M: I did a whole bunch of holes in the bottom, like quarter inch holes, and in the sides and a few in the top.
D: Ok.
M: Mostly I left the top sealed. Actually, I left the entire top sealed, in the sides and the bottoms I put a ton of holes. I just took my cordless drill and I put a whole bunch of holes in it. I painted the box because it was just pressed board material. I painted it with an oil based paint on the outside to make it more weatherized and I put some hinges on it and a handle. It kind of looks like a chest
D: We got those pictures, and it looks, you know, that’s nothing you wouldn’t expect around a house, you know it doesn’t look grungy at all. You put it on the south facing side of the house.
Open worm box
M: The south facing side of our house is pretty shady in the summer time but in the winter time but in the winter it’ll get pretty direct sun, we turn it against the big stone wall.
D: Very nice.
M: So it’ll hopefully you know have good solar positioning.
D: Are you planning to do anything else in terms of temperature?
M: I mean I thought about throwing some straw bales up against the side of it just to give it a little insulation
D: Sure.
M: We’ll see if I get around to doing that. And we’ll see what it looks like on the inside. I mean, now it looks pretty good on the inside. It’s been cold lately but nonetheless there’s still a lot of activity in there it seems like.
D: It’s also in contact with the ground too right?
M: It actually about 2 inches above the ground, so there is airflow underneath.
D: Gotcha, ok.
M: So what I did is I took the worms and I just, when we moved in this house, there was a whole bunch of sawdust out in the yard, in the barn, so I piled all that up and dumped the worms in, dumped the sawdust on top of the worms. I had a bunch of newspapers around, a big stack of them–I kinda just ripped them all up, threw them in, got some shredded paper from work, threw that in, leaves I had around. There’s a lot of leaves on the property so I just put a big wheelbarrow load full of leaves, threw them in, that’s what I used for bedding, pretty much.
D: Ok.
M: And then I sort of followed some instructions I found somewhere, I don’t know if it was from John Anderson, or if it was from some handout we got in class, whatnot. And we have about a 3 gallon pail we keep under the sink at our house. And that is our compost bucket. So when that fills up I take that down to the bin and kind of remove some of the bedding, throw it on the ground, on part of the worm bin and cover it back up with the bedding a little bit.
Food scrap bucket
D: Do you cover the thing you have in your kitchen or?
M: No it’s open.
D: And how often does it get emptied, I mean you guys make pizza dough and whatnot? Does it get flies? How often do you fill it up?
M: I think it fills about every 2-3 days.
D: Ok. So there’s not really enough time for flies.
M: No and it’s actually much more organic material than the worm bin can handle. So we have a compost pile in addition.
D: How do you know, did you overload the worm bin at some point, or you just, based on the number of worms, and just your feeling?
M: Well, it’s sort of an intuitive thing, but I filled up, you know as the summer was going, as it was starting I put a pile of it [food scraps] in then I would sort of wait until the worms ate it, then I put another one in…
D: Oh, interesting, ok.
M: And I would kind of go like that, and then right about kind of the end of August, I just filled it all up, with just 4 of our bucketfuls in a row. And just filled the whole layer up with raw, organic material, food scraps. And then mulched it really heavy with big flakes of straw bale.
D: And that’s what was still there.
M: That’s what’s there now [October]. So it’s taken them 2 months and they haven’t fully eaten that whole thing. So I haven’t harvested any castings yet. My idea was just to build up the population um as big as I could for now. And just let ‘em do their thing, and be worms in the box. And hopefully they’ll multiply next spring. I want ‘em to be healthy enough to live through the winter, basically.
D: Sure.
M: So, next spring we can maybe start doing some different things with them, maybe take some worms out, put ‘em somewhere else, or get another box going… I don’t know.
D: Ok.
M: We’ll see. Sorry to disappoint anybody here!
D: Sure, sure. So what kind of like stuff do you put in there, in the 3 gallon bucket, everything that you guys eat that’s organic that isn’t meat or dairy?
M: Yeah.
D: Ok.
M: Yeah so, Liz has only put paper stuff in there like tea bags or paper towels.
D: Junk mail?
M: No. No, none of that sort of thing, that stuff we just recycle.
D: Ok.
M: We just have so much organic waste, we don’t really need to bulk it up. Let’s see, I was estimating I think we produce probably about 50 lbs a week of organic waste.
