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Getting wormy

Posted on May 8th, 2007 – 11:40 AM
By Robyn Dochterman

Last weekend, I was looking forward to getting organized, in a seed packet kind of way. It was supposed to rain, rain, rain. Perfect, I thought. Time to get my thoughts together. Time to soak the rainbow chard seeds. Wait — I mean, time to drive into town and go to the Living Green Expo!

Were you there? If you missed it, you can still see the exhibitors virtually.

I wandered among the solar displays and picked up information about CSA farms (of which there are many near my house) and talked to people about the linseed-based flooring called Marmoleum.

But the coolest thing I did was to adopt some worms. I haven’t named them just yet, but I’m excited to have a sample of red worms to use in composting. My compost bin is underperforming, thanks to a too-shady locale. So I’m going to try vermicomposting and see if that works better for me.

Vermicomposting is a fancy name for feeding your worms scraps — stuff you’d toss in the compost anyway — and then using their “output” as compost. They are supposed to be faster and easier than composting the normal way, and just as good for your garden.

Have you tried it? Is there a downside? Got any advice for this novice?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 8th, 2007 at 11:40 am and is filed under Compost. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

4 Responses to "Getting wormy"

poverty says:

May 8th, 2007 at 1:45 pm

I’ve been tossing worms I find while digging in the garden into the compost bin since I moved it from the blackberry thicket (where it was home to a hive of hornets) to a patch of grass against the house in January. On weekends, I stir up the compost with a hoe, and cover it with a new layer of leaves. This past weekend, I opened the door in the front to see how things were going, and found some nice black soil with itty-bitty baby worms squirming around in it. I think things are going pretty well!

Liz says:

May 8th, 2007 at 8:06 pm

I have been doing Vermicomposting but in my basement. I first read about it in the book “You Grow Girl”. How I am doing it is in a big rubbermaid bin that I poked a lot of holes in. I have been doing it for about 2 months and it has been going really well. I really like that idea of throwing the reagular worms in with the compost bin to spead things up since I am not a fan of turning the compost.

Robyn Dochterman says:

May 9th, 2007 at 9:51 am

Liz, would you share how often do you feed the worms? What are you using for bedding? Do you do any regular maintenence? How do you separate the finished product from the bedding, etc? Thanks so much.

Liz says:

May 9th, 2007 at 4:59 pm

I feed my worms every couple of days because I feel like they are still getting establish. Also, they won’t eat things that are moldy and that is what will make it stinky but from what I have read it sounds like eventually I will be able to feed them everyday. When I made the orginal bedding I used a mixture of shreded newspapers, leaves and a little bit of dirt. Lastly, in order to seperate them they say that you can push all of the dirt to one side, then add new bedding on the empty side and put the food on the new side and the worms will migrate to the new stuff. I haven’t done this yet because my are new but I have notice that once I put new food in there when I check on them later they are at the new food. But they are definatly the most low maintenece “pets” that I have ever had. I have read that they can be left for two weeks at a time and will survive on just reeating the dirt. You can find a lot of info on the internet that will give more specific instructions!

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