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
I had the good fortune to interview Dan Matsch, who works at Eco-Cycle here in Boulder. They sell compost tea made from worm castings, and he and I had a great conversation ranging in topic from the benefits of compost tea to his experiences in home worm keeping to where Eco-Cycle gets feedstock for the worms. The entire interview is below.
Dan Moore: What is your position at Eco-Cycle?
Dan Matsch: Manager, Center for Hard-to-Recycle Materials (CHaRM) and Compost Dept.
Moore: How long have you been involved with vermiculture?
Matsch: ~20 years personally and professionally.
Moore: Do you care to elaborate on your 20 years of experience–that’s a long time!
Matsch: Prior to my career at Eco-Cycle I was an organic vegetable farmer for 13 years and always had a variety of vermicomposting projects going, mostly using the castings as part of a potting mix for my greenhouse transplants. And I’ve kept worms for my kitchen scraps at home for many years.
Moore: Are there any special challenges to vermicomposting in the Colorado area, as opposed to other parts of the country? Or is it all pretty much the same?
Matsch: Worms like 70 degrees F, high humidity within their living media and darkness. That doesn’t exactly describe Colorado’s climate, but the worms are native to a large part of North America including Colorado. They can fend for themselves in their native environment, but if you constrain them to a box and expect them to eat and reproduce at a certain level year-round, you have to monitor their habitat very closely. That’s why I always recommend to backyard composters that they use or build a bottomless worm bin that sits on top of – or better yet, is built into the ground. If the worms can escape adverse conditions by burrowing down, their survival and your success as a vermicomposter increases greatly.
Moore: Do you have any advice for small scale worm keepers?
Matsch: Keep them in the ground [as mentioned above].
Moore: Do you still keep worms at home?
Matsch: Yes, we have a 4’x8’ concrete block lined worm bed built into the ground in our back yard that produces about a cubic yard of castings every spring.
Moore: What has been your greatest success?
Matsch: Our Eco-Cycle high-tech compost tea worm farm is very fun, but I think the greatest reward is creating a closed-loop nutrient cycle at home because it’s so tangible. All our organic waste from kitchen scraps to yard waste go to the worms (the yard waste gets ground up first in a shredder). The worms and all the associated organisms break it down into castings, and that becomes the fertilizer for our gardens, which grow most of our food.
Moore: What kind of worms are used to create the compost tea?
Matsch: Eisenia Fetida.
Moore: How many worms?
Matsch: Our capacity is for about 150 lbs.
Moore: Is Eco-Cycle’s compost tea operation profitable?
Matsch: It’s within the realm of Eco-Cycle’s model of ‘cost + 10%’; however, we are doing it to raise awareness that food waste is a liability in the landfill, while a valuable soil amendment when composted or used to make high-value soil amendments like compost tea.
Moore: Where is [the tea] sold?
Matsch: Boulder Farmers’ Market on Saturdays, Eco-Cycle CHaRM on Wednesdays, April through September.
Moore: What kind of equipment is used to house the worms?
Matsch: We have a ‘flow-through worm digester’ that harvests castings from the bottom of their space, and we have a fiberglass worm farm that was originally manufactured by one of those ‘get rich quick growing worms’ scams that actually works quite well.
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Another View of the Eco-Cycle Worm Digester
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Eco-Cycle Worm Digester
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Eco-Cycle Worm Incubator
Moore: What kind of processing is needed to create the tea?
Matsch: Castings from the digester are ready to go with a turn of the harvest wheel; castings from the fiberglass farm must be hand-harvested, then screened, then formed into a cone in bright light to drive remaining worms to the bottom and slowly harvest castings from the sides. The brewing itself is much like brewing a pot of tea, except the water temperature is 70 degrees and the process is 24 hours. A better analogy of what is really happening, though, is a Petri dish: favorable conditions are made for the beneficial soil microbes, already in abundance in worm castings, to reproduce millions of times over in the water culture. So you are literally pouring microbes onto your soil when applying the tea.
Moore: How much tea is produced weekly?
Matsch: Currently we can brew 125 gallons twice a week, though we may expand by next season.
Moore: What are the benefits to the tea?
Matsch: The tea builds the population of beneficial soil microbes once applied. This improves a plant’s ability to uptake nutrients, since nutrients are exchanged by microbes at a plant’s root hairs. So with more microbes in the soil, more nutrients are exchanged with the root hairs.
Moore: Are you aware of any scientific studies testing the benefits?
