Worm Bin

This week I got to do something really fun. I found out that the City of Raleigh’s Recycling folks were sponsoring a vermicomposting workshop so I asked if I could help out. They accepted my offer so I showed up with worm bins in tow Tuesday evening. Bianca, who works in Education for the City, was running the workshop. She’s a really neat person who introduced me to worms several years ago at a composting workshop. (Thanks Bianca!)

Here she is teaching the class.

She asked me to talk to the class for a bit and we ended up teaching the rest of the class together. It’s so much fun to teach people about worms and answer their questions. A dozen or more people left that night with worm bins prepared to get started vermicomposting. Woot!!

I’ve just created my fourth worm-obsessed friend! My boss and his wife came over today. She and I harvested my worm bins while he assisted. She took all the castings for her gardens and over half the worms so she can start her own worm bin. She’s so excited and just adorable when she talks about her worms. I am delighted because I have “like new” worm bins in half the time. Everybody wins.

Look what Sean got me for my birthday:

It is a super cool new style lid to go on my existing worm bin. I really wanted this new lid for my worm bin, and he got it for me. Hooray!!

Thanks, Sean!!

Look what Sean gave me:

And he was nice enough to deliver it to me. How cool is that? I’m am SO wearing this on Fun T-Shirt Friday!

I finally snapped some pictures of the mystery larvae that’s in my worm bin. Can you identify it? It’s not listed in any “common worm bin critters” references. Wicked looking, aren’t they? They are less than a centimeter long.

Here is a video of the little critters movin’. They did not like sitting in the hot sun. I never have felt them (intentionally) so I don’t know if they’re as pokey as they look.

And here’s another mystery creature. Any idea what these are? Perhaps this is the fruit fly that’s been driving me mad. Don’t let the close-up fool you. This guy is less than one centimeter long.

Saturday I spent about 7 hours harvesting my worm bins. I tried out the new harvester-screener that Sean and I had built. Here are my thoughts about the screener:

• Castings need to be fairly dry for this to work well. I found I could achieve a good level of dryness by leaving the bins out in the sun for a little while before screening them.
• The outside dimension of the screener was good because it fit nicely over the Rubbermaid collection tub.
• I would like a smaller screening area. The wide screening area provided just too much room and seemed to make a larger mess.
• I would like higher sides - again, I found myself making a mess because worm dirt kept bouncing over the sides when I shook the screener.

Sean found that the screener worked pretty well, but I think part of the reason is that he doesn’t give the worms as much “challenging” food as I do. I had plenty of undigested paperboard, squash seeds, and the woody parts of vegetables.

The other part of this story is that I decided, once I got started, that the best way to tackle my fruit fly infestation would be to start my bins over. So, I needed to separate my worms from everything, not just the castings.

I wound up with about two pounds of recovered worms from all my bins plus one pound of worms for Jenny. That doesn’t count all the worms that didn’t get separated. I have an 18 gallon Rubbermaid that is about 1/3 full of beautiful, rich castings, and another 18 gallon Rubbermaid that is about half full of partially composted food and who knows how many worms. Lastly, I have a small kitchen garbage bag about half full of partially composted food, lots of shredded paper, and more unharvested worms. I am hoping that Jenny can take this bag because I think she has a compost pile. Otherwise, it goes in the trash.

Once I harvested everything, I used the hose to pressure wash all of the parts of the bins very well. I started two new bins with lots of newly shredded, fluffy paper and half of the worms in each bin. I started both my Worm Factory bin and the OSCR Jr style bin.

My clever buddy Sean and I were interested in buying or building a harverster for our worm bins. We debated buying this expensive tumbler harvester and splitting the cost, but we were reluctant.

Then I got feedback from Travis on the Worm Bin Board. Here are his comments:
I have one of the first “mini harvesters”, I don’t like it very much. Think about what you want it to do for you. The reason I don’t like it, is it can kinda beats up the worms. Just letting you know. I don’t sell my worms, so I really wouldn’t need to worry, but I really like my worms and don’t like to beat them up, they have been too, too good to me, know what I mean? I just use a sifter, with a 1/4 screen.

Sean decide that cheaper was definitely better, so he scrounged up some supplies at home (deck rails, L-brackets, and 1/4″ hardware cloth) and built a nifty little platform screener that fits neatly on top of a rubbermaid bin. You can read his post on his MySpace blog here.

I caught up with him this morning so he could donate his leftover deck rails and hardware cloth to me. I picked up some L-brackets at Lowes, and I assembled my harvester/screener tonight. Easy! I’ve got me a handy harvester! Sean tried his out tonight and he was satisfied with it. I’m going to give mine a try this weekend, when I harvest my bins and set aside starter stock for my new worm buddy, Jenny.

(By the time I got back with the camera, the cat had taken up residence on the screener.)

