vermicomposting - updated

[troutinturnie]

As an employee for the Municipal Government of Berwick Nova Scotia, I was assigned to organize and create a proper recycling and composting system that worked for everyone and was easy to maintain. I dont know how many of you out there are or have ever heard of vermicomposting but it is the answer! Vermicomposting is pretty much creating a worm farm. You keep several hundrend worms in a tub and you feed them your compost. It works like a charm, no mess, smell, or work really. I am in charge of feeding the worms and maintaining the compost. We usually feed fruits and vegetables them a couple times a week. Most fruits and vegetables are acceptable worm foods but dairy products and meat are not. Dairy will cause your bin to stink and the meat will not decompose and the worms dont tend to eat it. I learned alot while doing this project, one thing is that you can have a worm bin right in your living room and never know its there! If your worm bin is will looked after it is literally smell proof.
I have added a few pics to show you guys what its all about, feel free to comment or share any worm bin stories of your own.

PS, in the middle of winter when worms are non existing in Nova Scotia, you will be the place to be when all your buddies find out!!!

The worm bin


The worm food sign I created


The inside of the bin, shredded newspaper also acts as a food for the worms


Close up of the warms for ya



Cheers

[Admin]

This is awesome stuff ;D

Lets hear a little more about it. I keep a compost bin but am not gardening this year and always need bait. Karma to ya

[maritimer]

Berwick's Head Worm Guy ;D More Karma buddy

So what actually happens to the food? They just eat it and poop it out or what?

[troutinturnie]

Ill answer both your questions. Some people use the worm castings (poop) for fertilizer in their gardens. At the office I work at we have no gardens to put the castings in so every couple months you have to change the soil and put fresh stuff in. That is about the only maintenance the worm bin needs. As for the bait issue, the worms we use are redworms
They are a smaller worm. A buddy of mine uses his redworms in the winter time for ice fishing when other worms are not available.. .. he is the only one catching fish on the lake!!! As for other trout fishing these worms will work but another breed of worms would be better (night crawlers) either way with a worm bin you always have worms on hand for any occasion. Also, worms breed all the time and you can easily go from a few hundred worms to several hundred in a couple months!

Any more questions Im your man

[Admin]

If you have a worm bin outside with no bottom. Will the worms eventually escape or tunnel down too deep? Or is it better to have a bottom and a cover to keep out excessive rain? How should I go about making the perfect worm bin?

[gerrye]

This is interesting. I am not the best at "maintaining" my compost pile, I forget to turn it ect. I read up up on composting in barrels. Its called hot composting and is supposed to be ready in a couple of weeks. You vent the barrel, keep adding to it and rolling the barrel. Its working but it seems to have good spots and bad spots that just dry out. Using the worms sounds like it will work for me. Thanks for sharing.

[troutinturnie]

Here is a diagram of the perfect worm bin for what you want to do. First dig a hole in the ground about 2 feet deep and 4 feet wide. This is going to be your worm bin. You are going to want to build a box with the same dimensions so the worms dont escape. You will loose some but its no biggy because they will reproduce fast enough anyways. When you put the box in the ground you want to have about 2 inches hanging out over the ground creating a lip (I failed to include this in my diagram ) This helps keep the worms in as well. Now that is your bin. Do the same as any other bin and fill it with the appropriate soil and cover the top in shredded news paper and add your worms. As for the rain you are going to want to build a removable roof to allow you to feed the worms. I recommend a sheet of plastic roof or something along those lines, this will keep the excessive rain out. You want to have your roof on an angle so the water runs down. Also just have the roof up on 4 dowel sticks to allow air to flow freely, worms need to breathe to As for other bugs and stuff you may find later on that you could cover the whole operation in some sort of screen, I dont know that will be up to you when the time comes. Most importantly you want to have your bin in the shade. If the sun reflects off the cover it will fry all your worms in no time at all! Hope this helps and if you have any more questions feel free to ask.

[troutinturnie]

Also if you want to have this set up so you have as little maintenance to do as possible, you may want to drill about 6 holes in the bottom about the size of a dime just so the castings can flow through them and you wont have to change the soil as often.

[patricimo54]

What about adding aged chicken poop to the bin? Will it be to "hot" for the worms? I have been told that I need to compost my chicken poop before adding it to the garden. Is this my solution?

[Admin]

I'm liking this thread ;D I'll have to sticky this thread because I think it would be very benifitial to a lot of folks. I don't want to see it get buried.

