NC Vermiculture Conference
This conference in North Carolina has been going on for 10 years, and had 116 participants this year. Wow. More here, including some names of worm farms around the country.
Add comment June 20th, 2010
Vermicomposting and vermiculture around the world
I get email every time Google finds a post using the words ‘redworms’ or ‘vermiculture’. (You can set up the same thing with Google Alerts.) I have been letting these accumulate in my inbox, but there are a number of interesting articles showing the wide-ranging nature of vermicomposting, so I thought I’d compile and publish them.
Grand Rapids, Michigan sent a beekeeper to Nicaragua; there he learned vermiculture and now has “a compost pile with thousands of red worms.” In Detroit, Justin Pawloske “[collects] food from two area grocery stores that otherwise would have found its way into a landfill, and [composts] it with the use of worms”.
In Wisconsin, Will Allen of Growing Power uses worms in his composting systems on his urban farms because “[t]he worm castings make great fertilizer.”
A number of schools are doing vermicomposting. In Utah, West Point grade school is “using Red Wigglers to compost cafeteria scraps”. In Ontario, Scott Young Public School is also vermicomposting their cafeteria waste. In Kansas, Starside Elementary has set up vermicomposting systems, where “red worms eat food scraps, newspapers, and even junk mail.” In Ithaca, Caroline Elementary school’s fourth grade class is vermicomposting.
In Pennsylvania, the Haverford House, a part of Haverford College, is vermicomposting.
In the developing world, Spier Hotel, in Zambia, has a “waste-plus-worms-equals-compost vermiculture programme” as well as other sustainability initiatives. They are using Biolytix [PDF], an Australian sewage technology.
In India, villages are setting up backyard vermicomposting and selling vermicompost.
In Guatemala, a non profit considered using vermiculture as a profitable rural enterprise.
In South Africa, vermiculture is part of an “agricultural job-creation project.”
In the Philipines, residents who have been resettled near Bayanijuan plan to “start a vermiculture project.” There’s also a facebook page about a vermiculture project in that country.
In Minnesota, Mark Campbell, a resident of Edina, “tosses his kitchen waste in his vermiculture bin in the basement and uses the “tea” and castings to fertilizer his garden.” He also “ripped up most of the grass in his yard because he considers grass a waste of precious resources”. You can view a video of Mark here, though it focuses on fruit trees and apple crisp.
In Massachusetts, residents of cities with ‘pay as you throw’ garbage collection use vermicompost to save money and process their food scraps.
The Wall Street Journal reviews various composting options, including the Worm Factory, a vermicomposting bin.
In Maine, Redworms for a Green Earth exhibited at the Green Home and Living Show. Redworms were also featured at the Christ Episcopal Church‘s ‘Blessing of the Animals’ in Ponte Vedra, Florida. In California, a real estate blogger covers why vermicomposting is important for green real estate.
And, because this is a blog about worms in Colorado, here’s another great article about John Anderson and his company Garbage Busters.
I also got a lot of fishing reports–apparently redworms really are popular with fishermen!
2 comments November 25th, 2009
Questions: Plant diseases in feedstock and can worm cocoons drown?
Melissa, a reader, asks:
Could you tell me what the likelihood of mature vermicast containing plant diseases originating in leaves used as feedstock? I know that properly produced worm tea suppresses/fights plant diseases when applied to plants. However, I read on line that Australian standards for vermicast require some degree of pasteurization of feedstocks for mature vermicast. I appreciate any help you can give me with this.
Also, can worm coccoons drown in worm tea?
Thanks.
Melissa, thanks for writing in! I am afraid I don’t have any firm answers to either of your questions.
First off, as you know, worm composting does not reach the high temperatures that normal composting does. That heat is what kills plant diseases. While redworms have shown effectiveness in dealign with human pathogens, and vermicompost helped supress several plant diseases [PDF], I was unable to find anything directly attacking the problem you have: feedstock infected with a plant disease. If I were looking to sell the vermicompost, or use it on food plants that would come in contact with it, I would make some first and getit tested for the particular disease that was in the feedstock. Then, depending on that result, you could always start by hot composting the feedstock first. (As an aside, here’s an interesting abstract showing the finished product of worm composting and hot composting end up with dramatically different types of bacteria populations.)
