Yesterday was hands-down one of the nicest (if not THE nicest) days so far this fall. Looks like we are going to see the exact same conditions today as well (how often does that happen in the fall?) – sunny, calm, and temps up close to 20 C / 68 F! Keep in mind that normals for this time of year are probably more like 7 or 8 C (~44-46 F), and conditions last week were a lot worse than that.

Like a lot of people in my neighborhood, I decided it was time for my final grass cutting (and yard clean-up) for the season – what’s funny is that it was probably only my second grass cutting this fall in general! As I mentioned in another recent post, I was excited about having the opportunity for one last cut since it meant I would end up with a nice mix of grass clippings and mulched fall leaves (I still hadn’t raked up any of the fallen leaves on my front lawn).

With everything coming together so nicely yesterday (and since I was already out in the yard), I decided it was also a great opportunity to empty my two ‘backyard composters’. One has been used in a typical manner (receiving food waste, yard waste etc), while the other one has been my compostable cat litter bin (I’ll write more about this one in another post).

I’ve been surprised in the past with my worms’ ability to survive in one of these backyard bins over a winter, but I figured there was no point taking a chance. Aside from that, this provided me with more material (and worms) to add to my trench beds – which are currently being bulked up in preparation for winter.

While I didn’t ever purposely add Red Worms to the ‘regular’ composter, it certainly comes as no surprise that they managed to become established in it nevertheless (just as they did in the cat litter composter).

The upper layers of material weren’t all that rich in worms, but once I started getting into the really wet stuff at the bottom I started seeing LOADS of them!

It was a valuable reminder of the fact that Red Wigglers can do extremely well in a backyard compost bin – assuming they are provided with adequate living conditions. Likely the most important consideration is moisture. These enclosed, plastic bins (this one is called an “Earth Machine” as is given away by the regional waste department) can work quite well if you are regularly adding lots of fruit/veggie waste, since these wastes tend to be very water-rich. They also happen superior food materials for worms, in comparison to yard waste, grass clippings etc (although these materials can also be good if prepared properly). Even when you are adding these water-rich wastes regularly, it’s probably not a bad idea to add water to the system periodically as well. Something I like to do is to take the lid off of my bins during rain showers since this provides a bit more of a ‘natural’ moistening process.

I know I am biased here, but I truly believe that everyone who uses one of these ‘regular’ composters should also be using compost worms. These systems rarely ‘hot compost’ the waste materials added – they are not large enough, plus the wastes tend to be added slowly over time, so it only makes sense then to help the process along with worms.

I hadn’t added anything new to this bin in a little while, but earlier in the fall I had completely filled it with yard waste (zucchini plants etc). It was amazing to see how low the level of material in the bin was when I emptied it yesterday (it was probably about 1/3 full).

I guess the one downside of using worms is that you’ll end up with lots of the worms in the compost (unless you feel like taking the time to separate them). Of course, this is not an issue if you are using some sort of vermicomposting trench or ‘vermi-mulch’ garden – but obviously there aren’t too many people out there actually using these methods.

Given how quickly a population of composting worms can regenerate itself, I guess this is not really a major concern. Your average backyard compost-warrior will likely only remove compost from one of these bins once or twice a year, thus giving the worms plenty of time to bounce back.

As mentioned above, I will be writing a bit more about my cat litter composting bin in another post this week. You can also expect to learn more about my winter bed preparations in general at some point as well.

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We use a rabbit bedding made from recycled newsprint and it
contains some baking soda. I was thinking about saving the used
bedding, manure and all, to feed our worms. During the summer months
I could hot compost outside, though in the winter it isn’t really
possible. Do you think that the baking soda used for deodorizing the
rabbit’s bedding would cause problems with the ph in the worm bin?
Thank you!

Hi Jillian,
Rabbit cage bedding (containing manure) would be an excellent ‘worm food’ – it’s the baking soda that makes me a tad nervous. I’ve faced the same dilemma myself with my compostable cat litter – I was thinking about adding some baking soda to help with odor reduction, but then it suddenly dawned on me – baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) contains a LOT of sodium.