Matsch: As with most organic soil amendments, funds for studies through land grant universities are very limited. The previous statement about the benefits is simple logic but has been confirmed at a basic level by Dr. Clive Edwards and his colleagues at Ohio State University. Beyond that, most studies I’ve read focus on whether tea can function effectively against various common plant diseases. Steve Scheuerell and Walter Mahaffee of Oregon State University conducted a literature review in 2002 called, “Compost Tea: Principles and Prospects for Plant Disease Control” which is widely quoted. They have since published several other reports.
As with compost, though, I think it’s difficult to understand what is happening with compost tea through the scientific method of reduction. Tea is not a fungicide. It works in several ways to outcompete leaf-borne disease organisms for food or space on the leaf surface, and it works to bolster a plant immune system. Like studies done on holistic medicine, applying scientific technique to the study of a specific disease creates many variables and therefore variable results. It’s like the old story about 10 different people getting drastically different results examining parts of an elephant in the dark.
Our own greenhouse trials have focused on how compost tea affects seedling plant growth. Control and test are always comparable until some kind of stress is introduced. Then it is quite clear that the test plants have a stronger immune system that powers through the stress with less – if any – check in growth.
Moore: What happens to the vermicompost after tea is made?
Matsch: It is still inoculated with soil microbes, so we let excess moisture evaporate for a week or so, aerate it, and mix it with worm food the next time we feed.
Moore: I’m curious about that, as it seems you’d just accumulate more and more vermicompost/castings, and eventually you’d need to clean out the digester and worm farm. Eventually, you end up with a mass of castings, don’t you? What happens to that?
Matsch: The baskets that hold the castings in the brewer are about 1/3 full after the tea is brewed, so a majority of the castings dissolve into the tea. Eventually we will produce a surplus of castings as the worm population maximizes, but both our worm farms get harvested pretty heavily during tea season and the boxes don’t have a lot in them by fall.
Moore: How much waste goes into the process?
Matsch: Theoretically the worms should be able to process half their weight daily. In reality, they are eating about 250 lbs per week.
Moore: What type of waste is it?
Matsch: Half food waste, half crushed dried leaves by volume. For the most part, it is organic vegetable kitchen scrap, but we give the worms a mixed diet. They have had a lot of apples this fall from a program in Boulder that picks up fallen apples from people’s yards to try to mitigate their attractiveness to bears.
Moore: How is waste collected, and from where?
Matsch: I either cherry pick from some of our Zero Waste Services restaurant or grocery store customers, or from material brought to our food waste drop-off at the CHaRM. We have some people bringing clean vegetative food waste specifically for the worms now…they may need their own collection dumpster soon!
Moore: What is the long term sustainability of people driving to drop food off for the ecocycle worm composters? Where does home vermicomposting fit into this picture (if at all)?
Matsch: Backyard composting is by far the most efficient way to handle organic waste – meaning kitchen and yard waste – and I strongly believe that worm composting is the best fit for the vast majority of people who want to backyard compost. Curbside collection of organics for commercial composting is the second-most efficient. The City of Boulder is slowly rolling that out for their residents, it’s an option for unincorporated county residents, and Eco-Cycle has collections for our commercial customers. But that doesn’t cover everybody, and not everybody can backyard compost. So a variety of solutions is necessary to keep organics out of the landfill.
December 21st, 2008
I had the pleasure of interviewing Forest, a classmate of mine. We talked widely about his experience with worms, including blue worms, his recent failure, the shelf life of compost tea, worms’ place in permaculture, and many other topics. It was a long interview, so I’ve broken it up into parts.
In part 1 he discusses his experiences vermicomposting restaurant scraps on a farm Hawaii.
Dan: I’m with Forest who was a classmate of mine and we’re going to talk about worms. Forest what’s your experience with worms and keeping worms.
Forest: My first experience with keeping worms? I went to Hawaii a couple years ago, I lived there for 6 months. And in the, in that term we were able to get a worm farm going on a small permaculture farm in Hawaii which ended up being the largest worm farm on Kauai. When I got there, they, the woman who was managing the farm there was operating had a small worm operation there and she wanted a larger one so I designed up a system to expand it and we had, I don’t know one the size of this room there.
D: That’s a good 30 feet
F: Yeah.
D: I would guess. How wide?
F: About 5 about 4 foot wide. What we did was we were collecting the compost from all the restaurants around us all the different restaurants. And then We would sell them our produce, if we had anything ripe we would bring it, see if they wanted to buy it or the compost, so that happened every single day. And so we collected enough compost from that to create a huge worm operation and it was awesome. It was really really cool.
