Come learn how to make a DIY worm compost bin, along with general vermicomposting tips like how to maintain and feed your worm farm.
Regular composting, also known as cold composting, involves placing a variety of organic materials in a compost bin, enclosure, or even just in a large heap, and leaving it there until it breaks do…
It's spring and our worms are still alive! Last winter, we awoke each morning to find a few worms had escaped their bin and dried out on the kitchen floor, in search of A) warmth, B) food, or C) moisture. We attribute their success this winter to two changes we made after buying a new batch of worms last spring: Insulation - Our kitchen has floor to ceiling north-facing glass as seen in the photo above (blech!) . We covered up the bottom half of of this window with a scrap piece of 2" polyiso. insulation board (R-13) to prevent the cold window from sucking radiant heat away from the worms. This of course led to condensation and ice between the glass and the insulation, so I propped the insulation up 1" to allow airflow behind the board. This means we aren't reducing the convective heat loss of the window, but at least there is no ice formation (and melting)! Worm smoothies - We now blend most of the kitchen scraps that we feed to the worms. This makes the food more immediately available to the worms ("worms are like straws") as opposed to waiting for other organisms to break it down first (which would slow in the winter due to lower temperatures). We don't bother blending tea or coffee grounds. This might not work as well in more humid climates or with plastic bins. Below is a diagram of our worm bin. We put kitchen scraps and shredded paper at the top, adding a tray to the top as they fill up and removing the bottom trays when we want to harvest the worm compost for our container garden. We bought the bin from a guy in Denver but you could easily staple a few pieces of wood together and attach some wire mesh.
Did you know that one-third of the world's food is wasted, amounting to 1.3 billion tons every year? With such high quantities of food going into landfills, as well as rising levels of greenhouse gasses, it’s no wonder that so many people are turning to composting as a way to lessen their environmen
See how to compost all of those leaves falling in your yard this fall fast! Learn the simple secrets to making great leaf compost.
If you compost you know it's easy but it can take a long time. If you want to speed things up use a compost turner. You can make one in an hour for just $2.
We all know that red wiggler worms (Eisenia foetida) are amongst the most popular worm species in worm composting and organic gardening. Get to know more about the lives and functions of red wiggler worms.
The starting materials used to build a compost pile determine the nature of the finished compost. If the starters were mostly bacterial food, the compost will be bacterial dominated, while f…
For nearly 13 years I sold composting worms from the Red Worm Composting website by partnering with top notch U.S. drop-shippers for order fulfillment (I'm in Canada, but have a mostly-American audience). This has worked out very well - I've been lucky enough to partner with good people selling high-quality worms and I've ended up
Luxury compost toilet
Anyone with compost worms knows how valuable the worm juice from their wormfarm can be as part of veggie growing. The trick is remembering to add it, and
In this video, John from the Youtube channel, Growing Your Greens, explains his easy method for making high-quality compost for your garden.
What is Worm Composting and How Do You Get Started? Ever heard of worm composting? Or vermicomposting? It's the same thing — using worms to create compost for your garden. It's easy, inexpensive, and great for the garden. The byproduct of worm composting are castings an organic form of fertilizer produced from earthworm poop. As earthworms feed on your organic waste they turn those kitchen scrapes into worm castings aka black gold for the soil. Worm manure helps aerates the soil, provides beneficial nutrients, and is also effective for repelling many pests. Are you ready to get going? Follow this step-by-step worm composting guide to get started — it's like an organic garbage disposal, with your garden as the winner. Worm Composting In Raised Beds In this video, Bridget Ayers, a backyard gardener in Southern California - Zone 10b, shows us how she is experimenting with worm composting in her raised garden beds. Whether your garden is big or small, make the most of your space with these tips and watch the full Worm Composting in Raised Beds video on the Kellogg Garden Youtube Channel. 1. Choose your container. Wood or plastic works well, but to make is super simple, reach for one of those large plastic storage containers with a lid. You'll need one that is 8-12 inches deep (plastic sweater storage containers are great). You can also find ready-made worm bins online or at a specialty garden center. 2. Order your worms. Plan on two pounds of redworms (about 2,000 worms) for every pound per day of food waste. If you're not sure how much food waste your household produces, track it for a week and divide that number by seven. Worms can be ordered online after doing a quick Internet search. 3. Decide on the container location. Redworms prefer temps of 55-77 degrees, so a cool garage or enclosed porch could be ideal. Also, it's interesting to note that worms are kind of like people in that they don't like a lot of excess noise and vibration, so avoid putting the bin in high traffic areas. 