I just grabbed a box of it from the back of my fridge for reference purposes. This “pure baking soda” contains 164 mg of sodium per 0.6 g (600 mg). A quick calculation tells me that this material is basically 27% sodium by weight. So, say you decide to add 50 grams of the powder to your bedding – that would be 13.5 grams of sodium.

In all honesty, I’m not exactly sure what effect sodium itself has on worms, and wasn’t able to track any more information down. As I told you via email, worms tend to be extremely sensitive to inorganic salts – so for example, it definitely would never be a good idea to add inorganic fertilizer to a worm composting system (if you were trying to boost nitrogen or something like that).

Even if the sodium doesn’t harm the worms (which I still suspect it will), it is definitely known to be harmful to plants when present in high enough concentrations, so the castings you end up producing might not be all that great for growing anything.

If you are really keen to vermicompost your rabbit bedding (again, highly recommended) perhaps you can try something like peat moss as an additive to help reduce ammonia odors, rather than the baking soda.

NOTE: I just noticed that you mentioned that the bedding already contains baking soda, so I guess the first thing to do is determine how much there is in the material, and perhaps think about trying a different bedding material (again, if you are really interested in vermicomposting with it).

Hope this helps!

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If only I had a pick-up truck!

Last week, on a whim, I decided to put a little ad on a free classifieds website to see if I could round up some fall leaves and perhaps some leftover pumpkins. It was almost more of an experiment just to see if people would respond than an actual attempt to round up a lot of good worm composting material – especially given how late I ended up posting it (after Halloween, and towards the end of leaf-raking season).

Well, I did manage to get some nibbles, and one of these was from a person who lives about 2 minutes (by car) from me – someone who was more than happy to give me her five pumpkins. SWEET!

For once, procrastination actually ended up being beneficial! I didn’t head over to pick up the pumpkins until the evening before garbage pick-up, so as it turns out there were a fair number of pumpkins ‘kicked to the curb’ by other people as well. I’ve never been the type of person who is all that comfortable taking other people’s garbage – but I decided to step outside of my comfort zone (haha) and save some pumpkins from ending up in the landfill.

In some ways it is definitely a little disappointing to see anyone, let alone numerous people, tossing their pumpkins out with the regular garbage – but in their defence, this particular neighborhood is quite new so I’m not too surprised that backyard composting isn’t as common out there yet. Interestingly enough, as I drove back towards home (through older neighborhoods) I couldn’t find a single pumpkin sitting out for garbage day. There do seem to be lots of pumpkins still sitting on people’s porches etc though, so I might go out for a second round of pumpking picking this week.

I am quite happy to have all this valuable worm food available these days since I am preparing my outdoor beds for their winter slumber. To make the situation even better, after some really cold temps this past week, we are now into a warm, sunny period for a few days. Rather than simply raking up my own leaves, I’ve decided to take advantage of the nice weather and give my lawn one last cut. In other words, I’m going to end up with a LOT of mulched leaves mixed with grass clippings – an excellent material to provide both insulation and food value for my worm beds. I also recently secured a couple of large straw bales, so everything seems to be coming together nicely!

I was thinking it might be fun to put together a little video about this experience (once I’ve collected more pumpkins and/or added the material to my beds), but here are a few more pictures to tide you over until then!

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Back in the middle of August (oh how time flies!) I wrote a post about my plans to test out ‘Mosquito Dunks’ as a means of getting rid of fruit flies and fungus gnats in a worm bin (see “Can Mosquito Dunks Kill Fungus Gnats and Fruit Flies?“). Well of course – me being me – while I DID get around to setting up some bins outside to attract some fruit flies, I failed to actually get going with the experiment until some really cold fall weather finally made me realize I needed to act fast or risk losing my outdoor fruit fly ‘culture’.

