Worm composting

[MoonShadows]

Bought a Vermihut Worm Bin for the kitchen. While we have our compost pile outside, I like to dress directly around plants with worm castings, but they can be expensive to buy, and a worm bin will also help to produce even more worms than we get in our outdoor compost and garden naturally.

As worms digest the organic materials they consume, they refine them. Nutrients, including minerals and trace elements, are reduced to their most usable form. The castings have a neutral pH of 7.0. Castings are completely finished and unlike some other manures, don’t smell strongly (they smell like forest soil) nor will they burn plants due to too much direct nitrogen. Castings do contain 4% to 5% more nitrogen than your average garden soil, but in a slow release form due to the mucous the worms secrete as they digest. Castings make soil more absorbent, making moisture more consistently available to plants and prevent soil from completely drying out. Worms introduce uncountable numbers of beneficial microbes and bacteria into the finished product (up to 10,000 different kinds) that aid plant growth and help fight off disease. Castings give you the healthiest soil possible. In addition, castings contain humic acid which aids plant nutrient absorption. Studies show that germination and seedling growth is improved by planting in worm castings. Worm castings are the super food of garden plants.

 

[MoonShadows]

My 500 red wiggler worms arrived yesterday afternoon, so I set up the worm bin. It came with a brick-sized piece of coir which I soaked in 1 gallon of water expanding it to about 5x it's original size. Next, I lined the bottom try with a sheet of wet newspaper, added the coir, then the worms, another sheet of wet newspaper, then some cuttings of a small cucumber and a couple of florets of broccoli. When the worms arrived they were tiny and almost looked lifeless, but the literature explained that was normal. Already this morning, they look bigger and have become active.

You can see in this picture that some of them have already made it up to the top and many of them are around the sides.

 

[sumi]

I remember hearing about earthworms farmed for composting some years ago and people were raving about the castings. We have so many of the things here, I have considered getting a bin going and seeing how it goes. My mealworm messes I scatter over the lawn now. I put some on the plants I had and damn near killed them, but I think I may have overdone it a little…

 

[MoonShadows]

We thought about building one but that is a really good price. I wouldn't bother with building one if I could buy it for that. I need to do more research but would love to do this next spring!

That's what I figured...by the time I bought the materials....and, then got around to making it, another season would go by. At 61 revolutions around the sun, I don't want to wait too long.

 

[lcertuche]

You'll have to let us know how well it works. I used to use deep mulch for the garden and I had tons of worms. My chickens would scratch in it all winter along with shredded leaves up to their necks, grass clippings, kitchen scraps. I never tilled it and hardly ever watered it. Those worms know their business. I was constantly chasing the kids out of the garden because they would dig worms for fishing.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Woohoo! Anxious to follow this and see how it works out!

 

[MoonShadows]

Actually pretty well. The first level is beginning to fill with worm castings. I haven't harvested any as of yet, nor the "tea" from the spigot at the bottom. I'm waiting for it to build up some more. I bought a little meter to measure the moisture content and pH levels which are important to keeping worms. They say the worms can double in population every 90 days under good conditions. The only downside is fruit flies...almost impossible to keep them out. When I lift the cover, the worms scatter (they don't like light) and the fruit flies fly up and out, but they must find their way back in because I don't see them after a minute or two. Absolutely no odor whatsoever in the kitchen and just a slight earthy smell when I open the cover to feed them.

 

[NH Homesteader]

DH and I were just talking about worm composting yesterday. I haven't done much research yet but we're interested. This looks really cool.

 

[MoonShadows]

I got it for $68.95 on Amazon with 5 trays. I've seen them for much more on other sites. I have also watched YouTube vids where people show how to make them out of all kinds of different materials. I was thinking of building one, but then I found this one much cheaper.

 

[NH Homesteader]

We thought about building one but that is a really good price. I wouldn't bother with building one if I could buy it for that. I need to do more research but would love to do this next spring!