Here’s a letter I wrote to someone who was interested in getting started with vermicomposting. I thought I did a pretty good job, so I thought I’d post it.

Vermicomposting, if you don’t know, is composting with worms. It’s sort of like traditional back yard composting, but it’s different in that it’s done on a much smaller scale and the primary composter are red worms, not time and sunlight. Vermicomposting is ideal for apartment dwellers and those with limited space. Mostly we compost kitchen waste because we don’t have yard waste like grass clippings or fall leaves.

Resources

You’ll probably want to read a book to get started. I read “Worms Eat My Garbage” which you can probably find at the local library, or you can pick it up for cheap online. However, there are other books out there that are probably just as good.

Another great resource is the Worm Bin Board, a Yahoo! group. You can join the group easily, you just need a Yahoo! account. Here’s the link:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_worm_bin/
You can begin with lurking just to start learning bits and pieces, and ask questions whenever you want. I suggest subscribing to the Digest email so that you can stay in touch but don’t get swamped with email. There are many, many archived posts on this bin and chances are, most questions you want to ask have already been asked and answered.

Here’s another forum that’s pretty good but it doesn’t have as robust of email options:
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/verm/

Lastly, this is a very helpful page so you’ll want to bookmark it:
http://www.happydranch.com/invertebrates.html

Bin Construction

Next, you’ll need to design and create your worm bin. The simplest method is to purchase a single rubbermaid bin (with no holes for drainage) and use it alone. I wouldn’t recommend this because if you like worming, you’re going to want something a little bit better in a fairly short amount of time.

The next step up is a simple rubbermaid with a few holes for drainage and a catch bin beneath. The more complex version of this is to use two nested rubbermaid bins with a rubbermaid catch bin underneath. That’s what I have. Here’s a description I posted recently to the Worm Bin Board:

“Basically, I have two bins, a finishing bin and a working bin. They nest because they are the exact same rubbermaid model. Each of these two bins has a ton of small holes drilled in the bottom and just along the bottom of the sides. The bins are exactly alike - the “finishing bin” is the one on the bottom and the “working bin” is the one on the top. These bins both have large holes that are along the top edges of the sides for ventilation. I also have a third Rubbermaid bin, again the exact same model, that serves as the catch bin. Inside it, I have drilled much larger holes high up on the sides for ventilation. The bottom is solid because this is where leachate gathers. I used to drop the stacked bins right into this bin, but I found that there wasn’t enough space for air to circulate, so I put two plastic flower containers upside down in the bottom of the catch bin and now the finishing/working bins rest on them. They just happened to be the right height for what I wanted -you could use anything.”

Here is a more complex version of the Rubbermaid bin, it’s called the OSCR Jr: http://www.klickitatcounty.org/solidwaste/ContentROne.asp?fContentIdSelected=483736526&fCategoryIdSelected=965105457
This is what I modeled my bin after, but I didn’t put in a spigot or make the fancy top.

One last option would be to buy a premade bin. I have the Worm Factory:
http://neatitems.com/worm_bins.htm
I got mine from Worms Wrangler, but I can’t remember why I chose that vendor. You can get them from any number of online stores. I bought a 5 bin system but I’d recommend either the 3 or the 4 - I don’t think 5 is really feasible.

Bedding

You’ll need some paper for bedding. You can use paper from your home, shredded in a mechanical shredder or shredded by hand. We use old bank statements and old bills and toss them in the shredder. You can also use newspapers and junk mail, shredded by hand or in a shredder. Toss in shredded cereal boxes and other paperboard or cardboard, too. Avoid shiny paper, waxy coatings, staples, thermal paper, etc. You will want to have some shredded paper in the bin prior to worm arrival. This is discussed in detail in the book I recommended.

Food

Vegetables, fruits, coffee, tea, egg shells, paper towels, cat/dog/human hair (tho it takes forever to break down), cotton-based dryer lint. No oils or grease, meat, bones, cheese, or dairy and go easy on citrus, grains, and acidic foods.

Worms

If you’re local, I will gladly hook you up with some starter worms. If you’re not, there are numerous places online from which to buy worms, and there is probably a local worm farmer where you live.

More planarians on the sidewalk when I got to work today!!

We counted about a dozen planarians, ranging in size from baby to 8 inches. What was most intriguing was the behavior of the worms we saw on the sidewalk as well.

Here is a close-up of one of the worms we saw. It doesn’t look like a normal worm to me. It doesn’t seem to have a clitellum. Do you know what species it is?

There were about a half dozen worms that were crawling away from the grass towards the parking lot. They were moving in a very strange manner! They seemed to have a singular focus of getting the hell away from the grass. The best way I can describe their motion and behavior is to say that they were writhing. Several of them managed to pop up off the ground as they twisted and turned their little bodies.
I captured a little bit of bad video of them crawling away, but did not get the full-featured writhing on camera.

What is going on here?