So, being the smart fellow that I am, I decided to bring a culture of fruit flies indoors where my systems were happily chugging along, fruit-fly-free! Oh well – I always enjoy ‘taking one for the team’ in order to make a learning experience out of it, so now that I am enjoying a serious infestation of fruit flies in my basement, I know it’s finally time to get started!

I’ve set up a bunch of new apple cider traps, and the other day I started brewing my mosquito dunk water. I’ve decided to proceed somewhat cautiously with this experiment – largely due to the fact that someone left a comment on the other post (mentioned above), indicating the potential for actually harming the worms. While I’m not 100% convinced that this will be the case, I also don’t feel like being so reckless with my worms’ well-being as to simply starting pouring the stuff on my indoor beds. I might as well make sure it’s even going to kill the larvae before taking the risk of inflicting harm on my dear wormies!

As such, the original fruit fly culture container brought in from outside has become ‘ground zero’ for my experimentation.

This container has a piece of corrugated cardboard and a virtually-liquefied cucumber in it. There are lots of fruit fly larvae visible on the cardboard (such as those ones in the first pic) and until recently there were also lots of adults. I released them all when I opened the system to apply the dunk liquid A) accidentally and B) because I am trying to see if the larvae will mature into adults once their food source has been soaked in ‘dunk juice’ (Brain wave! If all this works out for me – I should really think about marketing my new fruit fly killer as ‘Dipteran Dunk Juice’! Haha).

To apply the liquid I used a small syringe and slowly soaked all zones where the larvae were visible – I made sure to move any run-off around the entire container as well.

So far so good – all I noticed today was the presence of two tiny adults. Fruit flies develop VERY quickly, so I’m hopeful that this is a positive sign. Many of the larvae DO still seem to be moving around, but we’ll see how they are doing in another day or two. The bacterium in ‘Dipteran Dunk Juice’ (TM) causes these larvae to stop feeding – so it’s not like some sort of instant poison or anything like that.

If it looks like the larvae are dying off, and no more adults are being produced we’ll move on to ‘phase II’. I’m still not planning to put the liquid on my actual beds yet – first I will set up a small experimental system, perhaps with a chunk of rotten fruit (or fruit-juice-soaked cardboard) in it, along with some worm bin material and a small number of worms.

Stayed tuned!

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It is always a lot of fun connecting people worm folks from across the world – it really reminds me just how GLOBAL this little thing we like to call the ‘web’ truly is (they don’t call it the ‘world wide’ for nuthin)! I’ve received emails from vermicomposters – or those thinking about getting involved – living in South Africa, Australia, Romania, UK, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, India and Mexico (among others). Well, up until a little while ago I had still never received an email from anyone living in Norway (or any of the other Scandinavian countries for that matter), so it was a bit of a pleasant surprise when I received some vermi-questions from Felieke van der Leest.

Technically speaking, Felieke is actually Dutch – she moved to Norway from The Netherlands last year.

…
Just an educational aside here – as Felieke explained to me, the name “Holland” is actually more for tourists, so if you want to seem a tad more cultured (haha) when visiting the country, you might want to use the other name.
…

I highly recommend you check out her website (her name above links to it) – you will see that she has created some pretty fascinating pieces of jewellery! One such piece, which for some reason I find strangely more intriguing than the rest (wink wink) is the one pictured to the right. These are brooches called “Jail Worms”, and rest assured that if I was a brooches kinda guy – I’d be all over these like a Red Worm on a cantaloupe!!

By the way, here is a little blurb from Felieke’s bio:

Animals have a special place in Felieke van der Leest’s heart. She provides many animals with a busy social life as ornaments, gives a select group a nice home in museums and she placed a few oversized specimens in the center of everyone’s attention in meeting rooms and stairwells. Jewellery, object or light fixture, the scale or function is not the aspect that inspires Van der Leest: the telling of unusual stories is always her main motivation.

