vermiculture

Composting

August 5, 2010

It’s been awhile since we talked about composting. I don’t think much about it, it just seems to be incorporated in my daily life. I’ve got two big bins in the front yard, and a little composter just outside the kitchen door. The word “composting” seems to be a scary thing for lots of people. Basically, it’s not a big deal if you follow a few basic rules. You need green products (kitchen scraps like rinds, tops, cores, grass clippings, green leaves -anything that breaks down and doesn’t contain meat or fat products.) To offset the green products, you need to add brown products (dried leaves, paper, cardboard, straw and wood chips). Too much green and you’ll end up with a stinky mess. Too much brown and it won’t break down as quickly. Eggshells and coffee grinds are excellent things to add to your pile. Common sense dictates that the smaller your pieces are, the faster the breakdown.

Keep in mind that you don’t want to compost plant material that has been sprayed with herbicides. It will remain in the compost and kill plants if you spread it around the garden. Also, weeds can be composted, BUT only if they have dried out and have not gone to seed.

I practice vermiculture, which means I cultivate worms which, in turn, compost my kitchen waste products. My end product isn’t just compost, it’s worm castings. Gold for the garden. Remember, too, if you are raising worms, their mouths are small, so crushing eggshells and chopping their food into small pieces is a courtesy they will appreciate. Aren’t they cute?!

The Kids

I have been composting shredded paper mixed into my bins for awhile. My latest success story is a by-product of my bird feeders. The birdseed I use is black sunflower seed and I am going through a bag a day, so that translates into a lot of hulls I rake up weekly. With a layer of sunflower hulls in the compost bins, the worms have multiplied exponentially, which means they are really chomping through the stuff I through in; i.e. faster turnaround. Is it wrong to be so excited about that?

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Oh, poop!

June 22, 2010

Did you see this article about Worm Gold in the Union-Tribune yesterday? The Department of Pesticide Regulation said George Hahn, owner of Worm-Gold, Worm-Gold Plus, and Tree Rescue Solution, was selling an unregistered pesticide, in violation of state and federal law because he claims that his products repel insects. I read the article a couple of times thinking I’d missed something, but I’ve concluded that this is a case of non-communicative bureacracy. This guy has been fined $100,000 already, and the next step is a lawsuit. Are you sh*tt*ng me??!!! People, people, people……IT’S WORM POOP! I happen to use Worm Gold, love it, and believe that it really helps keep the pest population in check. If Mr. Hahn changes the name to “επίστεγο σκουλήκι” (translation below), his marketing would be more exotic and, maybe, he could work around the whole lawsuit thing.
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* translated from Greek = “Worm poop” People, people, people………

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Happy Easter!

April 4, 2010

We’re having a nice day at our house. The Easter Tree has been set up for a couple of weeks, decorated with all the Easter ornaments we collected, and made, over the years.

We dyed our eggs and hid them around the yard.

This is before the egg salad when the eggs were hiding in the celery instead of the other way around!

We had an Easter egg hunt for the “kids” which was a little tricky because they don’t have hands to hold their baskets and they were pretty clueless about what was going on, but it was fun.

The kids had never done an Easter egg hunt before!

Top off the festivities with an earthquake and call it a day. Happy Easter!

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More worm information than you probably need….NOT.

December 3, 2009

As a self-proclaimed lover of worms, this information is GOLD!

From the Solana Center for Environmental Innovation

A brief description of different composting worms:

“Earthworm” is the common name for over 2,500 species of Earthworm. But not all species are suitable for vermicomposting or the compost bin. Earthworker worms do not eat a large volume of organic material, do not reproduce well in confinement, and do not thrive when their burrow systems are disturbed. Vermicomposting worms on the other hand, reproduce quickly, eat large amounts of organic material, and tolerate disturbance.

Red Wigglers
Eisenia fetida
Red wigglers are the most common type of vermicomposting worms. They are rust brown in color with striping between segments. Adults can grow to about 3 inches in length, they prefer temperatures between 59-77 degrees F, and cocoons hatch between 35 and 70 days. Red wigglers work well for vermicomposting because of their high reproductive rate, ability to survive in varying conditions, and because under perfect conditions, they can eat their body weight in food everyday. Red wigglers are not soil dwellers and will likely perish if added to a garden.

Red Tiger
Eisenia andrei
The tiger worm is a close relative of the red wiggler and shares very similar vermicomposting abilities. They are dark red or purple in color and can grow up to 3 inches long. They prefer temperatures between 64 and 72 degrees F and can process large volumes of organic material. They are often not separated from red wigglers by commercial growers.

