My worm composting experience

Thanks for the replies to my first post... I thought I'd add a new threadjust to show what I've done so far, so I can ask questions and also give insight to others who might want to try it. Learn from my experiences and what works or doesn't.

This is the composter. I just bought the materials last week and received my worms yesterday. I ordered 1/2 pound from a local 'environmental' shop.

As you can see, it's a standard Rubbermaid plastic tote with a lid, measuring 24x16x8.75" according to the label. I've photographed it on my kitchen counter so you can get an idea of the size. I'm a single guy living alone (except for my dog Zoë) and I figure I generate enough worm-food for this size container, mostly because I eat a lot of fruit and vegetables. I'd like to keep it in the kitchen, so we'll see about the smell as things go along. No animal protein (meat, dairy) or oils.

I drilled holes in the bottom of the bin for drainage, and in the top for ventilation. It's pretty warm in there already, so I might have to drill more holes. Does anyone have advice on this? I saw one example where there was an air pump and tubing! I hope that's not necessary for my little project.

Working from information I found online, I covered the holes with screening to prevent escapees. This cuts down on the effective ventilation, I suspect, but not on the drainage from the bottom. If anyone is a fan of The Red Green Show, note the liberal use of duct tape. How Canadian, eh? The screening is fibreglass.

Someone pointed out that worms try to escape when they are unhappy with their environment, a good warning sign that something's wrong, such as too much or too little moisture or acidity. This is a good point. Apparently they will gather on the underside of the lid to get away from the bedding.

I filled the bin with torn-up newspaper, well wetted, for the basic bedding. I also added about 2 cups of garden soil, for the grit. Already the bedding is sinking, although I have fluffed it up a few times. I also put food in one side and buried it with bedding. This was mostly lettuce, orange rinds, banana peels and coffee grounds, paper filter included.

Here's my little nest of worms. I bought half a pound as my starter, which cost me $30, kind of a lot I thought, but they are the right worms: Eisenia fetida, red wriggler/wigglers. I pulled back the bedding, put them in, pulled the clump apart a bit and covered them up. That was yesterday afternoon; today, several have travelled from the home base to explore the treasures lying in store. None crawling up the sides to escape, yet.

So that's my adventure so far. Any advice would be appreciated!

Andrew

I have read that they crawl out with an overdose of citrus rinds or acid things. (By the way, coffee grounds are not necessarily acid pH) I don't know how much soil you put in there, but I think is has to be enough that they can get some conveeiently wherever they are.

That looks good, keep us posted.

This is too COOOOOL
I love worms. Ok so funny story , I lived in Arizona "yes ,i know ,dry heat", hahaha. So we don't have worms in AZ to hot, yes again, "dry heat", hahaha. We move to the country, in Ohio,
Well ,because it doesn't rain in AZ , i was very excited to see rain., I ran and was frantickly digging up worms. to put in my compost. My neighbor comes out and says" what are you doing?" i reply ,"digging up worns to put in my compost", She laughed hysterically at the sight of city girl from AZ digging for worms. Apparently worms are ABUNDANT in Ohio.hahahahahahaha
I will be looking forward to your thread, i to am thinking about worm bins. cool
good luck
sue

I found this Andy:
http://www.cathyscomposters.com/

Worm Food
Fruit/vegetable peels
Coffee grounds/filters
Plant cuttings
Tea bags ........staples to be removed
Crushed eggshells
Brown paper towels
Cooked pasta & rice (no sauce)
Egg cartons/coffee trays
Breads/cereals/grains
Leaves/grass clippings
Beard clippings
Beans
Manure (horse, cow, rabbit)
Sawdust (from untreated wood)

One of my co-workers has been vermicomposting for a couple of years......after reading your post above I really should take her up on her wriggler starter offer.

This message was edited Jan 31, 2006 6:40 PM

Great information. I suppose that I have always figured that "Certainly, these teabag staples are not galvanized (stainless) and perhaps when they rust, they will provide some iron in the soil..."
Should the manure be aged?

It should be aged enough that it could be used on plants.

A popular book on the subject is:
Worms Eat My Garbage by Mary Appelhof.