Van der Leest has enriched jewellery design with the introduction of textile techniques. Combining this with gold, silver and plastic, in ten years time she developed her own idiom. She drew from her childhood in Emmen where she would visit the local zoo and also from her metalsmith education in Schoonhoven. Her unbridled imagination later came to full bloom at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. For someone who normally works with hand sized pieces it is remarkable to develop monumental installations. Nevertheless, Van der Leest has already produced some ‘jewels’ for public spaces, cooperating with her cousin in Neef Nicht Design.

Anyway – after I helped Felieke with her vermi-questions she sent me a picture of her boyfriend’s worm-adorned feet (first photo above) since she thought I might get a kick out of it (no pun intended). Of course, upon seeing such cool slippers, I did what I do best and begged her to let me share them with all of you!

As the picture caption indicates, these marvelous creations were actually made by Esther Nijdam, who in the words of Felieke is “a very talented young Dutch designer” (also a former intern of Felieke’s). Please be sure to check out her website as well (find the link in the photo caption).

Unfortunately, neither of these cool worm gifts will likely be available from Amazon.com any time soon, but if you happen to be a worm person (or have one on your Christmas list) living in Europe, then you might want to support these talented artists by purchasing from them!

I just want to close by saying thanks again to Felieke for the interesting email exchange. If nothing else, perhaps this post will help to inspire some creative souls (those partial to vermicomposting) over here in North America to come up with some great gift ideas like these!

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I’ve had a bale of straw sitting on the edge of my driveway since mid summer, and not too surprisingly it has started to rot. I guess it’s also not too surprising that it has become more appealing to my resident population of outdoor Red Worms as well. This actually caught me off guard initially – one day earlier in the fall I removed some of the straw to add to my big outdoor worm bin and found myself face to face with a lot more worms than I expected to see! The straw had a lot of fungal growth in the middle but what amazed me was how dry it was – definitely NOT optimal moisture conditions for the worms!

I’ve certainly found worms underneath my bales of straw before, but never so many right in the bale itself (well ok – there are loads of them in the walls of my ‘Winter Worm Bed‘, but that’s different). Makes me wonder what would happen if I actually put some of it in an enclosed worm bin and moistened it even more. Hmmmm…

Straw is a fantastic worm composting material, but just like some of the other ‘fantastic’ materials – such as coffee grounds, fall leaves, and grass clippings – there seems to be a subtle art involved in terms of getting it to work on its own. Of course, straw mixed with manure works very well since the manure holds water much more readily and also adds plenty of nitrogen and microbes into the mix.

Anyway – all of this has reminded me that I wanted to do a ‘50 Cocoon Challenge’ using straw. Obviously I can’t use this particular bale (haha), but I am hoping to get some new ones fairly soon!

On a related note, I also wanted to mention that I will be starting up my shredded cardboard ‘50 Cocoon Challenge’ very soon as well. Both of these should be very interesting since no ‘regular’ food will be added.
Stay tuned!

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Firstly, I’d just like to send a BIG thanks out to ‘Jeff’ – one of our readers (and a customer) – for telling me about this today. This is exactly the sort of thing that reminds me of why I got into vermicomposting in the first place (like I need a reminder – haha!). I love coming across these super-cool ‘real world’ examples of worm composting being successfully used on a large scale.

This video talks about the Red Worm beds (which actually just look like a series of big Rubbermaid tubs) being used at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Recycling Center, in Dayton Ohio. The worms process fruit and vegetable waste (along with newspaper) from the base, and of course convert it into a pretty amazing all-natural ‘fertilizer’. One very interesting tidbit was the observation that the worms seem to feed most heavily at 70 F (academic research has suggested that the ‘optimal’ temperature is closer to 77 F).

Although this video is quite new, it looks as though the base has been using Red Wigglers to process their wastes for a number of years now. I tracked down an article over at Worm Digest posted in 2005, but which actually looks to be from 2003!

Here is an interesting blurb from that article:

The base launched a vermicomposting program in July, using earthworms to consume a daily average of 500 pounds of solid waste. The worms digest vegetable matter and old newspapers. That saves the base about $25 per day on transporting and disposing of waste.

