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

 

 

The WormFarm Chronicles... We're Pregnant!

You guessed it. Not only have I seen some weird little fuzzy clumps, I have seen about a dozen new workers, very light pink and about a quarter to half-inch long. The worms are duplicating and replicating and multiplying and ... and... well that's a good thing right? The more worms, the more composting power, the more garbage eaten and the more garbage eaten quicker. It's like souping up your '69 Chevelle. What's not to like? I've been happily feeding the worms crushed egg shells and mega fiber everyday in the hopes of getting things going. About once every two weeks, I add a good size handful of pumice, a gritty gravely kind of pebble-like stuff and a pinch of sand from the back yard. These things in concert, all add a little calcium bolus to the worms which make them fertile for reproduction, while the grit from the pumice and sand, aid in food crushing and creation of organically rich solid worm waste. So far, so good.

Speaking of the worm waste, our end game, we're just about ready to dump our first tray of compost from our original tray. Just like the owners manual says, you should be able start using compost about 6-8 weeks after you open for business. Obviously, the longer you wait, the better the quality of the compost. So if you're antsy to start using your unique WormFarm 360 bi-product, it's probably ready to use on your flower garden. If you're in no hurry for it or you have some other foods and fertilizers to use up, let the stuff simmer and bake a bit more and harvest at 90 days. It's like a fine wine.

When you're ready to start fertilizing with the vermicompost, you start by simply mixing (1) part compost to (4) parts soil and drop a handful or trowel full of the high test organic additive to your plants and flowers. You can also tap your WormFarm and harness the compost liquid bi-product that has been accumulating from moisture and condensate called leachate. You can either mix this with your solid compost or mix with water in a 50-50 solution. Apply this tea with a spray mist bottle to the leaves and it delivers amazing results and clean, shiny leaves I'm told.

Stay tuned to our posts and in a couple weeks, roughly start date plus 60, we'll be harvesting and adding worm poop to the garden and all the flowers. In the meantime, we continue with the weekly maintenance as previously described.

GottaBGreen.com offers the latest in Eco-friendly composting, recycling and urban grow solutions. Plastic-free trash and compost bags. For more on the WormFarm 360 with or without worms visit: http://gottabgreen.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=55&products_id=4538

The WormFarm Chronicles- The Next Month...Day 32

"What might have been" in the first month of us cultivating a worm-powered compost engine, has come and gone. We are two days into the second month and dare I say it's lost a bit of it's charm, perhaps the novelty has worm off or maybe it's just getting boring. I haven't really looked at the contents in about 10-12 days. I open the moistened newspaper cap and continue to dump food onto the top layer but I'm not really "looking" in there. When they feel me take the cover off and consequently see light, they disappear quickly. And that's just the top "working tray" where food is actively being consumed and eaten for the most part. The real composting occurs in the lower most tray called the "processing tray." I have been a stranger to this tray for about 2 weeks. That changed today.

Today was a maintenance day and I thought I'd start by replacing the old, soggy newspaper cap on the top of the working tray. This was the original newspaper that I added on Day 1. Didn't really know if you're supposed to replace it, you're probably not because it's half decomposed itself and will eventually turn into soil, but when l looked closely at this, and lately when I lift the corners to add food, the moldy mess just kind of falls apart. Enter about a dozen new soaked newspaper pages to cap off the tray. I threw the old one out. Next I spread newspaper on the floor and took my top 2 trays and set them on the floor for maintenance. Deep in the lowest tray or processing tray is where all the worms for the most part. I grabbed my soft little yellow rake and very carefully raked and turned the compost over- the idea here is to mix the contents with some new oxygen as it stimulates the breakdown already naturally occurring. This by the way, irritates the worms because well, some of them are being literally pulled apart. Oh well, they're worms. After I turn those rich layers over, I add a couple handfuls of pumice, kind of a sandy, gravel medium that helps the worms digest and grind food up in their gizzards. I like that word, gizzard.

After that tray is cared for, I move to the fresher working tray that is about half full but a little light on paper. I shredded up about a dozen sheets and I added another handful of pumice with the shredded paper. Just as with the processing tray, i raked and turned the contents until all has been overturned and aerated nicely. Next I added some cardboard egg containers and a slice of bread. This should balance nicely with all the fruit and vegetables I've been dumping in. I hope our worms like bananas, berries, carrots and snap bean pieces because they sure get allot of it. Important- 40% food 60% fiber, and I flip flop those every couple weeks for even more balance.

My charming wife saw through a relatively transparent act of goodness I offered her last week. I asked her if I could make her an omlet for breakfast because I loved her and liked doing nice things for her. I came clean that it was really for the worms- they need their calcium that aids in reproduction efforts you know. I told her it served her right for all the coffee grounds she been throwing into the garbage instead of throwing them in our one-month old rocking WormFarm 360!

Check them out here: http://gottabgreen.com/index.phpmain_page=product_info&cPath=55&products_id=4538

Kelley Murphy, the author 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 at http://gottabgreen.com/

 

 

Are we there yet? Day 25

Monday night, one of these nights.... 11:05 PM


Day 25 is upon us and yesterday i made an observation while moving the WormFarm 360 from the dining room to the covered patio deck. It is getting heavy. I haven't really thought too much about everything I've been dumping into it for the last month. I had a sneaking suspicion that 'garbage in' was not going to equal 'garbage out ' (GIGO) Perhaps the worms just keep eating the garbage and said garbage just magically disappears...not so much I've found. The temperature has been in and out of the 90's for the past couple weeks so I've been carrying the system in and out. It is a relatively cool today so they are residing outside again. I checked all the layers this morning and the moisture content feels pretty good- not soggy but not too dry either. It's beginning to look pretty organic, dark and chewy in there, so I expect everything's going as planned, and more importantly everyone in our family unit is happy and it hasn't caused any negative effects in our fragile ecosystem.

