EARTHWORMS ARE EASY

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EARTHWORMS ARE EASY
by JANE BOGNER
SUNDAY, May 02, 2004

Back in the 1980s, on a visit to my husband’s cousin in New Jersey, we were flipping through their cable channels and I heard someone talking about composting in the kitchen. Keep in mind this was way before any thought of a Home and Garden channel or Martha Stewart.

“Can’t be true,” I said to myself, and commandeered the remote to find the channel. I caught enough of the show to learn about a lady in Kalamazoo, Michigan who had perfected a method of indoor earthworm composting. Upon my return, I went to the library and found that Mary Appeolhof had indeed written a book “Worms Eat My Garbage” about the process. Appelhof wrote a humorous guide to setting up Vermicomposting. Verme is Italian for worm.

I set out to test her method. I followed her instructions by the letter building a wooden bin with holes, weighing my shredded paper and the water to moisten it, adding a handful of soil to introduce bacteria to the bin, throwing in some crushed eggshells for grit, and finding a local bait shop that would sell me two pounds of red wigglers. I weighed, logged and added my kitchen waste. To my amazement and joy, after four months, I had 40 pounds of worm castings (vermicompost) and 9 pounds of worms.

So you are asking, “Why bother with an indoor earthworm bin?” If you live in an apartment or have minimal yard waste, it is an alternative to putting your fruit and vegetable waste down the garbage disposal or in the trash. I have kept my bin in my kitchen and others have also with no problems. The bin does not need to be inside the house: I usually keep mine in my garage, but you can keep it outside in a cool shady place. Worms like 55 to 77 degree weather.

Here’s the details in a nut shell:

Only a few things are needed to make good worm compost: a bin, bedding, worms, and fruit/vegetable kitchen wastes. Start by weighing your kitchen wastes for 2 weeks to determine what size worm bin you will need. Kitchen wastes include vegetable and fruit waste: coffee grounds & filter, tea bags, citrus, used paper napkins, and cereal. Bones, fat and meat wastes are not recommended.

If you have 3.5 pounds of food waste per week you will need 1 pound of worms and a small bin. For one or two people, Applehof recommends a 2 foot by 2 foot by 8 inch bin built from plywood or scrap lumber. Don’t use treated lumber. The best bins are made from wood as wood breathes and you don’t have to worry about excess moisture. I have also used plastic and galvanized tubs but I need to carefully watch the moisture levels.

Drill holes for adequate ventilation. If you have holes on the bottom of the bin, be sure to have a secondary basin to catch finished compost or compost tea. I have never had worms crawl out of the bin. Red wigglers do not live in soil, they are surface feeders so bins do not need to be deep.

A lid is necessary to keep the bedding moist and bin dark for the worms. I alternate between a wooden lid, old carpeting and a plastic bag, depending on the season and what I am feeding my crew. Bedding provides an insulated place for the worms to live. Worms breathe through their skins so use the “wrung-out sponge” test to gage moisture level. Try the following beddings: shredded office paper or newsprint, composted horse, rabbit or cow manure, leaf mold or peat moss. For a small bin you will need about 5 pounds of bedding. Mix 3 pounds (pints) of water for each pound of bedding in a separate container before placing it in your bin. Over time, the paper bedding will be eaten by the worms along with the food waste.

The worms to get are known as redworms or eisenia foetida. Redworms are also know as red wigglers or manure worms, not night crawlers. These are the worms that you find on top of the ground under that pile of leaves that you forgot to rake up. Redworms can eat half their own weight in food everyday if the conditions are right. At six weeks, the mature earthworm mates and produces cocoons. In three weeks, several worms will hatch from each cocoon. Now you are ready to assemble your bin. Place bedding, a handful of soil, a few well crushed eggshells (which provide grit and calcium for the worms), and the worms into your bin.

Once worms are down in bedding you can start burying your kitchen waste. Begin feeding your worms only a little at a time. As they multiply, you can add larger quantities of food waste. Bury the waste into the bedding regularly, rotating around the bin as you go. When you return to the first spot, most of the food you buried there should have been eaten. If not, don't worry; feed the worms less for a while.

Cover the bin and let the worms work. If you are using a plastic bin, remember that plastic does not breathe and will collect concentrated compost tea that must be removed for a healthy bin. Place bin in a shady location where it will not freeze or overheat. Chewing bugs will migrate to the bin. They are beneficial to the composting process. Ants usually indicate a dry bin.

Fruit flies are very annoying. Be sure waste is covered with bedding. Put up fly paper or make a beer trap using stale beer, a small jar and a plastic bag. Pour beer into the jar, cut a small hole in the corner of the bag, place that corner down into the jar to create a funnel. The flies will be attracted to the beer and drown.

After approximately four months you will have finished vermicompost. Harvesting the compost and adding fresh bedding at least twice a year is necessary to help keep your worms healthy. Try one of these methods:

1. Pull compost and worms to one side of the bin. Add moist bedding to the vacant side. Bury kitchen waste in new bedding and cover. The worms will migrate to new covered bedding. In 2 months you can harvest compost from the old side and add more new bedding.
2. Remove all but one-third of worms and compost. Mix in new bedding. Put the compost in your garden, worms and all.
3. If you have children who like to play with worms, consider this afternoon diversion. Dump contents of bin on a tarp outside on a sunny day. Make small cone-shaped piles of compost. The worms will go to the bottom to avoid the light. Harvest compost from the top and sides. Gather worms, set up new bedding and start again.

Vermicompost is higher in nutrients than traditional compost and ready for use. You are now ready to use your vermicompost. You can dig into your garden or use as mulch. Sprinkle it around the base of house plants and you will fertilize the plant each time you water. Make compost tea: steep a handful of compost in a quart of water for at least 30 minutes, strain and use to water plants.

Call 707 55-EARTH, our composting hotline, to learn where to get worms and bedding. The Vallejo Museum Book Shop keeps “Worms Eat my Garbage” in stock. A good vermicomposting web site is www.wormdigest.org.

VALLEJO COMPOSTING CLASSES

VALCORE will be teaching backyard and earthworm composting classes on the third Saturday of each month from May 15 though October. They are held at the recycling center at 38 Sheridan from 10am to Noon. Two BioStack bins will be given away and each participant will receive a composting book.

We will also have a composting teacher at the Garden Expo 2004 on May 15th from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the 100 Block of Georgia Street. This free event is presented by Vallejo Main Street. The Garden Expo is a kick-off for the Garden Tour which is on Sunday, May 16th. For Information call Cathy at 557-6762.

VALCORE Recycling Vice President Jane Bogner's "A Sorted Affair" is published every other week in the Times-Herald, Community Outlook Section. For recycling information call Genie Kaggerud, VALCORE Recycling manager at 645-8258 or visit www.VALCORErecycling.org.