As the number of worms grows, so does the amount of waste they consume.

The base acquired 250,000 worms and their climate-controlled home at no cost from another base that found it didn’t produce enough food waste to satisfy the little guys’ voracious appetites.

At Wright-Patterson, which produces more than enough fruit and vegetable waste from its commissary, the California red wigglers have flourished, now numbering more than 300,000.

(be sure to check out the full article here ->> “Worms Eat Away at Air Force’s Waste” – scroll down to find article)

Just the fact that they are doing this is great – but it is also quite inspiring to see that they are even saving quite a lot of money in the process!

Technorati Tags: worm composting, vermicomposting, vermiculture, worm compost, vermicompost, worm bin, worm bed, worms, red worms, red wigglers, composting worms, compost worms, dayton, ohio

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As I mentioned at the beginning of Mark’s recent guest post (Mark and his OSCR Worm Bin), I’ve been bugging him about writing for the site for awhile now. Ever since buying worms from me last winter he has been sending me emails about all his cool vermicomposting projects – not to mention sharing his helpful winter worm bin heating strategy, and posting lots of helpful comments on the blog. I just KNEW he’d be a great addition to the ‘team’, since one of my main goals here at RWC has been to get people excited about vermicomposting. If the overwhelming response to his OSCR post is any indication, it looks as though Mark is definitely going to be helping out in that department.

Anyway, I don’t want to waste too much space sharing MY thoughts about all this (will certainly add more in this week’s newsletter), so without further ado, here is a little more about Mark (written by the man himself)…

Let me tell you a little bit about Mark from Kansas.

Mark and his lovely wife Letty

I live in well… Kansas. My wife and I are in the health care field. When we moved into a really nice house a few years ago, the yard was a mess. We even found what was left of a frozen turkey in a cooler in the back yard. The backyard was over run with weeds and the front wasn’t much better. We bought some plants and the yard started to look better. After I cleared the weeds and brush, I took it to the city compost place. There I discovered compost. I took all I could haul and top dressed the flower beds. I then started to research municipal compost and was not all that impressed but, it looked good.

I turned my attention to the lawn and that giant pool of water out back after it rained. I could not grow grass to save my life. It was like the dirt was damaged. One of my residents was telling me about the great dust bowl back in the 30’s. I started to read about the dust bowl and figured that’s what happened to my yard. It turned out to be a good guess. Earlier I mentioned how I wasn’t impressed with the municipal compost – the weed seeds germinated nicely and overtook the grass seed in a matter of two weeks.

So, not wanting to spend money on synthetic fertilizer, I did more research and found redwormcomposting.com and thought “this is the biggest bunch of crap I have ever read!”

The worms are going to eat my garbage, that’s a good one!

[Editor's Note: Mark, you are fired! ]

I think I read everything on the website for about 4 – 5 months before I bought my first pound of worms, mainly because I did not think it would work. I followed the instructions, I even challenged the idea of keeping it outside, it stayed warm like it was suppose to. I noticed that the worms were really doing what they do. We had some really cold weather coming in so I decided to add a heater (that can be viewed elsewhere in this website).

My wife came up with the heater idea. I decided to move the bin inside because I got tired of going out to the cold garage. A few weeks later I noticed that all the food was gone, the bin had an earthy smell to it, and there were these little lemon looking things all over.

I harvested and split the bin. The vermicompost (VC) was so rich looking and the funny thing was, it use to be our trash. Then I split again, bought some more worms, and got hooked.

We use the VC in our flower beds; one bed was mostly sand and the other was mostly gravel. Man did those plants grow. We also started a vegetable garden as well. The tomatoes did well and, through casual observation, they were bug free, disease free and were pretty tasty.

On a personal note, one of the residents I work with, has a dementia related illness with dementia related symptoms and short term memory loss. His wife Joann would come in every day so I got to know him through her. She told me he was an organic gardener and he would always tell her how his compost smelled. Joann did not know how important that little piece of information was. Her husband would open up to me when I would ask him about compost. He would come out of his room more if I asked him to and we became friends. We would talk about compost. Joann passed away a few months ago; I still miss her very much. She was almost motherly to me.