D: So you did compost like vermicompost everything or just the vegetable scraps that they provided?
F: everything went into [the vermicomposting operation]. I mean it was huge you know, trash cans full of compost from all the restaurants and we threw everything in there every day. [We had] a long corridor so we started at one side and moved down and kept adding and move on so by the time we got partway down the line the first batches were ready to come off so that way, that way we could you know switch back, keep it up. We also had shade palms so it was completely shaded. But it also had a sprinkler system, a mister system on an automatic timer so that every so often it would just mist, keeping things misted all the time cause worms don’t like stuff to dry out. Plus when the sun was out even with the sun protection it would get a little hot there also.
D: And it was outside?
F: Yeah.
D: Did you have any issue with wild animals?
F: It was in our chicken bed, so we had to protect it from the chickens which was our biggest issue but that wasn’t that hard, because the way we designed it, it was closed off so the chickens couldn’t get at it.
D: Just chicken wire or something like that?
F: It was just a shade cloth. And we attached that to some long metal rods on either side and attached some PVC pipe and it [the PVC] half circled along it. So it looked a lot like a house.
D: And the chickens never figured it out? They weren’t smart enough to get through the shade cloth?
F: No [the cloth] was too thick.
D: Ok, gotcha.
F: They, occasionally, one would find its way in a little side pocket we forgot to close up but you know, a single chicken can’t hurt it so much. So we were extremely lucky. We tried other different types. We tried tires and boxes and a bunch of different ways but the amount of compost that we had, that’s what we’d use [the vermicomposting hoop houses]. I’m gonna change one thing I said. What we do is bring all the compost into the chicken pen and then let them pick through it for a day then we’d pick it up and we’d throw it into the worms. So the chickens got first pick. So we were able to feed our chickens [off the scraps].
D: You didn’t have to feed them anything else?
F: We did have to do a little bit of supplementing but I probably wouldn’t have if it was my chickens because I mean they eat all leftover pastries, bread, grain. If you [a restaurant] spilled some grain on the floor you just have to sweep it up and put it in the compost. They couldn’t cook with it so [the chickens] got stuff like that constantly. We had 60+ chickens there too so it was quite the large operation.
D: Were you involved in going to the restaurants and saying “hey, [can we get your scraps]?”. How’d you sell them on that?
F: We just said “we want your compost” and people were pretty excited about that actually.
D: They weren’t kind of pissed off that they would have to split their plastic waste from their food waste?
F: No.
D: Or did restaurants already do that?
F: No, restaurants didn’t do it but restaurants didn’t have a hard, tough time with it, I mean I think it’s partly the area we were living in was pretty liberal and pretty conscious and there wasn’t really any composting systems in place so you just start offering people the option and everybody jumped on it. The problem was just regular pickups because we had to do it every day, every two days we’d have to go and pick up every place and that doesn’t give you a lot of options for going backpacking for 3 days you know. So that was a management issue that ended up causing some problems but we had anywhere from 3 of us living on the farm to 20 of us living on the farm and it changed. It was just a huge invisible structure. Where we put most of our energy [was] trying to create an invisible structure. It’s managing people in flux, but the worms went well, you know, really well. And then after that I built a compost tea maker which is like a 55 gallon drum and then we’d take all the worm castings and separate the worms from the castings and then put that in the compost tea maker. And then we’d go spray down all of the plants with that.
D: Did you ever run any experiments on what compost tea was good for? I mean I mean how much it helped?
F: No, we just sprayed.
D: I mean I’ve wondered that because I’d like to. I mean Tracy was talking about selling that stuff, you know and it seems like that’s one way you could make a large body of stuff to sell.
F: Have you seen at the Saturday farmers market, Eco-cycle sells it there? So the problem with selling is it has to be in the ground within 12 hours of making it.
D: Oh really?
F: So that’s why they do the farmers market. Because they literally make it that morning and then they sell it.
D: Wow.
F: And so you’re buying it fresh and you have to go water your plants with it. There can’t be a delay.
D: Because all bacteria and all the good stuff will just…
F: It goes anaerobic. There’s a certain amount of oxygen in there and the microbes eat it. Once it’s done they kind of fall asleep
D: Sure.
F: So, you know you have to keep it while there’s oxygen in it. Now, if people could bring it home and put oxygen in it, you could use a little fish bubbler, it would last a little bit longer but even then not really [that long].
