Worm Composting Update

Don purchased a Worm Factory worm composting system with five trays for me a few  years ago. Over time, the system has become more Don's hobby than mine. He says it's because I am tender-hearted, and if I think of them as his worms, not mine, then I will be more comfortable feeding the occasional excess to our hens.

I suspect it's more because the worms like dark and decay, and they are wriggly and messy. Don is such a boy at heart that he finds true joy in messing with them. I enjoy watching him work with them and talk about them. But I must say that I am much happier now that we've found a spot for them on our porch and not in our kitchen or bathroom where they have resided previously.

He might also be the one in charge of them because he is a scientist at heart and likes to experiment more. Like him, I carefully read the valuable instructions that came with our Worm Factory. Unlike him, I feel compelled to stick pretty closely to the written instructions.

But I can't complain, since the worms have thrived--and then some!--under Don's care.

The worms are obviously thriving in the second bin down. This is before feeding time.

One of the things Don does differently is he puts mostly carbonaceous matter in the top bin. When that has been in the composter a while, he moves the tray down to the second one down. He then puts a new carbonaceous tray on top. He feels that this top tray discourages vinegar flies that sometimes compete with the worms for food, and he no longer has to dig through the carbon to put the food in underneath the carbon on the top tray, which the manufacturer suggests. He also thinks his system gives the worms more options regarding moisture, temperature, etc., as they move around the bins to keep themselves comfortable.

Don just dumps their food in the second tray down and then replaces the top tray with the carbon. He thinks the worms like the added moisture, and he finds the whole process less work than using the manufacturer's instructions. He leaves the bottom trays underneath these two  for quite a while for the worms to pass through and re-digest. The bottom trays are former top and second trays that are waiting for us to need some compost around the yard and gardens.

Here is a view of the top, carbon-laden, tray, where fewer worms visit.

The instructions say to either grind up the worms' food scraps or freeze them before feeding them to the worms. This hastens the decomposition process and makes it easier for the worms to feed. Freezing kills any fruit-fly larvae (really vinegar flies) that might be already in the scraps. But Don grinds the food in a specially-dedicated food processor--

--Yes! The worms in our house have their own food processor!--

And then he puts in the a mason jar in the freezer for at least a few days. Finally, he thaws it out and feeds it to the worms.

Here are Don's worms with some new food dumped in the second tray.

Don is adding a second helping of food from a mason jar. The worms digest it quickly!

Needless to say, we have very little food waste in our household. I belong to a wonderful CSA through Farm Chicks Produce, so I cook a lot from scratch, and we have certain vegetable peels and tops that our hens won't eat. We also pick up scraps from a local restaurant, and whatever our hens won't or shouldn't eat usually goes to the worms.

Both the worm tea from the composting system and the compost itself is fantastic for our own vegetables and herbs. Any extra worms are great protein for feeding the hens, and the hens love to spread the compost around our lawn and garden beds when they get the chance. While they scratch through the compost, they like to hunt through it for tasty treats.

Overall, the worm bin is a huge success despite the fact (or because?) Don does not manage the system according to the manufacturer's directions.

By the way, vermicomposting does not require a fancy store-bought system to work. Here is general advice from Cornell. Perhaps you will start your own worm composting system? If so, let us know what works for you!

Kitchen Composting Update

I took some pictures to update my composting post from December. Our composting worms have been happily turning paper and kitchen scraps into organic fertilizer for us. They are even reproducing, since we occasionally catch sight of baby red wrigglers crawling through the compost bin. The babies are camera-shy, and I don't have any pictures of them yet, but I have some pics of their fat, happy parents.

Update on 6/30/12: I am sad to report that we have released our composting worms into a compost pile in the wilds of my backyard. I hope they make out OK!

The reason is that we were not careful enough about freezing or microwaving our food scraps, and we may have over-fed our worms. As a result, our kitchen was overrun with vinegar flies.  We tried burying the kitchen scraps with a deeper layer of brown organic matter, but it didn't help enough.

So, sadly, we collected the vermicompost and spread it in my gardens, and then we released the worms to fend for themselves. NOT in soil, mind you! They would be sure to die there. We have a compost bin full of hay, wood shavings, guinea-pig and rabbit manure, as well as food scraps. We released them there in the hope that they'll have some chance of surviving there.

My worms' new home

We washed out the bins really well. When the vinegar flies are gone from our kitchen, we are going to set up the compost bins again and order more worms. But we'll be careful not to overfeed them, and to freeze or (more likely) microwave our kitchen scraps before feeding, both to help it break down faster for the worms, and to kill off any fly larvae or eggs before they have a chance to become a nuisance.