When I moved to my shallow wormless soil here in kalispell I started with the cheapest soil starter we had. Sawdust + water and to my surprise by early spring the dark sawdust was full of worms. There was a little cow manure added later but sawdust and water give birth to worms. Any carbon works we used leaves in Michigan. I feel that worm compost works best in the garden so dump anything and keep it wet. Hey when I was a kid we would have a major migration out of our crawler boxes when the barometer dropped suddenly and our basement became a grave-yard of mummified crawlers. Keep the lid on when thunder and lightning.

My worm bin is ready and my worms should be arriving today! I'm excited to get started. I made a bottom drainage hole with a tube to a bottle to catch the "compost tea". Let's see if I can get a picture on here.....

Thanks for the great comments, everyone.

It's Day 3 now, and the worms have moved in big-time! I checked through the bin and they are in all the corners, top and bottom, but there are still quite a few in the original stuff they came in.

One site I read suggested putting the food into plastic mesh bags and buring it in the bedding, to keep it together; then you can keep track of how much has been eaten and put the next batch in another part of the bin. I'll try this next time I feed them.

I don't want to disturb them much, but the bedding has settled and I'll add more on top.

Kristen, my bin has drainage holes in the bottom and I've got it on a plastic boot tray to catch any run-off, which hasn't happened yet. We'll see how that evolves.

Soferdig, since my composter is indoors, I won't be adding any manure! That might happen if I start one outside this summer. I've mentioned what I'm doing to a few neighbours in my little development and they're interested in having a large communal composter.

I'm producing way more 'food' than they can handle. Today I threw out most of what I would want to put in, because the bin is too young and there aren't enough worms yet. As the population grows, I might start a second bin. I just happen to eat a lot of fruit!

Andy; before long, their population will naturally match exactly what you feed them regularly. I figure that the mesh bags would also keep your usable compost and raw material conveniently separated for use. Fancy.

My vermicompost actually does use earthworms as well, as they seem to be very attracted from nearby to the area outdoors. Per worm they eat less and are slower, but when there are enough of them, it makes instant structured topsoil.

Does a large communal compost mean that all of your neighbors give their waste to you, and you give them a bit of produce, veg, flowers, or compost in return? I give flowers and veg to my neighbors for all of their grass clippings and leaves. They say that they were more than hapy to get rid of the stuff anyhow!
K. James

According to the US Government's publication on vermiculture (yes, there is one!) worms will run away from citrus, onion, and garlic.

Very wise. Much like a minority of people without bad breath. The citric and sulfuric acids need to be un-concentrated and dispersed by microbes before the worms will go near:
"Ouch, my eyes (If I had any as an annelid) are burning!"

This message was edited Feb 1, 2006 11:44 AM

I should mention the lady at work uses just white papper, that has been shredded, as her composting bed. Andy the manure she's put in is so well aged it doesn't have any smell to it.

When deciding how many worms to purchase, use the 2:1 ratio. (Two pounds of worms for every pound of kitchen waste produced per day). To determine the amount of worms required, it is recommended that the organic scraps be collected and weighed for a week or two.

My worms came this afternoon!! WHY is this so exciting?!?! ha ha. I will wait until tomorrow to put any food in....I read to try to wait and let them start to eat on the bedding a bit.

I can really appreciate your excitement, Kristen, I'm still charged up about my critters. I'm trying to exercise restraint and patience!

Lilypon, I read that the bleach used to make white paper can be a problem for worms, so I'm just using newspaper for now. They seem to like it.

If we do a communal compost, I'll set it up in a common area nearby. I live in a housing development with two rows of townhouses facing each other on a dead-end lane, and there's a garden at the end with a fountain and trees, shrubs, etc. I would put it there and just let people toss in their vegetative waste and keep it topped up with bedding as it goes. I'll have to think about how to manage it. For now, my own is enough to think about!

I thought it might cause a problem too but she's been collecting the shredded paper for 4 years from our workplace and she says it works well.

Just looking at your "zone's" makes me cold! Do you all have your bins inside for winter? We are having a big thunder and lighting storm now and I know my worms must be upset in there! They are outside, but under the covered porch with a lid and a blanket.

As a beginner, I only have one bin, and it's inside. Winter temperatures here can go to -35C -- NOT a good temperature for worms!

Over the long term, I'll probably keep my worms inside anyway, to avoid other critters moving in. If I left the bin outside during the summer, who knows what I'd be introducing to my house when I brought it in for the winter. At least worms stay put (more or less).

Question: Do earwigs like the environment of a worm composter? My guess is that they would.