D: Ok that’s good to know; I didn’t know that
F: So we just spray everything with compost tea. I mean everything I’ve read and all the research I’ve done is it’s really incredible.
D: Really, ok.
F: So, yeah so I just want to explain the inputs to outputs of the worms. We had 3 acres we were taking care of so and then when I had this spring when we got worms…
D: Can I ask you a question about the farm? So how did you separate the worms?
F: Separate the worms? The woman who lived there, Crystal, she came up with a way to do it. You just take you take some old castings, flip them down into a wheelbarrow and then she took a tray that had like a screen on it that was big enough that the worms could crawl through, and we put the worms on the screen and then put that on top of the old castings and you just wheel it out into the hot sun, and the worms, once they reach a certain temperature, they’ll burrow down as quickly as they can to get away from the sun. You have to be careful if it’s a really hot day you have to put it in kind of half sun half shade you know. You don’t want to cook em but you want to frighten them that it is hot, then they’ll go down into the lower level. Then you just pull the top one out and it’s all cleaned out. It’s actually quite easy.
D: It sounds, again like a laborious process right, like you can’t do that with all your castings at once, you have to do repeated trips.
F: Yeah, exactly.
D: But like do that then you go work on the farm someplace else and then you come back?
F: And then this was invisible structures. There was the patterns of behavior. We’d wake up, go make our run [to the restaurants], feed our chickens, rake up yesterday’s [scraps and throw it in worm pits], then we go and take some castings, we put it in [the wheelbarrow separator], then let it sit all day, and then the next day, we’d take those castings and make compost tea with it and then be spraying. It’s just a lot.
D: Sure, lots and lots.
F: Plus 20 other things.
D: Sure yeah, this is a long[?] cycle you’re talking about.
To be continued…
(Thanks to Pam for her transcription skillz.)
December 2nd, 2008
I recently interviewed Tracy, a classmate of mine. She’s kept worms for a number of years, but the most interesting thing she has done, from my perspective, is vermicomposted dog and cat waste, both hair and fecal matter.
However, she has much to say about all things vermi, from selling worms to making worm bins. Currently, she’s getting back into wormkeeping, and her next venture is “to compost dog waste at the dog ranch” at which she currently works. (Only small edits for obvious typos were made.)
Dan: You used worms to vermicompost dog and cat hair. Anything else (dog feces, etc)?
Tracy: I did vermicompost dog feces, at the time I had a 180 lb Rottweiler and a 80 lb Pittbull living at the house. (Large waste producing doggies!) I had a separate container (made of pallets about 4ft by 4ft), I combined this with old soil and yard debris, it took quite a while for this to break down and I really only spread it around the grasses or large non food trees.
Dan: How long did you do this for?
Tracy: 3 years total at this location.
Dan: What safety measures did you take, if any?
Tracy: It is important to maintain an optimum temperature–especially if you are dealing with feces. The ideal temperature for composting with dog waste is about 145F, this will kill off any pathogens that may cause adverse bacteria. The sun hit this containment a little more, and the manure itself heats up really rapidly. I stirred this when the temperature rose, about once a week or two. I kept this one bin away from the household bin. The household bin was usually kept at 60F to 80F degrees. Of course in the colder months–which was mild in Oregon–the worms will slow down.
Dan: How did you hot compost and vermicompost feces at the same time? I thought hot temps killed worms.
Tracy: I think what I did was let the sawdust and dog feces get a head start in one bin, let it heat up, and then move it on down the bin row. I was using a thermometer just sticking it the middle. Again I was just starting and using trial and error. When I started combining the worms, it would have been after I combined the partially broken down feces with yard debris and soil. The worms don’t tolerate excessive high temperatures, but it really only gets that hot in the very center, and that was initially when you start with a lot. They did have enough room to move away from the hottest spot. Some people have had their piles catch fire due to the heat, I never experienced that.
(I just want to mention that people have had very mixed reviews with the dog feces compost and it is important to note temperatures. The household worm bin is a fantastic idea. But I would not want to give the incorrect information when dealing with possible spread of bacteria when dealing with animal waste. So this is what worked for me to rid myself of dog waste and avoid putting this into a landfill. It is important to be careful and keep it away from food growing sources.)
Dan: What did you do with the worm castings?