So here I am today. I am moving onto bigger projects. My winter project is the OSCR bin and to see how fast I can process a ton of trash.

I have smaller projects in the works and am planning a big project in the spring and summer.

I would also like to add that my wife Letty (pictured above) has been very supportive of me. She has had some ideas that I incorporated into my projects. When I was harvesting a bin last winter, I did it in the house it was too cold for me outside, she was really impressed with the VC. I was surprised that she didn’t say anything about the wheelbarrow in the back room of the house or the few worms crawling around on the carpet. Letty also brags about me at work, she is like my own personal cheerleader. One time I went to get 2 more plastic tubs for a side project, she wanted to pick them out (I suspect she choose a certain color in case I had to bring the bin inside and it would match the curtains).

Thanks Mark! Bentley here again, folks – and just so you know, I WON’T be butting in on all of Mark’s posts (apart from the odd teasing remark, perhaps). I will be adding a tiny blurb at the end of each of Mark’s articles along with his headshot, just so there isn’t any confusion over authorship. Mark will also have his own user account here, so his name will appear as the author (down below where it says “Written by Bentley” it will say “Written by Mark from Kansas”)

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One of the really cool things about building this website is that it has allowed me to connect with lots of people thinking about getting into vermicomposting and then helping to nudge them further in that direction. It is especially gratifying to receive emails from some of these folks weeks and months later, telling me about all the cool vermicomposting projects they have on the go etc.

Included here is a bit of a background story, Mark’s OSCR-building journal entries, and a gallery of pictures taken during the set-up process. Each photo has it’s own caption, but you may have to look closely to read them since I needed to shrink the images so they’d fit in the post.

I like to experiment with the whole vermicompost concept. I have had a lot of success vermicomposting so far. The Rubbermaid bin seemed like too much labor to harvest and maintain. I had, at one time, 4 Rubbermaid bins and one 55 gallon drum (cut length wise) in my garage. They were in the garage for four seasons and all of them prospered. For 12 months I fed them all kinds of things just to see what would happen and made a list of what they would eat. To make a long story short, I had 5 bins with different foods different moisture content, or different temperatures. If I killed some I would not kill them all.

The vermicompost I did harvest was great for our plants. Some plants grew well in sand and other plants did well in what was mostly gravel. My wife used some VC on her tomato plants and from casual observation, they were bug and disease free. She was very pleased with her small crop and received several compliments on the taste and juiciness.

So, I finally decided to lay all my cards on the table. I have read volumes of research and spent more money than I wanted to. Living in Kansas, I have an unlimited amount of manure and coffee grounds. I keep track of how many pounds of coffee grounds I get from the gas station and put up a sign in the store stating how much the store has recycled. The sign is a public awareness tool. They sell more coffee by going green and I get the coffee grounds.

My goal for this year is to reduce the bin input by 90%. I am trying to reduce 1 ton of trash into 200 pounds of high quality VC. I send samples to K-State University for nutrient contents, N P K. Some of the previous values varied greatly and now I think I have a good mix of food to balance out the values. It is my understanding that N P K are non renewable resources, they have to be mined or made from fossil fuels. I make them in my garage.

The guy I get my horse manure from wants to go completely organic in his huge garden. I think it is a fair to trade manure for VC for him to till in his garden, I’ll let him do the growth trials on a large scale, that will free me up to do more research.

I chose the OSCR bin type to meet my needs. Less labor and more time to observe and record.

It does have a forty watt heater cable in it that – based on an electric consumption calculator – will cost me 10 cents a month. I have been criticized for leaving a “carbon footprint” and using electric to heat it wasn’t pure vermicomposting. Personally, I think we are in a natural resource and pollution crisis. Time has run out a long time ago to start doing something now, if I have to maintain my bin with electric, then I have to. If all my worms die, I have no worms to vermicompost and have to spend even more money.