Yes, unless the medium is finer, like soil. (where theyprefer not to dig into). If they began to appear, it would not be hard to elevate the bin and put down sticky boundaries to keep them out.

A little digression- I had the most unusual experience with earwigs last year. They are normally detritus eaters, but eat a little vegetable matter (say books, authorities, etc). I was completely overrun by them in my veg garden last summer! There were literally a dozen earwigs on one leaf, skeletonizing it. They ate everything but Mirabilis. Squah, carrots, lettuce, calendula, dahlia... They even ate castor leaves, which suffered the worst damage. I tried baits to no avail. My success at killing them was a nighttime earwig pogrom. All of them were easily seen then, and I could kill hunrdeds a night. Once I got over the nasty smell that they make (and leave on one's hands), I would go out and squish every one I saw two nights per week. What works, works...
K. James

Here's an update on my worm bin. The wormies have spread all through the bedding, and seem to have found two places to concentrate as well. I discovered some egg casings yesterday, so something's been going on in there while I wasn't looking!

The temperature is a little warmer than room temperature (the bin is in my kitchen) and I think this is due to the organic matter breaking down. There is condensation on the roof and walls of the bin when I take the cover off. Speaking of this, they are not trying to escape. They couldn't if they tried, because the tote seals tightly when you close it, and I lined the ventilation holes with fiberglass screening. But if they were trying to escape, they would be crawling up on the walls and lid, so I'm told. I've seen castings on the walls above the bedding, but no worms when I've checked.

Two days ago I fed them by putting in an onion-bag of food to keep it together, as I described previously. Today there were no worms in it (they still have plenty of food elsewhere in the bin) so I guess it needs to break down a bit and attract more microbial activity before it becomes attractive to the lil guys.

I started with only half a pound of worms, so I have a way to go before the bin is really 'happening'. Some of the worms are quite big, so I expect they are mature and doing what comes naturally. I haven't spotted little babies yet, but I'm trying to be as unobtrusive as I can when I check.

As someone said above, they are tending to stay away from the orange rinds and onion skins (which are dry anyway). Their favourite was the flesh of a baked yam. And they really like the lettuce, which got really slimey. They're not too keen on banana skins. Someone suggested freezing or nuking some things before putting them in to hasten the breakdown. I can just put stuff outside overnight and it'll freeze rock solid!

Hi Andy,
Thanks for the play by play. I'm about a week behind you; I just got my worms yesterday. Nice to know I can read your experiences and avoid any wrong moves. ;-)
My little guys were crawling up the sides of the bin when I got up this morning, but I added a little bit of lime and drilled a few more holes in the lid. They seem happy now.

Update on my experience.

So far, so good. Not the most exciting hobby I've ever had.
The worms have started to eat the pulp from my juicer, ....slowly. They seem more gathered in that spot now, but it's not disappearing very fast.
I decided to shred some newspaper, wet it and place it over the top of the area where the pulp is. (A big clump of it ....newspaper that is) They seem to like that.

After three weeks, my bin has developed its own microbial environment. When I feed the bin, stuff seems to start breaking down almost immediately, sometimes getting covered with mold (a yam, a choped-up orange)or getting slimy (lettuce). There's a nice 'earthy' smell to the bin, and I'm seeing a lot of castings. It's warm in there, too. I put an extra layer of moist newspaper strips on the surface last week, since the original bedding is settling, and being eaten. Some people report a foul 'sour' smell coming from the bottom, but I don't have that at all.

There's condensation on the sides of the bin, so it's moist, but there's no leachate coming out of the drainage holes, so it's not too moist, I guess. Ventilation seems to be fine.

Update's from anyone? Andy - pics inside your bin would be great. I have the bin but haven't acted yet!

-Kim

I was wondering how fast do they breed? Lets say you have four dozen worms, how many new worms would or should you expect to have in, lets say, three months?

Dena

I would like to know the same thing Dena. I have a half a pound of worms in my bin and they don't seem to be keeping up with eating the pulp from my daily juicing. I'm hoping that they will multiply and some day keep up with me.

Kim, A friend of mine didn't believe me when I said I was keeping worms, so I took this shot for her.

These websites answered all my questions and more, lots of good reading!

http://www.wackyworldsof.com/html/worm_care.html
http://www.cityfarmer.org/wormcomp61.html
http://www.wormswrangler.com/article10.html

Copied from wormswranger.com site:

Earthworms are hermaphrodites, meaning each worm possesses both male and female reproductive organs. Some earthworm species can be self fertile, meaning they can fertilize their own ova to produce young, and some species are parthenogenic, meaning fertilization of the ova by sperm is not necessary to produce young. Most earthworm species, however, require that two worms exchange sperm in order to produce young.

