Vermicoast

You have the worms in their bin and have let them settle in for three days. This allows them time to de-stress from the rigors of travel. Recall those vibrations they had if they arrived through the mail to you or riding in your car.

I hope you have been saving your kitchen wastes for the worms, if not your compost bin, while the worms were traveling to you. There are many ways to save them in preparation for the worm bin.

You can freeze the wastes in containers, if you have the room. This method allows for the first level of molecular breakdown to occur within the food. As the moisture in the food waste freezes, it takes up even more moisture, breaking apart the tough, fibrous skins of bananas, etc. This is the same as the action that happens when you make ice cubes and the water in the tray has that small dip in the middle of it. Once the ice has frozen there is a slight bulge or the top of the cube and is rounded because the water has frozen and expanded in the freezer. The action in the freezer will hasten the food's breakdown in your worm bin. 

Another way is to use a small bin on your counter top to collect wastes throughout the day. Now we have biodegradable liners for these and you can wait until it is full before taking it to your bin. These liners will dissolve in the bin and a plastic bag is not used or wasted.

It is a good idea to have thought ahead of time, before the worm's arrival, as to where you will store the wastes until the worms are ready for them. I use lidded, very tall pails for mine. I place these around the 90 plus bins I have, in the sun. This allows the waste to further break down through the action of the sun's heat on the food waste. After one week the wastes are soupy. I have found it hard, but not impossible to tell a banana peel from an apple core.  Using a long handled scoop I feed the worm bins this way.

What to feed your worms? I recommend all wastes from your kitchen. This includes the plate scrapings from meals, all the left over ends from making a salad. Virtually everything you once put into the garbage disposal will now be food for your worms. I have often been asked about citrus and how to feed them the rinds because they are so acidic. As I have many citrus trees this was a problem in the beginning for me. I found, by trail and error, that if I placed them into a pail of water, allowed them to sit for three or four days, I could them pour off the water onto an acid loving plant, such as an azalea or Camilla without a problem. Then I could feed the bins a small amount of the rinds without harming the worms.  

One reliable way to feed your worms is to make a grid on the top, outside of your bin's lid with a making pen. This allows you to know which burial site you have used for the worms. I label mine with the numbers one through eight. Feeding first in the spot of number one. I gently  pull back the bedding and place the food at the bottom of the bin, replacing the bedding when I am done. This should be done on the third day after your worms have arrived. Every three days you can feed them again, until you are at the spot of number five. Pull back the bedding and see if the food in number one has been consumed, if it has the worms are keeping up with you. If not, wait another three days and feed them, if the food has been consumed. Continue on this way, since it appears the worms are keeping up with the feeding schedule. The number one reason that worms die in the bin is from over feeding. The food wastes heat up, hot compost. Since the worms are  secured in the bin and have no where to go, they die from the heat. You can see this is a disaster for them. By giving the worms just one cup of food every three days you are going to be erring on the side of caution. You will be able to judge just how much food they can eat, once you have worked with them for  two to three weeks.   

I do recommend that everyone who keeps a worm bin have a worm annex. This is another bin, any type you might have on hand will do. It could be an old wash tub from your kitchen sink or a sweater box. If it doesn't have a top you can use a piece of wood with a rock on the top. This will make sure that you have a safe place to transfer the worms to if you do have a problem within the bin. The other insurance you will need is more dry and soaked shredded bedding for them, just in case, for the annex. The only way the worms will tell you there is a problem in their bin, is come to the top of the bin, as they are trying to escape from either over feeding or over poluation .

I will write about those two issues next time and who else lives your bin.

Have a good time with your bin. We all make a few mistakes in the start of any new project. The worms will forgive you just about anything. Until next time: enjoy your bin and the creatures who live and help the worms in it along with the worms.

~Shel

The long awaited and exciting day has finally come! Your worms have arrived, the bin is ready, but  what do you do next?

After you have opened the box and packing materials the worms arrived in, you will first  inspect the worms. Are they alive, well and active? They should be wiggling around and ready for their new bin. If not, you have a problem. Perhaps they lingered too long on a hot loading dock and have been delivered to you DOA. This is not a happy thought and you will need to take action, by contacting the seller and either receiving a refund or more worms. Rest assured that a reputable worm breeder will make good on your order and/or refund your money or send you live worms ASAP.

OK, let's think happy thoughts here about your new worms: they are alive and ready for your well prepared bin. Open the bin, pull back the bedding in one corner and ease them out of their large baggie and into the bin.  It is always a good idea to rinse the baggie at least twice into the bin. This ensures that you have all the worms, cocoons and new hatchling's in your bin and that all the baggie contents have been transferred,  and not one worm is left behind.  I hope you have a bright sunny day to do this transfer.Worms can't tolerate sunlight as it dries out their entire outer body which they breathe through. Knowing this you will see them dive into the bedding as fast as they can. If the day is dull and overcast you can use either a goose neck lamp in your garage or a flashlight to get them to make their dive.