Second, I’m not sure whether or not worm cocoons can drown. I found several references on the web to viable worm cocoons floating, but when I put a worm cocoon in water, it sank. I found other conflicting references. Again, in searching, I found some interesting facts (some worm cocoons can survive -8 degree celsius (-22 F) for 3 months, cocoons dehydrate at lower temperatures) but no authoritative studies on the survival characteristics of redworm cocoons. Here’s a forum post from the author of “Worms Eat My Garbage” which indicates that cocoons are not hurt by water:
The safest course would be to sift cocoons out before you make worm tea, or perhaps skim off the bottom layer periodically, since hatched worms are known to die in 100% water environments.
These are both fascinating questions experiments; please let me know if you end up experiementing around either one.
Add comment November 15th, 2009
Vermicomposting on Wikipedia
I strongly encourage you to visit the Wikipedia page on vermicomposting. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Isn’t that cool? So much information packed into one page.
One of the things I love about worm keeping is that it is such a hands on experience. Are you curious if worms like cabbage? How about carrot tops? Rotten apples? The answer is try it, if you have the room in your bin. This culture of experimentation is prevalent everywhere I look in the worming community.
However, a lot of the knowledge people have is locked up, in mailing lists and on the web. And, if a newcomer looks for advice on the web, they can find all kinds of crazy conflicting advice (yes, I realize I’m adding to the madness).
This is where Wikipedia comes in. It can serve as a jumping off point, with references to other blogs and papers. The Wikipedia article is already the top result for ‘vermicomposting’ on google. But the best part is that you can edit the article yourself. Notice an incorrect fact? See a typo? Found an article that explains an aspect of worm keeping? Have a great picture of your bin? Add it to the article, and keep pushing the knowledge of worm keeping forward.
Note, please be aware that you shouldn’t put links to your own blog posts on Wikipedia; it’s bad form to do so. I did this, until someone else removed them. And that brings up another point–editors and writers on Wikipedia can be a bit brusque, so be prepared with a thick skin. Here’s the Wikipedia manual of style to get your editing started on the correct path.
Add comment October 16th, 2009
Cat litter composting
Bentley, over at redwormcomposting.com, has a new post up about cat litter composting, and his experiences with it. He started out trying to compost cat poop, but also wanted to know if the compostable litter he was using could be processed by redworms.
Initially the composting seemed to proceed at a very slow rate, with the volume of material in the bin remaining relatively stable. Strangely enough, after my last big addition of cat litter waste (I tend to let it accumulate for awhile before adding it), the level of material in the bin seemed to go down quite quickly all of a sudden. I also noticed a lot of mushrooms growing in the material (as you can see in the image above) just afterwards.
Yesterday, when I was taking some pictures for this blog posting, just for the fun of it I decided to have a peek at the material in the bottom of the bin. I was curious to see how well decomposed it might be. When I pulled up the compost access door I was shocked to see a bunch of fat, vigorous Red Worms wiggling away. Upon closer examination I discovered that the material was not only loaded with worms, but it’s also contains countless cocoons!
Good stuff! Read the whole article. Also, you may be interested in my interview with someone who composted dog and cat waste.
Add comment August 11th, 2009
Vermicomposting Horse Manure
Via the Manure Management articles section of the Equine Extension department of Colorado State University, I found this interesting article on vermicomposting horse manure. It references another article about composting horse manure quite a bit.
These articles are quite explicit about methods to create the compost, and have good information about the processes of vermicomposting or composting. They also do a good job of explaining some of the decisions a someone with horse manure will need to take (what kind of worms, how to set up windrows).
Here’s a great quote about the profligacy of E. foetida:
50 pounds of Eisenia will reproduce to 1,000 pounds of worms shortly after four doubling
periods (in just over 16 months). In two years, that initial 50 pounds of Eisenia will be more than enough (3200 pounds) to vermicompost the manure from 30 horses.
