Worm Composting Basics

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Starting your worm compost or vermicompost is easy. You can even setup your worm composting in one day. It will be fun and environment friendly. It will not cost you much as well if you start small. First, you will need to acquire the materials for worm composting. Once you have these handy, then you can start setting up your worm farm. Follow the worm composting basics below.

Setting up the worm bin

Setting up the worm bin is easy. What you need is just a box with a cover which can hold all the other materials that you have. You can either purchase a worm bin or make one. Just take into consideration that the composting worms need air, moisture, darkness and warmth. Use what you have as long as you clean it first prior to using the container.

Preparing the worm bedding

Aside from food, composting worms also need a place to live. Worm bedding serves as both. It is where the worms will leave and it will serve as their food as well. Ideally, your worm bin should have a lot of bedding to start with. Great materials for worm bedding are newspapers, cardboard, leaves and coconut coir. It is best to shred the paper and cardboard but if you do not have a shredder, cutting it into thin strips (about an inch) is fine.

The bedding material needs to be moistened first before putting it in the worm bin. Remember, composting worms need moisture. Wet the bedding just enough so it contains water but is not dripping wet. Think of a wrung-out sponge as a comparison. Once you have this, you can put it inside the worm bin ready for your worms. You can also add a handful of grit, fine sand will do, in the bin to help the worms digest their food.

Typically, the amount of worm bedding should be half of your worm bin. Filling your worm bin with 3/4 full of worm bedding is ideal.

Adding worm food

Worm bins are usually setup at home unless you are doing this for business then you will need a yard. Worm food can be anything from your table except meat, dairy products, oils, pet waste and other things that has harsh chemicals. Minimize grains and citrus fruits as well since this will make the bedding acidic and can kill your composting worms.

When first starting up your worm composting, after adding the worm bedding, you can add a little worm food in the bedding. Make sure to cover the worm food once added to discourage flies and worms usually eat food beneath the surface.

Vegetable and fruit wastes are great worm food. The composting worms also love coffee grounds, tea bags and grounded egg shells.

Introducing the worms for composting

After adding the worm food in your bin, let it stand for a day or two before introducing your worms. You can directly put the composting worms on top of your bedding and they will normally find their way beneath the bedding and to the food and start working or eating. Now you are all set with your vermicomposting and all you have to do is feed your worms regularly and in no time you will have worm poop or worm castings which is actually the vermicompost.

Materials for worm composting

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Worm composting or vermicomposting is not as hard as it sound. Anybody from around the world can start worm composting at any time. Though extreme weather is a hindrance to vermicomposting since the worms need to thrive in certain temperatures, this hobby can be done almost everywhere as long as the worms can thrive. This can be done in the city as well, like what I'm doing. You don't necessarily need a garden or a lawn to start having your own vermicompost. You can have your worm bins inside your house if you don't have a space.

So what do you need to start composting with worms? To start your worm composting and worm farming, you'll need the following:

Worms - there are two popular worms for composting. The Red Wigglers and African Night Crawlers

Worm bin - this can be made of wood or plastic which you can either purchase or make

Bedding - any organic material where the worms can live, i.e. newspapers, cardboards

Worm food a.k.a food wastes - these are left overs and other organic wastes

Once you have these materials, you can go ahead and start your own vermicompost or vermiculture.

What is worm composting?

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Worm composting, also known as vermicomposting, is utilizing worms to recycle food leftovers along with other organic and natural material into a valuable soil amendment called vermicompost, or worm compost. Worms eat food scraps, which become compost as they go through the worm's digestive system. Compost leaves the worm via its' tail end. This rich compost may then be utilized to grow plants. To see why vermicompost is ideal for plants, remember that the worms are eating nutrient-rich fruit and vegetable scraps, and converting all of them into nutrient-rich compost.

worm composting or vermicomposting

Worm composting is a safe, interesting, educational, and also earth friendly activity that one can feel great about. It's a hobby that I started for the sake of getting rid of our household waste and I'm looking forward to all the benefits that I can get from it.

Vermicomposting can be done with the help of composting worms which you can order easily online. You can buy Red Wigglers online for as low as $29.95.

Worms for composting

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There are a lot of earthworms that you can find in the soil. But if you want to do worm composting, you've got to look for the ideal worms for this purpose. When looking for Worms for composting, one should look for worms that are surface dwellers, voracious, reproduces rapidly and can survive in captivity. There are two species of worms that are commonly used in vermicomposting, the Red Wigglers and African Nightcrawlers. These composting worms can be found in any part of the world including the Philippines. The Red Wigglers are considered the best compost worms followed by the African Nightcrawlers.

Red Wigglers, scientific name Eisenia fetida, are the widely used worms for Vermiculture and Vermicomposting. They are voracious eaters and are adapted to living in a decaying environment. They are not burrow deep as well.

Red Wigglers

African Nightcrawlers, scientific name Eudrilus eugeniae, are also commonly used in composting and Vermiculture. They are less voracious compared to the Red Wigglers.

African Nightcrawlers

So what's the difference between Red Wigglers and African Nightcrawlers? Well, aside from their eating habits, the most obvious one is their size. Look at the photo below for the comparison. Aside from that, both worms are great for composting.

You can readily buy Red Wiggler worms online and have it shipped to your address.

What are earthworms?

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Before we go into the details of worm composting, let us meet first the very essential contributor to the process - the earthworms. I'm sure you've heard or even seen these creatures. Earthworms are invertebrates, meaning animals that has no backbones, that thrive in the soil. They are creatures that makes our soil rich by consuming the organic matter or wastes in the soil and makes oxygen flow through the soil when they go about creating tunnels.

There are a lot of types of earthworm in earth but what we will be using in worm composting are those that are classified as, what else, Composting Worms. The other type of worm that we usually find in agricultural fields are called Earthworkers. Earthworkers and Composting Worms are basically the same but the composting worms are fast breeders and consumes a lot of organic material which makes them ideal for vermicomposting.

Earthworms are hermaphrodites, meaning there is no disticntion between a male and a female because they have both sex organs. Having both organs does not mean though that the worms does not need a partner in order to reproduce. They still copulate with each other in order to reporduce.

Earthworms are commonly called dew-worm, rainworm, night crawler, and angleworm.

You can read a whole lot about earthworms from Wikipedia.

About Worm Composting Basics

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Worm Composting Basics was created to share my experience and knowledge in composting with worms. There are different kinds of earthworms that can be used in composting, you can learn about those worms in this blog. Simply use the search bar on the upper right. Vermicomposting or the process of composting using worms became a hobby when I started having problems with organic wastes. I tried finding ways to get rid of our household garbage in the best way possible way and that is vermicomposting. With the help of earthworms, you can get rid of your organic wastes and at the same time you can even earn from it.

So stick around and learn what you can from the Worm Composting Basics blog and hopefully you will start your own worm compost.