Since the worms don't tolerate travel well because they don't like vibrations, please allow them at least 3 days to adjust to their new home before you feed them the wastes from your kitchen. It is also a good idea to place the bin in an area which doesn't have vibrations around it. Some of these might be a dryer that tumbles around a lot with that lone tennis shoe in it.  Another place  the worms will not care for is by loud and or constant throbbing music.

It is time to start feeding the worms on the third day you have the worm bin in the location you have picked out for them.  I have found the best way to do this is in a rotation method. If you can, put numbers on the top with a marking pen, outside and on top of the lid. I use 1 through 8 in a  rectangular circle. You can use a clock face method, if that works better for you.  I feed them first in the spot marked 1 and wait 3 days, then feed in space 2 next. I start with 1 to 2 cups of the kitchen waste. When you have fed the worms in spaces 1,2,3 and 4 you are at space 5, pull back the bedding and see if the wastes have been eaten in space 1. If they have eaten the wastes, the worms are keeping up with your feeding schedule and over time you will be able to add more wastes at one time. If the food wastes are not gone you will want to wait another 3 days before you challenge them again with food. The precaution you are taking here for this is the number one reason that worms die in their bin. Over feeding the worm bin can cause the food waste to heat up, hot compost and since the worms have no where to escape to, they die. Not a happy event for your new worms.

One other tactic  you can do to ensure that the worm bin's health is in order is to sprinkle inexpensive birdseed over the top of the bin. This does several good things in the bin. The seeds will sprout and send down roots to the bottom of the bin. This will introduce the needed oxygen into the bin. Worms, like cows, make methane gas. This can foul the worm's environment and cause them to not work well or perish. The seedlings that will sprout in your bin will allow for a free exchange of oxygen and CO2, making sure the worms have a healthy bin. Once the seeds are too tall for the bin, you can turn them under, using them as food for the worms. Do add more seeds as  they are eaten by your worms once you have turned them under.

I feel you will find that keeping a worm bin and the worms is simple and easy to do. I have found that worms are the most forgiving of all pets. Once you have harvested your bin in 4 to 6 months, the worms will have doubled their numbers and you will be ready to either start another bin or invite a neighbor over and give them a worm bin as a gift. It is always a good idea to have already talked about the ease of keeping worms with this neighbor or friend in advance!

Nice work. You now have a working worm bin and the gift of their casts for your garden will be never ending!

I hope to see you back here in another few days.

~Shel

I have done this many times over the past 21 years. It is easy to do, costs next to nothing and will give you a great bin the worms will love to call their new home.

You can start by recycling just about any old sweater box bin you might already have: see you are already recycling for your worms and our planet. If you don't have one you can buy one at your local thrift store or at a garage sale. If that fails you can go to a big box store and buy a snap-down top, Sterilte bin, either a 10 or 16 gallon, one depending on the amount of kitchen waste your home generates per week. This is about a $5.00 investment which will pay off for years.

You then take your trusty drill, using your 1/4" inch drill bit and drill 9 holes equally distant from each other. Make sure you have drilled the corners, too. I learned the hard way that I had to place the bin on the floor in the garage, on top of a stack of newspapers or I drilled into the garage floor and had to get a new drill bit. Then line the bottom with either dry cardboard or 3 or 4 sections of the newspaper. Add shredded and soaked newspaper until it comes up to 2" below the top of the bin. Make sure you have wrung out the soaked paper until no water can be wrung out anymore. When you add it into the bin, pull it apart ( sort of fluffing it up), so the worms will have air spaces to crawl through.

Take 2 tablespoons of regular garden soil and sprinkle it over the top of the paper. This is to add in all the  micro organisms that will work in concert with the worms to breakdown the food wastes.

You will want to place your bin at waist level. Recall you are not only saving landfill space but your own back as well. Find a shady spot in your garden for the bin. Place it on a tray to catch the leach-ate which will drain out the bottom of the bin. Use 3  pieces of 2×4's, equally spaced under the bin, so it doesn't bow and break under the weight of the casts as the worms produce them over the next 4 to 6 months until you harvest the casts.

You are now ready to order your worms! Good job. Well done! See you here in a few days. I look forward of hearing your progress. ~Shel

Like to Garden? Heard of composting with worms? It is called vermicomposting and it's a fun family project that can significantly reduce your waste stream while giving you unbeatable compost.

Whether your passion is vegetable gardening, beautiful flowers, lush house plants, soil fertility or simply household waste reduction, this site is for you.