I've been promising to talk about the common sense approach to collecting kitchen waste and storing it before you dump it into your WormFarm. I've just been throwing the scraps into a tupperware bowl with a air tight lid and making the dump into the working tray once every couple of days. This way, we're disturbing the worms less and we're controlling the amount of food we put in front of them at one time. This is a good process but can be made even easier with biodegradable bags and a small kitchen waste container. Bio Bags waste bags are the perfect companion for bio-waste kitchen containers, primarily used for the collection of food scraps and other biodegradable waste for home or community composting. The term "superliner" means a normal waste can liner can be both thin and light- meaner cheaper, and still be as strong as a comparable Bio Bags waste bag. Made from cornstarch, these bags help to eliminate regular plastic bags from our environment. When disposed, these bags will biodegrade as naturally as food scraps, leaving no harmful residue. No Polyethylene is used in the production of this product. Bio Bags bags are GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) free, certified for use in organic agriculture.

Apparently, the worms don't mind them either The other thing I like about the bags is they work great in a traditional backyard compost. If you don't compost anything, but just throw away your garbage in white kitchen bags, make them Bio Bags because they won't be sitting in landfills 2000 years from now. They will disappear along with their contents in no time at all. Make so much sense it's a wonder more people aren't using them.... or is it they just don't know about them yet?

For a list of best selling green products, GottaBGreen.com offers the latest in Eco-friendly composting, recycling and urban grow solutions. Plastic-free trash and compost bags. For more on the WormFarm 360 with or without worms visit:

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

 

 

 

The WormFarm Chronicles

Our NEW Worm Composting Bin- The Chronicles, Day 18

03:05 PM

We're bearing down on 3 weeks with our new WormFarm 360, which is good because my partner is starting to ask questions like "Where's the compost....When can I dump the tray ... How long do we need to wait to get rich, organic worm castings for my box roses? Patience princess, It's not like microwaving oatmeal. We're actually waiting for mother nature to decompose this organic material in real time. We've probably all seen those cool time-lapse films of strawberries rotting, ice cream melting, the lifecycle of the dandelion and yogurt growing mold and shriveling up- all cool stuff. That's exactly what we're doing here, but we're using a thousand worms to gently accelerate the process. As far as quantities and timelines go, we're adding food scraps to the tray about 10 times per week before the tray is full- this tray we're dumping into, is called the "working tray." We try to stick to a 60/40 mix of food to fiber. The fiber is paper, cardboard, junk mail, paper towels etc., while the food is just about anything other than meat and citrus. The meat, too fatty and greasy, leads to a smelly worm bin. The citrus radically upsets the pH of the worm bed and freaks the worms out. Under that "working tray", is the "processing tray," or the first tray we filled when we started, also the bottom tray. That's where the compost is, or where the most involved layer of food decomposition occurs- the oldest stuff. Since I added the second tray with new food scraps about a 3 days ago, I haven't looked at the processing tray.

Monday morning is my WormFarm 360 maintenance day. I usually get up early and take the layers apart and get a look at the contents of these different trays. If you remember from the top, our tray 1 is nothing but dead leaves. This tray acts as a barrier between fruit flies and the food waste beginning to decompose in our active tray, or tray 2. I peel back the 4 or 5 sheets of soggy newspaper which act as a moisture cap to the new garbage. Yeah, the worms are doing their thing. I inspect this layer carefully and see the worms fully involved in a pile of coffee grounds, which is a treat for them I read, a pile of moldy bread scraps, asparagus, carrot, beans and celery scraps. I also had a whole bunch of strawberry tops and cut up banana rind, melons and 4-6 crushed egg shells. Layer 2 looking good... all decomposing, everything moist, nicely balanced, clean and running well. Now onto the processing tray or tray 3, which I haven't seen in awhile.

Upon initial inspection, everything looks like it has been compacted like a sheet of patchwork concrete. I remember from the manual, that after a couple weeks, and a every couple weeks thereafter, I'm supposed to take the little yellow rake enclosed in the kit, and gently mix up the layer- kind of gently folding the top to the bottom and getting some fresh, new air in there. You have to go easy and gently because there's a boatload of worms in there and they're not happy to see you, or to be seen. This mixing it up, aerates the contents and speeds up the decomposition. I'm guessing were about half way to the finish line with this tray. Most of the food products have disappeared into rich, dark brown globs, but there's still a good amount of the paper squares and cardboard still there. I think our tray is about two weeks from being soup- that would mean it takes about 5-6 weeks to make a tray of compost providing the conditions are right, you feed them regularly- but not overfeed, and keep the temperature and moisture content to their liking. We've had hot and humid weather as of late, and the forecast is for more of the same. Therefore, the worms go back to the dining room as that's too warm for them on the screen porch. They go deep into the core of the bedding and slow way down, kind of like us. Next week, I'm planning on buying biodegradable bags and building another old school compost pile in the back yard.

Day 18... all good.

For a list of best selling green products, GottaBGreen.com offers the latest in Eco-friendly composting, recycling and urban grow solutions. Plastic-free trash and compost bags. For more on the WormFarm 360 with or without worms visit:

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