And the article also answers a very important question about horse dewormers and redworms:
Will horse dewormers kill red worms?
The most common wormer used is known by the brand name Ivermectin® made by the Merial Company. Merial’s research shows that the active chemicals in Ivermectin® are deactivated when manure is exposed to sunlight. Equine studies show that 95 percent of the active chemicals in Ivermectin® are deactivated in the horse before being passed in the feces. Leading experts in vermicomposting believe that the concentration of Ivermectin® in the horse manure is not high enough to seriously injure Eisenia.
Apparently the Ivermectin used for horses has been rebranded Zimecterin; it might be worth asking the vet about this situation because I couldn’t find anything.
These articles don’t, however, give much advice about what to do with the presumably vast amount of vermicompost your worms will be generating. Assuming the worms reduce the weight of the manure by 20%, that’s still over 4 tons of vermicompost a week when your operation is fully going (assuming 30 horses). This is about all the advice you get on what to do with castings:
Castings can be tilled into the soil directly from the windrow or screened for adding to greenhouse soil mixes, potted plants, lawns, and gardens.
Vermicomposting at this scale is an economic decision. 50 pounds of red wrigglers will probably cost you 500-700 bucks, and you have labor, land and equipment costs. On the other hand, you have to get rid of your manure somehow and beyond castings, you might be able to start a business selling redworms to home wormkeepers like me.
5 comments July 18th, 2009
Red wigglers to the rescue
Boulder Organic, a new publication from the folks at the Boulder Weekly, have a new article about red worm composting, John Anderson, and rescuing a bad compost operation. John is his characteristic, no b.s. self:
“Our prime directive in this culture is to make more food to make more people to sell more shit to,” he says. “The system has to stop designing waste. We design things with waste on purpose because of somebody’s back pocket.”
The article also discusses other important aspects of home wormkeeping, including how to feed and harvest red wigglers, and provides a list of things that can be vermicomposted (one which is slightly different than the one I’ve provided).
Add comment June 22nd, 2009
Vermicomposting on the History Channel
Via the_worm_bin, this video examines a large scale verimcomposting operation:
7 million worms, accelerating the composting proces form 6-9 months to 40 days.
Add comment April 16th, 2009
Does Redworm Composting Reduce Pathogens in Waste?
Via a pointer from Dan Matsch, I looked at some of the work that Clive Edwards has done. One paper, “The Effectiveness of Vermiculture in Human Pathogen Reduction for USEPA Biosolids Stabilization” (pdf) is interesting. The researchers basically piled human feces (dewatered biosolids between 15 and 20 percent solids) into two windrows. They then innoculated both windrows with a variety of pathogen indicators, and one with a significant number of E. Fetida worms.
The results? After 144 hours (12 days), the windrow with the worms had significantly less pathogens than the one without:
Interesting stuff. It would be hard to do this outside of a commercial facility, since the biosolids were not 100 percent feces, you’d need a large number of worms, and to let the worms work undisturbed for two weeks. But it certainly is interesting that rewdorms are responsible (in some manner!) for such a large amount of pathogen reduction. (I’ve worried about pathogens in worm bins before.)
This also reminds me of a chapter from the Solviva book, where the author discusses various composting toilets (including a flush toilet), and her successes with using earthworms there.
4 comments March 27th, 2009
Internet Resource: RedWormComposting.com
Redwormcomposting.com, a blog and ecommerce site, is chock full of information on vermicomposting. Located in southwestern Ontario, the author is prolific; he writes for EcoSherpa and Compost Guy as well. As well as redworms, he sells various products on the site; some of them look pretty interesting. He answers readers’ questions fairly regularly, and also is always trying new approaches to vermiculture. I especially like his experiments in keeping worms alive through the Canadian winter. The writer is obviously gonzo about redworms and his site is worth reading through if you have any interest.
Add comment March 7th, 2009
