The EPA (USA’s Environmental Protection Agency) has a great starter page about worm composting, with links to some pretty good information sources:
Through this method, red worms—not nightcrawlers or field worms found in gardens— are placed in bins with organic matter in order to break it down into a high-value compost called castings. Worm bins are easy to construct (they are also commercially available) and can be adapted to accommodate the volume of food scraps generated.
It’s more of a ‘what is vermicomposting’ than it is ‘how do I start’, but I love the fact that the US federal government (as well as some local governments) promotes vermicomposting.
July 8th, 2009
Especially during the winter, food scraps can be a big problem. My redworms are not inside, so I can’t just walk to another room in my bathrobe. Food scraps accumulate at different rates (if I make a fruit salad, quite rapidly; chili, not so much). If I leave the scraps for too long, they produce fruit flies and smells. And since the weather can be bad 6 months of the year here in Boulder, Colorado, I can’t always put the scraps in my bin immediately, as I tend to do during the summer.
I’ve tried a variety of solutions for keeping my food scraps inside until I can move it out to my external worm bin, including:
- having my worm bin inside
- a 5 gallon bucket full of leaves and some vermicompost
- zip lock baggies
Things that I have not tried that I’ve read or heard about include
I don’t like the idea of freezing the scraps because
Below, I outline the system that works for me. I have two or three 1 gallon coffee containers, like this one:
coffee container
I fill one (container A) up with food scraps. Since it is airtight, the smells don’t escape, and you have no flies. It does get pretty funky and moldy in there, depending on what scraps I’m putting in. I’ll put everything in there, including liquids.
When it is full, I take it out and dig a hole in my bin. I empty the container into the bin. If it is really funky, sometimes I’ll fill the container with water and dump that in. I refill the hole with some of the bedding.
Then, I add a bunch of leaves (every fall I grab them from the curb and store them on my patio) for additional carbon content.
As for the container, I’ll leave it outside, and take another one in (container B). I find that leaving them outside on my patio serves a number of purposes:
- dries out any food scraps that stuck to the side of the container
- dissipates any smell
- dries out mold (I don’t know if it kills the mold, though)
I have not had any trouble with animals investigating the containers, though I live in a pretty urban environment. After container B fills and I empty it into the bin, I knock whatever dried scaps remain in container A out into the bin or onto the beds, and take it in with me.
What methods do you use to deal with your food scraps?
April 26th, 2009
A few weekends ago, I gave a few quarts of worms to classmates that had asked for them. Since I have plenty of worms in the bin, I was happy to hand them out. I didn’t bother separating the worms from vermicompost, I just dug around in the bin and found a bunch of worms chowing down. I took a couple of clusters and tossed them in yogurt quart plastic containers for easy transport.
One of my classmates was a bit surprised–I think he thought I would take longer to get him the worms. He asked me a question that put me back on my heels for a second: “What do you do with all the worms? What about the castings they produce?”
As far as I am concerned, there are four outputs of worms for the home worm keeper (as opposed to an industrial worm farmer):
- more worms
- vermicompost (the intermediate product of worm digestion)
- worm castings (the end product of worm digestion)
- garbage reduction
Each output has good properties, but it may be hard to achieve all of these outputs at the same time. For example, when I want to make worm castings, an easy way to do so is to put extra worms into a small bin with some food and wait. The worms all die, but I’ll have pure castings in the end. Worms may reproduce better when fed special worm food, which limits the garbage reduction, and they’ll certainly reproduce more if you replace bedding more often (not too often, but as the bedding turns into castings, the worms have to exert more effort finding food, and thus less making new worms). Vermicompost and worm castings are somewhat exclusive, since vermicompost eventually turns into worm castings.
Luckily, you can have more than one worm bin, and each can be set up to produce one or more of the outputs. However, I think it helps every worm keeper should think about what they want to optimize, as that affects box location, required amount of work, and size of box.
My worm experience has been focused on reducing my garbage production. That’s why I originally started keeping worms, and easily reducing organic waste has been what keeps me excited about worms. (That’s not to say that I don’t use the other outputs: I’ve put worm castings as top dressing on plants, gave worms to other people (obviously), and put vermicompost under transplants. But for me, the magic of worms is their ability to take smelly waste and turn it into dirt.
October 24th, 2008