I have a lot of metal roofing scraps that I could line the bin with. This will be a project of mine somewhere in the future. I'll make a hinged metal roof for it. Do you have to do anything special in the winter? You mentioned a friend uses the worms for ice fishing. Does he hve a bin inside the house or cellar?

More karma to ya.

[payne]

Thanks for sharing, very interesting.
Could you do this with the nightcrawlers?

[troutinturnie]

Pat, does chicken poop contain alot of amonium? I thought I heard that before somewhere but can't rememebr. In that case you wouldnt want to because it would kill off the worms. If it doesnt you would almost have to trial and error it... The worms will eat it but not in large amounts so if you tried alittle at a time and the worms were eating it then feel free to keep adding more each time.
JC, in order to use the worms for fishing you would have to transfer them inside over the winter. Someplace that would keep them warm enough they wont freeze. Once inside you can dig them up as often as you like for fishing.
Payne, you can do the same with night crawlers although they do not decompse the waste as fast as the redworms.

[maritimer]

I'm gonna give you another Karma as well. For answering everyones questions and drawing that mint diagram ;D

[muskrat24]

Thanks for posting this. ;D Vermicomposting is a dual benefit for the outdoors man. Makes fertilizer for your garden and bait for your fishing trips.

[acewoodsman]

that's a great post i'm going to have to copy this down an give it a try next yr it's got alot of good use's ;D have another karma

[dirtyd]

Thanks for posting. That is great info. We compost, or try to compost but I really like the idea of having a never ending bait bucket sitting around, without having my yard looking like a badgers been through.

Have Karma.

[troutinturnie]

I was doing a bit more research into this today at work and I found out that my outdoor diagram would be better for the night crawlers. The night crawlers wouldnt be your ideal indoor worm composting because they are a more picky worm apparently and dont eat as much and as fast. So for indoor worms your best bet is redworms and for outdoor more bait style worms, night crawlers would be fine ;D

[kiwisaavy]

This is a cool thread. I'm a big fan of earthworms and used to keep a setup like troutinturnie in my bathroom in Alaska. Did it for a winter and it worked fabulous, but the following winter I was going to be away so I was stumped how to keep my worms from freezing to death. Decided I'd put all the worms in a big compost pile outdoors, cover with buckets of manure from a friend's stable, and mound it with a couple feet of dry hay and cover with a tarp. And hope for the best. Well, after 6 months of winter, I uncovered the mound, and there were heaps and heaps of happy worms.

Now I live in New Zealand and I'm a lazy composter. Have too many other things to do than 'turn the pile' so I chuck worms in with all the food scraps and pea straw and pony poo and they munch it down to wonderful compost and castings.

At one time we were home brewing. And we put the spent hops in the pile. Got worried because suddenly I couldn't find any worms scattered through the pile. ... that's because they were all in the HOPS having a party. They love the stuff.

[trapperandhunter]

thats a pretty good idea turnie, and i would take redworms over night crawlers any day for fishing i hate night crawlers for brookies |!

[dirtyd]

I’m bummed to report that I gave this a shot and it didn’t go over too well. Although I take full responsibility because my attempt was half-assed as some of my attempts are.

I had leftover red worms from a fishing trip so thought this would be a perfect opportunity to get this project going. I didn’t have any proper bedding so I did my best to shred up some old cardboard and also mixed in some pine shavings, watered ‘em, rung ‘em out and thew them in a medium sized Rubbermaid container along with a couple handfuls of leftover kitchen produce.

A couple hours later I got yelled at by the wife because we had worms crawling all over the basement. Got all the worms rounded up and tightened up the lid. Then because the lid was so tight I started growing mold/fungus. I was pretty bummed. But I’ll give it another shot before long but this time I’ll put a little more thought it the process.

[stickbowhntr]

Didn't I see a link to a BIG article on this somewhere here? maybe somewhere else a long article giving in even more detail...I think it was the same articles as I remember the pics that are here ?Could somebody post that link? Thank you . ;D

[barkspud]

Great post old boy I've seen this on TV and my have even been that company. I know it was a Canadian one. My son used to do this and I have friends that do as well works great and good stuff for the gardening needs. I like red worms or the ones we have here but don't care for crawlers. I have haversted crawler to just to add to my garden very benificial for sure. I dump my worms before freeze up in my beds and garden spots every year. Come spring I dig more( not from my garden) under apple trees are great for worms thick if the trees grow any amount of apples..spread a old rug or burlap out under the tree and pull up every now and then to find worms works great. With me digging worms for a living I can fill a bucket pretty fast if they live there ;D...have a karma old boy..