4. Prepare the bedding. Soak a large amount of shredded newspaper in water, and then wring it out so it's moist rather than dripping wet. Place it all in the bin until the container is 1/3 to ½ full. Add a bit of sawdust, fine sand, or ground eggshells to the newspaper so the worms have something gritty to help them grind up the paper. 5. Add the worms. Dig down to the middle of the bedding and place your worms in that space. Cover the bin and set it aside for about a week for the worms to settle in. 6. Add kitchen scraps. After the first week, add kitchen scraps like fruit and veggie peels, crushed eggshells, tea bags, and coffee grounds. Avoid meat and dairy. Add just a small amount once a week — if you add more kitchen waste than the worms can process, you'll end up with a stinky garbage bin. Kellogg Garden Organics All Natural Raised Bed & Potting Mix Learn More Product Locator by Locally **Product not available in AZ, CA, HI, NV, UT. For a comparable product in these states click here. 7. Monitor the worm bin. If the bedding looks dry, mist it with some water. If it's too wet, add dry newspaper strips to absorb the excess moisture. Other than that, sit back and let the worms do their thing. 8. Harvest worm castings. Once the bedding starts to disappear and the contents of the bin look more like soil (about 1 ½ to 6 months), it's time to harvest. To harvest, push the bin's contents (compost, partially composted materials, and worms) to one side of the bin. Pick out the partially composted materials and place them on the empty side of the bin, and add more kitchen scraps on top. Replace the bin cover and leave alone for a couple of weeks. The worms will migrate over to the new food, leaving the fresh compost for you to take and use in your garden. Vermicomposting Update: Worm Composting in Raised Beds In this video follow along with Bridget Ayers, a backyard gardener in Zone 10b, as she gives us an update on how worm composting in raised beds has handled the summer heat. Whether your garden is big or small, make the most of your space with these tips and watch the full Vermicomposting Update: Worm Composting in Raised Beds video on the Kellogg Garden Youtube Channel. Share The Garden Love
It's funny, I spend so much time reminding people that 'regular' soil worms are not well suited for worm composting, yet here I am talking about raising 'earthworms'. Be assured that the term 'earthworm' refers to a wide assortment of different worms, including those used for composting, and does not in fact solely refer to
Composteur à baril rotatif Si vos besoins de compostage sont réduits et que vous n'avez ni l'intérêt ni le temps à retourner votre compost, ce genre de bac à compost vous conviendra parfaitement. L...
If you started a worm bin, good for you! Now it is time to harvest the worm castings, so you can put them to good use in your garden. Let me show you how!
by Rick Pickett, Eco-Ola Rehabilitating degraded land in the Peruvian Amazon requires utilizing many tools in ecological agriculture’s arsenal. We use a mix of sea kelp, calcium solutions, organ
One quick way to know if your worms are happy or not is to see if the worms are escaping the bin. If you take a peek inside and see some worms climbing up to the sides, then they may not like the place or the food they are having. If they are perfectly happy with things, there may be little reason for them to leave the worm bin. Also, if you lift some food scraps up and see the worms all gather around to munch on the foods. They may form a little worm ball underneath a watermelon rind for exa
Learn how to compost at home, including the benefits, what to compost, and how to make it using food scraps and yard waste.
There's no reason to let compost go dormant over the winter. Keeping your compost active year-round offers a range of benefits, including a great fuel for your garden in the spring. Here are 10 tips for winter composting.
While you may not have heard of the practice, composting fish has been around a long time and can be great for plants. To learn more about how to compost fish scraps for your garden, read this article
This three-crate system will churn out rich soil in a fraction of the time.
Buy PDF & Cut List It's large, sturdy, and loaded with features, but you can build this compost barrel for the cost of a bargain model.
Discover cheap and easy DIY compost bins projects you can build at home. Get creative today and build something practical.
Composting seaweed for use as a home garden amendment is cheap and easy, especially if you have access to it. Use this article to take advantage of the benefits of using seaweed in compost.
Discover innovative ways to create aerated compost tea from recipes using natural materials and humic acid for the best results. By following our compost tea recipe guide, uncover the importance of microbes and beneficial microorganisms in compost tea. #compost #tea #recipes
Learn how to compost your kitchen food scraps and yard waste using a compost bin, a pile or a composter.
The Best Triple Compost Bin: Instructables has plans for several compost bins made from recycled products like garbage cans and pallets. I've used a black plastic orb for composting, but it gets too heavy to roll around as it fills up with moist material. I wanted t…
Every fall nature gives us an abundance of leaf litter that is perfect for composting in winter. Composting leaves with this two ingredient method is an easy way to make a lot of compost for the spring garden.
