The WormFarm Chronicles- Day 49…. Part 2

Once you've allowed them to escape with their lives, you're ready to start collecting the treasure. First, take your small, yellow plastic 3x5 paddle and begin cutting the compressed compost into smaller cubes. Use an up and down cutting action to further reduce the size of the chunks. The material will still be moist and clumpy like clay, but that's not a big deal- use the little yellow rake and continue turning your castings over in an effort to dry. Now it's just a recovery mission. Use the paddle and a small trowel to collect the material in a container for future use. It should be relatively worm-free but there will be some worms remaining in your compost. You can afford to loose some as they have just about doubled to 2000 worms in their short stay with you. Now all that remains, is cleaning up your remaining trays with a hose, especially the collection base of the system which holds most of the water, manure and sediment. It's also a good idea to exercise the tapper and run some water through it as it sometimes will clog with silt.

Now more waiting- I hate all the waiting. I just want to start dumping compost all over my property but I read somewhere it's a good idea to let the compost sit or "cure" for a month or two. This curing time supposedly makes the compost less acidic, making it "bioavailable" to your plants and the waiting makes it more pH neutral. Recapping now, six weeks have elapsed since we began adding our first kitchen scraps to now, where we're taking out our first tray of worm castings. We need to wait another month while it rests, gains nitrogen and cures... sounds like a fine wine on its way to greatness. We're now ready to apply the compost to the flowers and plants. Mix 1 part worm castings to 4 parts potting soil. This combination of "amended" soil will be extremely nutrient rich, about 5 times richer than conventional potting soil I'm told. The leachate or liquid bi-product collected out of the bottom of the system, can also be sprayed on the leaves or added to your amended soil if you prefer. The cycle then continues by essentially repeating itself as we did originally.

Finally, one footnote. If you don't want to wait for the compost to cure for a month or two, that's alright but be careful where you use it. It is very nitrogen-rich and acidic. Acid loving plants like roses love this for fertilizer but most of your other flowers will react negatively to this pH balance and will probably burn.

For more information and a look at the system with, or without worms, go to: http://gottabgreen.com

The WormFarm Chronicles- Day 49…. Part 1

This past weekend marks an important milestone for us. It's been just over 6 weeks since we started composting kitchen waste products in the WormFarm 360. The menu the worms dine on has been very carefully planned and orchestrated. Selected food types include fruit and vegetable waste, paper, junk mail, fiber, coffee grounds, bread and egg shells. What we don't feed them are meats and fats, bones, bakery, citrus or other rich things and dairy. The other thing I learned is the worms are pretty high maintenance, their environment needs to be very tightly controlled. I share this with you, because we're getting close to harvest our first tray of worm castings which make up a good share of this organically rich compost for our plants, flowers and garden. I read in the instruction manual and it says, "with regular feedings, your worms should eat up to 2 pounds of waste per week and you should be getting the first tray of compost in 6-8 weeks. Personally I didn't believe it would be that quick- a more realistic timeline I thought was around 2-3 months. After which we might be realizing a usable final product. I was wrong, Tray 1 is ready. I have attached a picture below that shows the contents after 4 weeks of decomposition with the rigglers' help. I told myself we'd wait until 6 weeks to actually pull the trigger and just sat and admired my work for two weeks.

We're now ready to remove the contents of our initial processing tray and it occurs to me, I don't know how to do this. I will need to refer to the instruction manual to figure out exactly how to do this. You see, there are over 1000 worms in that compost I want to harvest. So how do you separate the worms and the compost? Must be a trick to it. Well the trick is, the instruction manual doesn't tell you. I googled the question and found a couple useful You-tube videos from people who have been doing it commercially for years. The answer is really pretty clever how you separate the worms and the compost, while not killing your worms and making a mess.

First, take your Worm Farm outside and set up a comfortable place to work in the sun. Next, take the processing tray or the lowest tray, out of your system and set it aside on a sheet of newspaper. Now return the stack of remaining trays into the system in the same order. Note that all trays have moved down one number and one tray closer to the ground. Tray 2 becomes tray 1, tray 3 becomes tray 2 and so on. On the top tray, or your freshest working tray, remove the cover and the moistened newspaper cap exposing the food scraps. Next, place the processing tray that you set aside, on top of the remaining trays exposing the dark muddy looking looking compost to the bright, hot sun. If you remember from an earlier blog post, worms hate light and dry surroundings as they need moisture to breathe and survive. Exposing the compost to then sun and drying it out quickly makes the worms head south almost immediately. Let this just bake in the sun and stir occasionally, which speeds up the process.They retreat to the moist, dark bedding below to escape the new, harsher environment. Give them an hour or so to migrate from the tray. Depending on the conditions it might take more or less time and you can always manually grab the last stragglers.

All for now, stay tuned for Part 2…

For more information and a look at the system with, or without worms, go to:  http://gottabgreen.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=55&products_id=4538

 

 

Our NEW Worm Composting Bin- The 360 Diaries, Day 40

Let's look at the worm... our worker bee. Earthworms have been around a very long time and can survive in extreme climates. Conventional wisdom has it the earthworms originated in Europe and came over to North America on boats with the early settlers and then migrated across the country to the west. That's a long crawl. The earthworms are found in all parts of the planet except extreme deserts and subarctic zones. There are over 7000 varieties of earthworms and they come in a variety of sizes from a quarter-inch to several feet long. They can live up to 15 years and their young begin to reproduce at just a few months old. There are a couple different kinds of worms that will adequately work in your vermicomposter, but the 'Red Wriggler' reigns supreme. It processes vast amounts of food, replicates quickly, is a crushing hyperactive machine and is actually the quintessential composting workhorse.

Most earthworms like to burrow deep into the dark and quiet, but the wriggler likes to burrow and scamper about in the very top layers. The other bonus is they are bred to do just this- be incarcerated in a dark, soggy box and be okay with it. Earthworms will jump ship at first chance. The Wriggler, not so much.

A bit about how they eat. They have a rather primitive or rudimentary digestive tract. They have no teeth and very few digestive fluids, they depend on bacteria and fungi, stinky molds and other nastiness to predigest their food. Worms can survive on any organic matter including starches and paper (junk mail) but get this- they need microorganisms, nematoads and protozoa (sounds like a law firm) to break down the fiber. When the food becomes small enough, the worm sucks the particle into it's mouth. Sand particles and particulate along with strong contracting muscles, grind and breakdown the food even more. Finally digestion occurs in the intestines of the worm, this is where the microbes mentioned above work. These microbes are what really digest the food and turn it into rich worm castings. Here's a bonus... In a scant 3 months, the wrigglers can be expected to double in numbers. The worms lay eggs and are incubated to cocoons. I saw some of these tiny, newborn worms last week- seemed pretty happy to be here. All in all, we're in a month and a half and everything looks good and on schedule for our first harvest in a couple weeks.

Kelley Murphy the author, owns a media production business in the healthcare vertical market, and is a new e-commerce business owner of gottabgreen.com, promoting and selling a responsible lifestyle and eco-friendly green products online. Looking to rid the world of plastic, follow his blogs and shop GottaBGreen.com for the Best Selling Green Products.

To see the WormFarm 360 GO HERE: For more info and where to purchase your own Worm Farm, shop http://gottabgreen.com and go to Grow/Compost or click on:

http://gottabgreen.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=55&products_id=4538