Vermiculture and Your Worm Bin

Healthy soil = Healthy Plants = Happy homesteaders

The mainstay of organic gardening and sustainable crops is the maintenance of healthy soil, so the first thing that we decided to set up was our composting system.  Our thoughts are that it would be beneficial to have a composting system set up prior to planting our garden so that we could utilize the fertilize as quickly as possible, cutting down on the amount of plant food we have to purchase.

There are several methods of composting but we settled on a worm bin for several reasons:  Fist off, the idea of having “pet worms” just seemed awesome to us.  Second,  the worms help accelerate the composting process making fresh worm castings available in about 3 months.  Third, worm castings are awesome fertilizer and we want only the best for our garden. Fourth, we eat a lot of vegetables and all the vegetable scraps that we create in the kitchen (stems, stalks, peels etc) stay out of the trash and now feed our worms.  Finally, worm bins are self-contained, can be placed indoors or outside, and are easy to make and maintain.

There’s a lot of information out there on the web about setting up a worm bin and some pre-made expensive bins out there.  We generally ignored the option of buying a pre-made worm bin as this went against everything we are trying to do, and we encourage you to not purchase one of these expensive options.

A worm bin in its simplest form is some sort of container, with drainage and ventilation holes, newspaper bedding, worms, and vegetable scraps for food.  Check this page out for a basic worm bin design.  We opted for a slightly more complicated (but still rediculously simple) stacking design.  Our logic was that once the worms have eaten all the food that we give them, and our bucket is full of awesome worm poop (fertilizer) how the heck are we going to separate the worms from the compost?  The stacking worm bin provides a simple solution which will become clearer as we walk through the worm bin process.

Building a Stacking Worm Bin
Project Time: 1 Hour
Budget: $30-$40

 

Supplies

• 2x 8-10 gallon Plastic storage tubs with lids
• Drill; 1/4″ and 1/16″ bit
• Newspaper
• Some Cardboard
• 4 red bricks or similarly sized objects
• A Little bit of dirt
• Worms! (about 1lb)

Step 1
Drill about 30 holes with the 1/4″  in the bottom of each tub.  These will provide drainage for the drippings and also a path for the worms to crawl from bin to bin when it’s time to switch tubs.

 

1/4" Drainage holes on the Bottom

Step 2
Drill a lot (30-50) of holes in the top of one of the lids using the 1/16″ bit.  This will be the lid to the tub that houses your worms.  The holes are for ventilation so that your little composting soldiers can breathe in there.  The other lid (the one without the holes) will be a tray underneath the worm bin to catch the drippings which is an excellent liquid fertilizer.

Step 3
Using the 1/16″ bit drill ventilation holes in the walls of each tub in a ring, near the top of the tub.  There’s not really a specific spacing or pattern you should follow, just get a bunch of holes in there.  But if you need numbers…space them about 1″ apart and do at least 2-3 rows all the way around.

Step 4
Tear some newspaper into strips about 1″ in width.  Dampen the strips by dunking them in water, and then squeezing them to get all the excess water out (worms like it to be damp, but not soggy).  Tear up and dampen enough newpaper to cover the bottom of one of the tubs in about 4″ of newpaper.  This will be the worms bedding.

Step 5
Toss in the worms!  When you buy your worms they will often come in some dirt, but if not throw in a little bit of dirt with them as grit to help them digest.  Put a wet piece of cardboard (we used an old beer box) on top of the worms, and put on the lid with the ventilation holes.  Don’t forget to feed them!

Step 6
Assemble the worm bin.  put the lid that has no holes on the ground like a tray.  Put  two bricks or similarly sized blocks of wood, or anything else that will prop the bin up inside the tray and set the empty tub on the bricks.  Put your other two bricks inside the tub, and put the tub with the worms on top of these bricks.   The end product should look like this:

Finished Worm Bin!

Tips/Information

On buying Supplies
We managed to make our worm bin and get it operational for under $40, and I’m sure you can do the same.  All the supplies are readily available and easy to find.  One trip the hardware store should be all you need. The storage tubs are the largest expense and run about $10 each at a home improvement store, and who knows, you might have some extras in the house already.

A Bit About Worms
Typical worms used for composting are red wrigglers, or just red worms.  Worms compete for food and can consume about 1/2 their body weight in food each day so the amount of worms you’ll need to have in your bin is dependent on how much vegetable waste you produce in your kitchen.  If you produce about 1/2 pound of vegetable scraps per day you’ll need 1 pound of worms (about 500 worms per pound).  If you have a big family you;ll need more worms!  Don’t worry, worms multiply quickly so if you start out with less than you need, they’ll make up for it by reproducing.  Worms are pretty hardy, but they don’t like extreme temperatures and function best between 55 – 85 Degrees F.

More on Worms: To buy or to harvest?
We bought worms.  It’s the quickest way to get your composting going, and is much easier than harvesting your own.  If you’d like to harvest your own worms from your yard it is relatively simple.  One way of collecting worms from your yard is by laying a large piece of wet cardboard on the ground at night, and checking it each morning, pitching any worms that you find into your worm bin.  Another (and more effective) way is this:  take a plastic nursery pot and drill several 1/4″ holes in the bottom.  Toss in some dirt, some wet cardboard, maybe a little bit of vegetable scraps as worm bait, stick it in the yard and wait.  Periodically check inside the pot near the food for worms, as well as underneath.  We have had some success gathering worms, but we generally recommend purchasing your initial group of worms and collecting others to supplement your stock.

Menu
Worms like a healthy diet.  Feed them your uncooked fruit and vegetable scraps, and they’ll be happy.  They also enjoy coffee grounds, teabags, eggshells, grains, cereals, and many other things.  Rule of thumb: nothing cooked or oily (no salad leftovers), and no proteins (leftover chicken).  Check out this article on healthy worm feeding.

The Changeover
After about 3 months the worms will have done their job and composted all of their bedding, leaving you with beautiful worm casting for fertilizing you garden or other plants.  It is now time to switch tubs.  Prepare new bedding for the worms in the empty tub and set it right on top of the castings that fill the tub that currently has all your worms.  Put some grit and food into the new tub and put the lid on.  The worms will crawl up from their old tub into the new tub once there is no food left in their old home.  All that will remain in the old tub will be fertilizer to use at you leisure!