D: This is just the 3 of you, not counting any of the people downstairs?
M: No, I guess it’d be the whole household–4 adults and 1 baby. So the baby doesn’t really eat anything yet.
D: [laughs]
M: Um, but really like I haven’t put anything in there in the last 6 weeks.
D: Interesting.
Liz: We eat enough vegetables for about six people.
D: Yeah I mean my guess is that since you guys have a vegetable garden in the back, you probably eat a lot more vegetables than the common person.
M: Yeah cause of our backyard garden plus Liz works on the farm, she brings home a lot of produce.
D: Sure.
M: And you know like the last 2 months have been like the hardest time.
D: Sure.
M: That’s when things are most abundant and we’ve been doing a lot of canning and processing so you know if we have tomatoes, we’ll cut a bunch of rotten parts out of tomatoes, we’ll have a whole bucket of tomatoes or something.
D: Sure, sure.
M: And I could fill up the worm bin easily.
D: So those have all gone to the secondary compost pile.
M: Right.
D: You haven’t done any worms with that stuff. Ok.
M: Yeah, pretty much, we put a lot of corn husk into that bin just because corn was really in season.
D: That was the corn time.
M: Yeah. And we threw corn cobs in there too just to see how they’d do. Kind of curious if they’ll eat the corn cobs.
D: Yeah, the corn cobs I’ve got, I put in the worm bins, it was like they come out and they’re like somebody got every last kernel. The cob is still there for sure. You guys planning to put food in there over the winter then?
M: Yeah maybe. Probably. Like I said, what I did was when it was starting to get cold, starting to get to the end of August, you can feel the weather changing, so really I just wanted to pack it full and and then…
D: Get em healthy…
M: And just really do a heavy layer of straw and that’s what we did. No one told me to do that; I just sort of thought that might be a good idea.
D: I mean the one thing that kind of jumps to my mind is, when worms are in their own waste, just like any other animal they have a harder time and I don’t know what the situation is down there but it looked like underneath the straw was pretty rich, pretty, you know, dark and not a lot of bedding, so I don’t know whether that’s good or bad for them.
Redworm closeup
M: Well, I don’t know either. My hope was that they would eat some of the straw for bedding but I don’t know if that works very well.
D: I think so. It’s pretty good as long as you dig it in.
M: You have to kind of mix it in a little.
D: Or you put the food in the straw, so you could split the straw.
M: Maybe I’ll just start dumping raw waste on top of the straw and then put another layer.
…
More on earthworms in the garden and how Michael got his worms in the next segment
February 27th, 2009
From their website:
After many years of selling earthworms, we have decided to stop selling them. We promoted vermicomposting as a way for people to compost if they did not have room for a backyard compost pile or a collection service was not available. We are happy to see that collection services are now available to everyone. We think the easiest, most effective way to reach zero-waste is to have your compostables collected and composted by a professional company.
More on the decision of the Boulder Compost folks to stop selling earthworms.
I am of two minds about this.
On the one hand, scale often leads to efficiency, and composting is no different than other businesses in that. And I sympathize with Eric; separating worms for sale is tedious even with the appropriate equipment.
On the other hand, worm composting is one of the ways to re-connect yourself to biological processes that folks in the USA (especially in cities) have become more and more removed from. (Gardening is another.) And I would argue that having trucks cart compostables around is less sustainable than small, on-your-patio worm composting.
Best of luck to Boulder Compost as they pursue a different path.
February 21st, 2009
If you don’t want to buy ‘Worms Eat My Garbage‘ and are feeling a bit adventurous, Boulder County Open Space outlines pretty much everything you need to get started with worm composting. It also has contact information for local sources for redworms. From the introduction:
If you don’t have a backyard, live in the mountains, or don’t have space for a big bin, you can still compost your kitchen scraps with red wriggler worms.
Go read the page if you’re on the fence!
Updated 2/28/2009: Corrected links, which had changed.
February 7th, 2009
This is part 2 of my conversation with Forest, a former classmate. See part one for his experiences in Hawaii; here he discusses his kitchen worm bin experiement.
Dan: Ok. So after that you said you were doing some stuff this spring?
Forest: We got the worms in class.
D: You bought some from John [Anderson, the Worm Man]?
F: We bought a whole five gallon bucket. We were doing a worm composting experiment in our kitchen. I wanted to see if I could do it inside. So we grabbed some plastic tubs and took one and drilled holes into the bottom of it and slid it into a second one, so the water would drain out into the second one.