When worms mate they lay side by side with their heads pointed in opposite directions, making close contact along the upper segments of their bodies. They excrete a mucous that coats both worms and binds them together, preventing them from being easily pulled apart and ensuring environmental conditions like rain or dew do not interfere with the exchange of sperm.

The worms exchange sperm, storing the received seed in a pore on the skin surface just above the clitellum (the differently colored or thickened band that encircles the worm body). Once they exchange sperm, a process that may take hours, the worms move apart and eject their own ova into a pore on their skin surface near the sperm pore. They secrete a thick mucous around the clitellum, which hardens on the outside but remains sticky underneath, forming a band out of which the worm backs, drawing the band over its head. As the band passes over the pores holding sperm and ova they are picked up and held on the sticky underside. Once the worm has backed completely out of the hardened mucous band the ends close forming a cocoon with sperm and ova inside where fertilization takes place. Each worm will continue to produce cocoons until they have used all of the sperm received from their mate.

The length of time it takes for the baby worms inside the cocoon to mature and “hatch” out, and the number of young in each cocoon depend on the worm species and environmental conditions. Earthworm cocoons are easy to spot in the worm bed. They are roughly the size of a large grape seed and similarly shaped, with one end rounded and the other drawn out to a point. When first dropped from the body of the parent the cocoon is a creamy, pearlescent yellow, darkening to a cola brown as the young worms within mature and prepare to emerge.

yeah, but do they snuggle and talk for a while? just kidding, thanks bluekat, good info!

Here some updates. The bin has been doing really well.

Since my last post about the 'microbial bloom' I've been able to feed the bin more and more. I added some food in a mesh onion bag, an idea I read about somewhere, to keep the food 'together' and it's now full of worms. I'm also tucking food into little pockets throught the bin.

The castings are everywhere, and so are the worms. Here's a photo of the whole bin. You can see the onion bag sticking up a bit. Note condensation on the sides of the bin. Yesterday for the first time there was leachate -- liquid leaching out of the bedding and coming out the drainage holes I drilled in the bottom of the bin. I have a boot mat to catch the stuff, which I hear is great fertilizer.

Pulling away the bedding to take a good look, I found loads of worms, including babies, and also quite a few egg casings. As described in the previous post, the look like grape seeds (yellowish in this photo).

Last week I put in some chopped eggplant and a slimy head of romaine which is a lot of moisture. The bedding is looking pretty gooey as a result, and they seem to love it. You can see in the photo they are all over it. Note the different sizes of the worms in this photo. I think in the month that I've had them, there have been babies. I saw a bunch of 1-2" ones when I was rooting through.

The bin is not smelling! I had people over for dinner last night and we spent most of the evening in the kitchen, where the bin is, and we didn't smell anything from it (I showed it to them, not squeamish guests!) It has a nice earthy smell when I open it up.

Manure was mentioned, as a worm food...

There's a possible danger with fresh manure: Because livestock can get intestinal worms, farmers will put vermicide in the livestock feed. The vermicide should remain active through the intestinal tract, and so still be active in the excrement.

The anti-bio-organisms don't seem to be active in year-old manure. I don't yet know what specific process removes them, or after what minimum amount of time.

Hi Greg :)
I guess I should have noted above what manure I use for my garden/indoor plants. For spreading about my garden I collect manure that has been aged for 30/40 or more years (around here it's an easy find..........we just dig at our oldest barn clean-out pile;). For indoors I have bought packaged sheep manure (usually) from local gardening centres. Not sure of the length of aging it went though but I've not had a plant get burnt by it.

Any cattle/horse/rabbit/pig manure that I've found that hasn't broken totally down (ie. turned into wonderful clean friable earthy smelling *Black Gold* I've added to my compost pile to finish the process there.

Still gotta get me some worms.

edited to be a little more manure specific.


This message was edited Mar 3, 2006 8:25 PM

Where ever there is moist compost there is worms. The center of the earth is not molten lava it is worm casings. They are too deep to see in many soils. Now Alkaline stuff no but any soil is a potential worm farm. Water + Nitrogen+ Carbon = Worms.