I also decided to install a 4” fan to force air into the harvest chamber, in short, I want to pressurize the harvest chamber to force air up and have the bottom 2” of the bin on the dry side.

10/10/09

I am getting ready to start the new big bin 40” x 48” x 24”.

The heater cable was a little long so I angled it upwards to 10” because the heater cables can‘t touch each other. The breeding chamber itself is 4” deep The breeding chamber is defined as: the harvested VC from the other bins which I have witnessed as having a lot of cocoons. The main body of the heater cable is 4” above the steel cable screen.

So from the bottom: steel cable, a layer of news paper (2-4 sheets thick), the harvested VC that include cocoons, and the main body of the heater cable.

I want the “finished” VC at the bottom so the heat will hatch the cocoons. The bulk of the food at the top will drive them upward.

I have a Bentley Bin* inside for the harvested worms. I am going to have to start a second BB when I harvest the rest of the blue bin. It is cold outside and I am going to have to let the reactor bin sit for at least a week to let it warm up and stabilize before I add the worms.

*[Editor's Note: I emailed Mark to see what he meant by "Bentley Bin", and here is what he said (I have linked to the video he refers to as well): "Bentley Bin is the Rubbermaid bin you made in your video. The first one I used and had success with. I was so thrilled with the simple bin, that I just call it a “Bentley Bin” because I built it from your website. I guess I am just a fan."]

10/11/09:

Loaded bin with:

100lbs. finished VC with cocoons

6 lbs. paper/cardboard/coffee filters

56 lbs. aged horse manure

48 lbs. aged coffee grounds

12 lbs. kitchen scraps aged in the freezer

2 ½ lbs. aged cow manure

1 ½ lbs. of sand

12 ounces oats

4 ounces egg shell

2 gallons of water

Letty plugged in the heater @ 7:00 pm. The temp of the bin is 42 degrees.

I’ll have to wait for at least a week for the temp to go up to70 degrees. The wait period will also stabilize the contents, once stabilized I’ll add the worms.

10/12/09

Temperatures vary from zone to zone. The temp is 56 degrees within a 20 inch radius from the center, at a depth of 4 inches. The left side of the bin had temps in the mid 60s.

I sprayed down the top with 1 gallon of water. The moisture meter was reading 20%.

I also added:

8 lbs. coffee grounds

8 lbs. horse manure

10/13/09

Temps rising in various zones. I closed the harvest door and have a temp 8 degrees above ambient.

Added 2 ½ gallons of water.

Added 8 pounds of horse manure. The surface seemed like it had to much coffee grounds.

10/14/09

Temps holding steady from 68 degrees on the right and 76 degrees on the left. Right side seems to be the cooler zone with the middle being the warmest. Moisture readings about 40 -50%

Added ½ gallon of water.

10/15/09

I went ahead and added my small holding bin of worms and unfinished VC 24 lbs.

The small bin was running a little dry so, in they went. I estimate 6 lbs. of worms.

I also watered it down with ½ gallon of water.

10/16/09

I have pot worms crawling up the sides.

Added 4oz of bread to the right side.

Added 3oz crushed egg shell scattered around the top

I went ahead and added the other holding bin 43 lbs. of worms and unfinished VC.

I have no idea how many worms were in the 43 lbs but, there was a lot. Maybe 15 lbs.

Added ½ gallon of water.

Totals:

Finished VC/cocoons 100lbs.

Horse manure 72 lbs.

Coffee grounds 56 lbs.

Kitchen waste 12 lbs.

Paper/cardboard/coffee filters 6 lbs.

Cow Manure 2 ½ lbs.

Sand 1 ½

Egg shell 7 ounces

Oats 12 ounces

Bread 4 ounces

Water 7 gallons

Worms holding bins 77 lbs.

Let me wrap this up by sending out a big thanks to Mark for taking the time to document his OSCR building experience (and of course for sharing it with us). Hopefully he will be able to provide us with updates as the bin (and his vermicomposting adventure in general) progresses!