Tracy: I harvested worm castings about every 2-3 months. I did make tea out of the casting, just by adding water, letting sit and pouring over my gardens. At this time I did not filter or use aeration to make my tea. To harvest, I would pile up my compost in pyramid shaped piles on a work bench, let them sit for a few hours and then all the worms would travel to the base of the pile and I would scrape off the top, I believe there are more efficient ways to harvest. In my fresh garden beds I would apply this directly. I also would transfer this compost to a large bin that had soil in it. I would continue to mix this and use it for potting and had a ready made blend for new gardens.
Dan: In making the tea, what was the ratio of water to vermicompost–any references or did you just wing it?
Tracy: I was definitely winging it. I used 5 gallon buckets, put about 1/4 of compost and filled with water. Sometimes I would dilute it further. Now there are better references online for an accurate formula.
Dan: What kind of worms did you use? (Eisenia foetida?)
Tracy: Yes I used the good old red worm wigglers
Dan: What volumes were you dealing with?
Tracy: I started out with 1000 red worms, I had the main bin that was about 4ft and 4ft and at the time I was living in a household of four. We were vegetarian and had a lot of veggie and fruit scraps. The worms can eat about their own weight in food a day, I probably was feeding them 2lbs a day, more at times. Of course the worms quickly multiplied so I was removing some and expanding bin by bin to avoid over population. Moving them to the bins that held yard debris, the dog waste, the ready made soil; other spaces where for example a bunch of blackberry bushes had been cut back and piled. I even sold a few to fisherman, sorry worms! At the time more people were interested in purchasing the tea from the farmers market and gardening store more than they wanted to have their own worm bin and do the work–which it really is no work at all! Now when I think of it I should have been selling the tea instead of the worms!
Dan: How did you find the fishermen to sell the worms to?
Tracy: Neighborhood, coffee shop and bar conversations! I am not sure what kind of fish and if they were catching any fish at all!
Dan: How long did the materials take to break down?
Tracy: Like I stated previously I think I was harvesting the castings about every 2 months during the warmer months. Some things were really quick to break down–a few weeks for green scraps or peelings. Some things took longer–a whole corn cob, citrus peels. I did it more often on a smaller scale, but if I wanted to get a lot of compost I would wait a little longer.
Dan: What did you use for bedding?
Tracy: I used A LOT of shredded newspaper, leaves, eggshells, coffee grounds, shredded cardboard, sweepings from the kitchen floor–pet hair, junk mail. Nothing with a lot of dyes like the glossy adds from the paper.
Dan: With the junk mail, what happened to the plastic envelope windows? Did you end up fishing those out of the bins?
Tracy: I would always tear those out. I made sure to always shred any paper product going into the bin. Nothing went in as a whole envelope or a whole newspaper.
Dan: Any tips for someone who wants to do this themselves?
Tracy: The biggest thing is the moisture content. The bedding should feel like a wrung out sponge. They do need moisture but there should not be standing liquid in the bed. This will eliminate any smell coming out of it–you should be able to keep a small unit in your home with no odor. This will also keep out flies, etc. Having a good balance of coffee grounds and egg shells will balance the ph of the compost. Don’t over do the citrus, it is not their favorite food. Don’t use meatscraps or dairy. Don’t use new materials to build a bin, you can use so many things you already have. I am about to change an old bathtub into a new bin!
Dan: What did you build the boxes out of?
Tracy: The boxes were made of pallets that I had. I just screwed them together with a drill. The main worm bin was made of a rubbermaid container with holes drilled all the way around it for oxygen to circulate. This was inside the pallet frame with four straw bales lined around the bin, to ensure warmth for the wormies. The worm bin had a lid on it and then the pallet closed around the straw bales to keep out animals. Four other pallet bins were lined up next to this along my fence for expansion.
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Worm bin made of pallets
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Worms and bedding in a rubbermaid bin
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Rubbermaid tubs make great worm bins
Were the boxes inside or outside?
Tracy: The bins were outside. I did have a mini bin–a five gallon bucket with a handful of worms I kept in my back room during the really rainy and cold months. I would just transfer that to the main bin on a nice day.
My gardens in Oregon were the best they have ever been in my life, using all those worm castings. Also the recycling program was really great in Oregon, so every week for a household of 4-5, two dogs, and a cat, I only had a small plastic grocery bag of garbage every week. Things are a little more challenging here at 9200ft, having to deal with colder weather and taking in all of my own garbage and recycling is one more step, but I am striving to again have zero to little waste.
Just talking about this makes me really excited to continue my vermicompost. I have been living in a tent or small cabin the years before I moved to Colorado, so it has been a few years. I guess I should have experimented with campicomposting!
September 25th, 2008
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