D: Oh cool.
F: And then I bought a paper shredder, so I put all my paper through it and I used that in the composter. And this thing held it held 6 months worth of compost in it without getting full.
D: How big was it? 14 gallons?
F: Umm, this big [gestures]? It was one of those plastic bins from Target.
D: I think it’s probably a 30 gallon one based on the size [of Forest's gesturing]. Like more than 14 gallon because I have a 14 gallon one that’s maybe 2.5 feet by 1.5 ft. Yeah so maybe 30 gallons.
F: Ok yeah.
D: That held about 6 months plus of waste?
F: Plus all of my junk mail.
D: Well, did you shred it with the plastic stuff in it?
F: Yup, shredded it all. All of my paper went in there, 6 months worth, and it still wasn’t full. The problem was it held a bunch of water and so what we decided to do was put more holes, try to raise the bottom one up to the top. The worms weren’t too happy. There wasn’t a smell involved, it was just too wet.
D: How did you know the worms weren’t happy?
F: The worms weren’t thriving. Because of Hawaii, I’ve seen thriving worms. They were all in one corner, it would be so wet, [the bedding] was just like clay. I’d add more paper, but the paper didn’t really help. Sometimes the bottom tub would fill up with water so much that [the top tub] would just be sitting in water.
D: Did you empty the tray periodically?
F: Yeah, but as part of my life, it probably got done every week. It had sat too long and stuff. So, I was trying to make the system easier. So we put more holes in the top tub. We lifted [it] with some bricks off the bottom tub so there was more air flow. What that introduced was fruit flies that had greater access. So then we had fly issues. And since there was more air we could smell that shit and so I’m sitting there and I finally just ended it, I put it all in a compost outside and just put the worms out there and cleaned it all up because my experiment was just for me over, trying to compost in the kitchen.
D: Sure.
F: It worked in some regards but I think it would [be good] to [re]design the whole system again.
D: So you had one really good experience and one kinda not so good experience.
F: Well I mean the with the really good experience, I mean the worm kitchen really worked, the first design, it just kept too much water. As soon as I got more water out it created more airflow, insects, and smell got in and out.
D: Sure, interesting, interesting.
F: So, that’s my 2 main experiences [this and the farm in Hawaii]
D: what did you do with the leachate?
F: Um it was interesting because it was in one of several situations the liquid. Sometimes it was fresh, it smelled like it was off, really high bacteria, I didn’t feel comfortable putting it on plants, like it was too rich but I live in a 3rd floor apt so I cant just go outside and throw it.
D: Imagine if someone was walking outside and got that rained down on them.
[Laughing]
F: Maybe talk about that off record. But, so with that one I would just dump down the toilet if it was bad. Some of them had sat for a long time. Some had sat for a couple weeks and that didn’t have the smell anymore. And that I would mix with water and then water my plants with it.
D: Did you put meat or anything else in there or pretty much just vegetables?
F: It was just vegetables. We kept meat and cheese out of it.
D: Did you process the waste at all. Like I’ve read that some people freeze the waste then put it in the worm bin?
F: Like I tried putting it through a food processor for a little bit but I only had to do that once or twice to be finished with that. It’s just a lot of labor and then you’re washing it every time. SO I just threw it all it in.
D: Just threw it all in and cover with some more of your junk mail?
F: Shredded paper, yeah. Shredded paper constantly. Which kept the smell suppressed also. It kept it too wet though, which was one of the issues.
D: Interesting Interesting ok. SO what did you do with the 5 gallon bucket of worms you bought from John? Did you put it all in there?
F: Yeah.
D: Do you have any advice for someone thinking of home worm keeping?
F: Don’t try it in the kitchen.
D: Don’t try it in the kitchen?
F: No, I think that to get proper airflow in it and to get proper drainage, its gonna, there’s no way to do it without some smells being involved and opening it up for flies. So I would recommend if you want to keep them frost free, maybe keep them in the garage or something like that. Which I just don’t have. I’m either in my living space or outside, so I don’t really have in between space. It seems appropriate for some sort of in between space. Open garage or something you don’t mind a little bit of smells once in a while.
D: Sure, sure. The garage would just smell anyway with other kinds of petrochemicals and whatnot.
To be continued…
January 8th, 2009
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