If you have any questions or comments for Mark please be sure to add them below!

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At the risk of horrifying my loyal worm-lovers (haha), I thought it might be interesting to offer something a little different here on the blog. This was inspired by a recent email exchange with Dan Thorne, one of my local (Ontario, Canada) customers, who just so happens to be an avid fisherman.

As much as I now love my worms, I still definitely have a serious soft spot for the live food folks and the fishing fanatics – after all, my fascination with Red Worms started well before I really knew anything about vermicomposting. I used to be an avid aquarium hobbyist and diehard angler (I still wet a line every now and again – but am definitely not much of a bait fisherman anymore).

I can still vividly remember one of the real ‘turning points’ for me prior to my first introduction to a worm compost bin. I was watching my favorite childhood fishing show – ‘Real Fishing with Bob Izumi’ – and Bob was fishing for Steelhead (large migratory Rainbow Trout) on a tiny creek here in Ontario. As you might guess, his bait of choice that day happened to be Red Wigglers. Well, long story short, he was ended up pulling these monster fish out one after the other – I was completely floored! Steelhead can be a challenge to catch at the best of times, let alone on a teeny tiny, crystal clear creek. There obviously had to be something special about these worms! (little did I know at the time JUST how special they were!)

What’s really cool is that Dan was actually a guest on Bob Izumi’s show at one time (although not on the episode mentioned above), and also knows just how effective these worms can be for catching Steelhead. He recently shared with me a little story about one of his Red Worm fishing days (along with some additional fishing wisdom) and I requested permission to post it here. Dan kindly agreed, and even sent me the great photo above (thanks again, Dan!).

I was fishing an opening day in late April on a very crowded river that held a large number of 5-10 pound Steelhead (migratory Rainbow Trout). The water was gin clear and the fish were extremely weary refusing all regular offerings of various colored spawn sacs, spoons and lures and even big dew worms. Luckily I had the foresight that morning to pack a couple dozen red wigglers adding to my arsenal with the hope of offering something different than everyone else.

I arrived early that morning to find more fisherman than I’ve ever seen at this particular spot, in fact some were actually camped overnight in order to secure a good spot to fish at sunrise. The water was ultra clear and I knew this would be one of those challenging days where the fish would be hunkered down with feeding as the last thing on their minds. I downsized my complete presentation in order to offer my bait in the most natural way possible. My first 10 drifts were made with the typical baits as used by the fisherman who now lined both sides of the river with no strikes…there’s no doubt these fish were spooked.

I single hooked a red wiggler on a small #12 hook, and half way through my first drift my float disappeared and I found myself fighting a beautiful 8 pound Steelhead in front of everyone who had to quickly pull their lines in allowing me to fight this aggressive brute. Some thought I foul hooked it since they didn’t seem to be biting anything….but I knew better! To make a long story short, I continued hooking one after another until I finally ran out of worms my mid-morning but not before landing and releasing another 10 or so beautiful chrome fish, not to mention the ones I battled and lost.

Don’t get me wrong, these worms are not the end all but through experience I know they have produced fish when other baits haven’t. I strongly believe they will hit the smaller worms purely based on natural instinct. Steelhead spend their first 2-3 years of life in the river before venturing out into the lakes, only to return every year thereafter to spawn. During these early years of growth they become accustomed to only feeding on natural food sources which include small worms that get washed into the river after rainfalls. I don’t think big dew worms are as common as the smaller worms, thus my reasoning for raising them and having them on hand for just the right occasion.

This was definitely not an isolated incident as there have been many occasions I have nestled in between unsuccessful anglers and immediately hooked fish. When they ask what in God’s name am I using I simply reply “worms” with no description and then move on.

~ Dan Thorne

Technorati Tags: red worms, red wigglers, fishing, trout fishing, steelhead, rainbow trout, bait, bait worms, worm composting, worm bin, raising worms

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