imafan26
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Posts: 13961
Joined: Tue Jan 01, 2013 8:32 am
Location: Hawaii, zone 12a 587 ft elev.

Re: Vermicomposting

vermicomposting is easy. All you need is a container with a drain hole to let the worm juice and water out and a lid with holes for air. I use a rubbermaid container. Shred and wet newspaper for bedding. Use only the black and white pages. The hardest part will be to find the worms. African blue and red worms are what are used in vermicomposting. Some people do sell them, otherwise you can get them from someone who already has a worm bin. The bin needs to be in the shade. Freeze or chop vegetables fine. Do not use meat or fats as they will attract more vermin like rats. Some things should not be put in the worm bin like papaya seeds since it makes the worms sterile. Pungent onions and garlic skins are hard to digest and some things actually give the worms indigestion. The bin should be watered daily and drained. The worm juice can be used as a tea on the plants. Add newspaper as needed as it decomposes. The newspaper provides the carbon the worms need. Usually the worms only need to be fed once a week. You should not keep adding vegetables until you see how much the worms can handle. If you have too much water, add newspaper, if it smells and you still have a lot of vegetable waste there is too much nitrogen so freeze the waste and add it later or trench compost. Watering the bins regularly removes the toxic byproducts in the container. You need to harvest the vermicompost and separate out the worms about every three months or so. It is a time consuming task.

Things about worm bins you should know. If there is too much water in the bin or it is not healthy the worms will try to escape. I put a screen under my bin cover because other critter like to move into the worm bin too. Centipedes, spiders, ants, roaches, and mice. I kept my bin in the garage but in the end I was doing more roach composting than worm composting and the geckos got in and ate the worms.

There are commercial vermicomposting set ups you can buy. They are expensive but are good if you only have a few worms. It consists of a series of trays and the worms move up and makes it easier to harvest the vermicompost. It still needed to be sifted because not all of the worms move up.
https://lancaster.unl.edu/pest/resource ... t107.shtml



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