Redworms
Lumbricus rubellus
This worm works well for vermicomposting and bait as well. It is said to be irresistible to fish. This worm is dark red to maroon in color with no striping between segments. They can grow up to 3 inches in length and prefer temperatures between 64 and 72 degrees F. Redworms cocoons hatch in 12 to 16 weeks. This worm can potentially do double duty as a vermicomposter and earthworker.

Nightcrawlers
Lumbricus terrestris
Nightcrawlers are not ideal worms for vermicomposting bins. Nightcrawlers are deep dwellers that can burrow up to 6 feet into the ground. Nightcrawlers do not like their burrows to be disturbed and prefer temperatures around 50 degrees F. They can grow up to 12 inches in length and prefer to eat leaf litter and mulch. Nightcrawlers are earthworkers, performing an important role in soil mixing, taking organic matter from the surface into deeper layers of the soil.

For a list of suppliers go to this link: Worm and Compost Supplies in San Diego County

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Good compost comes from happy worms….

November 15, 2009

I hear singing and laughing, and I don’t think it’s Ringo.

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Composting – come on, you know you want to do it!

October 17, 2009

On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal had a nice article about composting and comparing different models. Read the full article here…. Journalist Gwendolyn Bounds also made a cute video about her attempts with different composters. She even plays piano for the “kids” in her Worm Factory 360. I think she and I could be friends!

There is another article online at WSJ written by another journalist, Rachel Emma Silverman, as she shares her families attempts at being more “green” in their daily lives. There are a lot of great links in the article, too.

In our household, we’ve cut our trash down significantly by composting everything we can, including: vegetable scraps, egg shells, coffee grounds, paper towels, cardboard, shredded paper, newspaper, old cereal and bread. Let the worms do the work. Sometimes I break the material down using a food chopper so the “kids” can eat through it faster, but in the interest of keeping things simple, just toss it in.

Just a quick note on eggshells. I just read that you should wash, not rinse, them before you toss them in because of the salmonella poisoning risk. That seems like a lot of water to waste. Another suggestion is to cook them in the oven for about 20 minutes, although I couldn’t find any info about a suggested temperature, so pick a temperature and wing it. From my perspective, I don’t see why we should have to go through all that work to have eggshells in our compost. There is bacteria naturally occurring in the soil anyway, and what about cow manure? This sounds like a subject I could spend hours researching on Google. No thank you. Moving on…..

Gardener’s Supply Company is a favorite gardening catalog of mine and they have a great selection of composters and composting supplies. Check it out:

After you click on the logo above, you will see a link for composting on the left side of the page near the top.

I’m a “cold” composter vs a “hot” composter, which means that my brown/green ratio doesn’t have to be so precise and I can throw in whatever I want whenever I want. Plus, the “kids” don’t like it hot, so it’s all good.

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Spoiling the little darlings

July 9, 2009

Today was an impulse shopping day. Since my conversation at the Del Mar Fair with Mr. Worm Guy, I’ve been hitting garage sales on Thursday mornings in search of a blender or food chopper to break the food scraps down before I throw them in the worm bin. I’ve since learned that these little appliances are hot ticket items in the world of garage-sales and really hard to find. In the meantime, I was out there looking and finding all sorts of other great things. Two weeks ago I went to a garage sale and drove away from there with two garbage cans for the yard, a bag of shredded paper for the compost bin, a wooden tool box for my garden essentials and a cat! All for $5.00! The family was moving to Australia, they hadn’t found a home for Kizzy, they were leaving in two days and the rest is history. So in my quest to find a cheap blender I bought a bunch of other stuff (treasures, really!) and spent a bunch of money on the new cat! She’s beautiful and settling in nicely.

Last week and again today, I went to more garage sales and found lots of treasures, but, of course, no blenders or choppers. So…….. I made a command decision that I needed to go spend $25 on a new little food chopper NOW or this project of shopping garage sales every week was going to be too costly! Starting tonight, food scraps going into my little Worm Factory will be ground to a fine paste. Nothing is too good for the little darlings. Just don’t tell my two sons I said that. They know me as the mother who gave her children two choices for dinner – Take it or leave it! Especially after the younger one, at age six, looked at the food I put in front of him and said – in this order – “I hate it, what is it?” (Aaahhh, good times!) Bottom line – worms don’t complain!

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Let’s talk about the “Kids”

June 26, 2009

At the Fair, I found Mr. Worm Guy, and we had a good talk about worms. My “kids” don’t seem to be eating fast enough and I learned that I started with too low a number of worms when I first set up my new little Worm Factory stacking composter. I think I collected about [...]

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