Live and learn.

Update on 10/25/12: Don and I have been missing our composting worms, so we decided to start the kitchen worm bin back up this fall. Don dug through the outdoor compost bin to look for red wrigglers, but they were gone! Either they've dispersed or something evil befell them. There were a lot of ants in the pile, and Don read somewhere recently that worms and ants don't get along.

So I went online to findworms.com and found a source of red wrigglers. They were shipped to our home in great condition and with good instructions. Since we've had worms before, we had their home all set up and ready for them. They've settled in quickly and are already making short work of the kitchen scraps they're getting. We've been microwaving the food and cooling it off before giving it to the worms.

I've also been reminded since then to try DE if we have trouble with flies or other insects in our worm bin. DE does the worms no harm, is perfectly natural, but kills most insects without any poisons. I wish I'd remembered that last time round!

Update for January, 2013: Our re-established red wrigglers are doing great. Don is chopping up their food, using a small food processor dedicated for the purpose. He either freezes their food for a few days, or microwaves it, or both. He makes sure the food returns to room temperature before he puts it in their bin, of course. The worms are thriving, they eat a good part of our daily kitchen scraps, and the flies are gone. Success!

Kitchen Composting

I have a confession to make: I have pet worms that live under my kitchen table.

They are not just any kind of worms. They are a specific kind of "red wriggler," or composting worms. Depending on the temperature and their living conditions, they eat up to their weight in food a day, mostly shredded paper and kitchen scraps. Their worm-castings (a nice way of saying "worm poop") is an organic fertilizer and soil amendment that is absolutely the best of anything available for your garden.  I've read that worm castings are up to eleven times more potent in their effect on plants and soil than any other type of compost.

And any excess moisture that drains from the bin can be watered down into "compost tea" that not only fertilizes your garden but protects plants against diseases, too, as a foliar spray. Since I try to garden organically, it makes sense for me to keep these quiet, easy-to-keep pets around. Why buy expensive organic fertilizers when the worms are so happy to convert your kitchen scraps for you?

I did make mistakes with them when I first brought them home. First of all, I made the mistake of buying "red wrigglers" at a local bait shop to get started. I later learned that this may have been a mistake. There are thousands of species of worms, and if you don't get just the right kind, Eisenia foetida, you can have problems.

What kind of problems? Well, the "right" kind of red wrigglers hate light, which helps keep them at home in their cozy little worm bin. Instead, I initially brought to my kitchen "Lewis and Clark" worms that were bent (pun intended) on exploring the brave, new world of my kitchen at all times of the day and night. I'd wake up in the morning to find them all over my floors, exploring my cabinets, you name it. And the only thing worse than stepping on a worm when you're blundering around bare-foot is finding your pet worms dead and drying up all over your floors, etc. After all, I like the little guys, and I feel responsible for them.

Perhaps they didn't like their initial housing arrangement. Since my wonderful fiance, Don, bought me a vermiculture bin with detailed instructions on how to get started, including advice not to buy worms at a bait store, my worms have stayed happily at home. Perhaps it's the new bin, perhaps it's changes to the bedding, perhaps my "Lewis and Clark" worms have removed themselves from the gene pool, leaving the stay-at-home types behind, or perhaps  a mix of the above. Now that they've settled in, I couldn't be happier with them. They are making some wonderful looking soil that I can't wait to add to my plantings in the spring.

For more information on vermiculture, try this Eek! website, this website from the University of Illinois, or this link I found through "Mother Earth News," which is the publication that got me into vermicomposting (worm-farming) in the first place. The composter Don bought me is called a Worm Factory. It looks just like this one:




Update for January, 2013. Our original worms went to a backyard compost pile. We had overfed them, and not fed them carefully enough, and we got vinegar flies that began to invade our whole kitchen. I wish I had remembered to try DE in the compost bin! That probably would have taken care of the problem without hurting the worms.

Don and I missed our worms, though, so I bought more a few ago from an online company that sells them. This batch of worms is doing GREAT! Whenever Don feeds them, he chops up their food into very tiny bits, and then either microwaves or freezes it first, or both. Either process kill any fly larvae that may be present in the food, thus preventing the vinegar flies. So far it's worked great, and the worms are thriving.

Don even bought a dedicated little food processor just for chopping up worm food. People tell me that my husband and I are two peas in a pod. They don't know the half of it!