Posted on July 26, 2007 in latest news
How about having the wriggly red worms as your pets? Don’t like the idea? Why not? Which pet would cost you not even a single penny for maintenance? Which pet would feed on your left over food and give you the best and cheapest soil amendment available. If you are a proud owner of a small garden or even a few container plants that you would like to see in the pink of health, then you’ve got to have a Worm Compost Bin.
No point buying an actual Worm Compost Bin, that would be too much of an investment. I’ll tell you how to have a Worm Compost Bin with least possible expenditure. All you need is –
- 1 pound red worms.
- Two 8-10 Gallon flat and dark plastic containers(with lids) that you may get in about $5 each.
- A Drill Machine with 1/4″ and 1/16″ bits to make drainage and ventilation holes in the plastic containers.
- A piece of cardboard
- Stacks of old newspaper.
Procedure
Step 1: Drill Holes
- The first thing you would need to do is to drill ventilation and drainage holes in your dark plastic containers.
- Take your drill machine and drill about 20 1/4″ drainage holes at the bottom of both your containers.
- Now drill 1/16″ inch ventilation holes at the sides of both your containers about 1-1½ inch far from each other
- Lastly, drill 30 1/16″ inch ventilation holes on top of one the lids
Step 2: Prepare Bedding
- You can just leave your worms inside the bin can you. You need to make sure they have a comfortable stay at your container. This is why you need to prepare a bedding.
- Take old waste newspaper and cut them in shreds with scissors or just tear them into thin long pieces.
- Soak them in water and squeeze the excess water out.
- Make sure the bedding is moist yet not soggy.
- Spread the moist newspaper at the bottom of the bin making the layer 3-4 inches thick.
- Add on a handful of dirt or your garden soil.
Step 3: Add the Redworms
- Your worms are ready to enter their new home.
- A worm can eat up to ½ its weight everyday. So depending on this, for your whole lot of 500 red worms that weigh 1 pound, you need to put in at least half a pound of food for the day. Keep increasing the amount of food as your worms multiply. You can feed them with all of your vegetarian kitchen waste, especially Breads and Grains, Cereal, Coffee grounds & filter, Fruits, Vegetables and Tea bags.
- However avoid dairy Products, Fats, Meat, Feces and Oils.
Step 4: Cover with Cardboard
- Worms always live 3 inches under the surface of the soil. Therefore you just cannot put them over the bedding and forget. You need to cover them up too.
- Take a piece of cardboard and moist it and place it over the worms.
Step 5: Use the second container
- You will have to work on only one container initially. Once your worms finish all the food and you can see no recognizable traces of the food you had put in. Its time to use the second container. Repeat the process as above and prepare a new bedding and bury food in the second container.
- Now place the second container directly under the first one.
- Once all the food in the first container placed above is exhausted, the worms travel to the second container in search of food.
- Once they have all traveled into the second container, you will be left with worm-free Vermicompost in the first one.
Problems
- Most people face the problem of stink from their Compost bins. The reason for this being – not enough ventilation or too much food. If you have the same problem, you can try putting in more ventilation holes or avoid feeding your worms for 1-2 weeks.
- For some people, the worms may try to die or try to escape. The possible cause of this could be that the bedding might have exhausted. You can try adding more bedding.
If you are not facing these problems… you will have wonderful Vermicompost ready to use in one or two months.
Good Luck!
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