Posts Tagged ‘Red Worms’

Grass Compost. Natures Secret For A Flourishing Garden

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

Hello! I hope you enjoy the article.

The best organic fertilizer comes from your garden. Don’t throw out the grass. If managed properly, grass can be the answer to your composting problems. With a little effort and care, you can keep the grass from rotting. All you have to do is take a few precautionary measures to succeed in your goal of making the perfect compost heap.
When you trim your lawn, allow the blades of grass to fall on the lawn. Your lawn mower can do it for you if you make a slight alteration. Detach the grass catcher and mow your lawn as you usually do. The grass automatically falls out wherever it’s been cut. Ensure that the mower blade is sharp and the grass is absolutely dry before you begin your operation, else the lawn mower will get clogged.
You now have your own natural fertilizer. This process is known as grasscycling. It is economical and saves you the time and bother of clearing the grass or putting the blades of grass into bags. However, this strategy may not be viable if you have toddlers and pets.
If you wish to do things in a more conservative way rather than resort to grasscycling, here’s how you go about making an effective grass compost heap. Fresh mown grass contains moisture and is rich in nitrogen. There is a tendency for the moist grass to stick together, thus preventing the oxygen from penetrating.
If you simply pile up the grass, it will turn slimy and rot. The smell is offensive, to say the least. The best way to prevent the grass from caking up is to layer it with materials that have high carbon content. These browns comprise leaves, twigs or wood chips. These are placed in between the layers of grass and give the heap a looseness that allows the oxygen to penetrate.
In order to help the oxygen circulate, it would be wise to aerate the pile by turning the contents over, frequently. You don’t want the heap to turn into a slimy, putrid mass!
If you have more grass than other materials, you should avoid stacking up the grass to form one huge unmanageable pile that could go bad simply because of the abundance of grass. You could have many piles that are easier to manage. When you regularly turn each over through the summer, you will notice them turn into compost at which time you could lessen the number of piles by combining them.
If space is your constraint and you find it difficult to manage a number of heaps at once, dry the newly cut grass in the sun. Spread the grass anywhere in your yard and allow it to sun-bake the whole day. Once the moisture and the sourness go out of it, you can start your compost heap.
The one thing to avoid is to have chemically treated grass on your compost heap. In case you have used pesticides or herbicides to promote grass growth on your lawn, don’t cut the grass for fertilizer, unless a good shower of rain has washed the residue out.
Adding lime to the heap of grass for compost is a good idea to hasten the breaking down process. This is also the surest way to prevent mold formation, which is responsible for the foul smell.
With these tips, you could make your own fertilizer out of grass clippings. Not only is the method economical but it also gives you a sense of achievement when you see your garden flourish.

Good luck!

Warren has put together a very informative site detailing the concise elements of worm farming for personal use and or your own business. Detailing benefits of home composting and many other aspects of worm composting.

Worms Composting
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How To Maintain A Compost Heap

Friday, January 8th, 2010

Hello! I hope you enjoy the article.

There’s so much waste that is generated in gardens every day. You’ll find leaves, dead plants, twigs and grass clippings. It takes too long and probably involves a lot to take it to a landfill so what do you do?
The simplest solution is to start a compost heap saving a lot of time and money, not only yours but others as well if you were thinking of paying the garbage disposal people and getting them to take it away. Especially when all this waste can be converted into excellent food for your plants.
Food that’s better as far as your plants go than any fertilizer you can buy. The great thing is that every bit of all that stuff that you consider waste can be turned into nutritional and beneficial food. You get the best fertilizer going without having to buy it paying so much for it.
Unfortunately, compost usually means rotting heaps and awful odors to most peoples minds. This need not be the case if you mange your compost heap well. You need to maintain it so that it gives you great compost without smelling to high heaven.
What you need to make sure of is to see that the heap gets enough oxygen. For this, you will have to turn it over periodically. If you don’t, you’ll probably have the neighbors banging on your door or worse still, you could have the authorities coming to check what you’re up to.
When you start off with your compost heap, try and make sure the area you allot for it is shallow and covering a larger area that a deep and smaller area. This is because there are more chances that the deeper it is, the less likely that the bottom portions will be turned out so that they get exposed to the air.
The best thing would be if you had some kind of a flat surface like the roof over your shed to spread it out on. This way, you get it spread over a large area.
Now, what goes into the compost heap? Any kind of organic waste from your kitchen or garden. So you could put in your vegetable peels, leftovers, leaves, grass, twigs and even newspaper ? but remember not too much of newspaper, just one-fifth of the total volume or it will take longer to compost. This is the easy part ? getting everything together. Now you need to get the compost going and that?s a little tricky till you get the hang of it.
Once you have piled up a whole lot of stuff in your compost pile or bin, you should wet it. It?s easier for the material to get moist if they have all been broken up or ripped up into small pieces. Soon, you’ll find this moist mass beginning to meld together.
You need to prod it along by turning it over once in a while with a shovel and making sure it stays wet. You could also use one of those aeration tools you get and poke it into the mass, making holes in it. This is to get the oxygen into the pile as that makes for quicker decomposing.
Interested? Then start off by deciding where in your garden you would like your compost heap to be. It shouldn’t be a source of intrusion or take away from the beauty of your garden in any way. Find a place where it is tucked out of sight and you are ready to begin.

Good luck!

Warren has put together a very informative site detailing the concise elements of worm farming for personal use and or your own business. Detailing benefits of home composting and many other aspects of worm composting.

More information:
Worms Composting
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Common Worm Composting Problems and Solutions

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

Hello! I hope you enjoy the article.

Trouble in the Worm composting Bin

Worm composting with Red Wiggler worms is a really easy, low-maintenance way to generate rich organic fertilizers for your organic gardening needs. Worms are very easy to get if you know where to find them. If you do not then it is best for you to buy worms from a local supplier.

Red worms are also easy to feed, easy to keep comfortable and worm composting fertilizer is very easy to harvest. Maintaining the healthy welfare of your worms almost amounts to doing nothing! That is why so many home garden farmers prefer worm composting! It is cheap, easy, and it somewhat rejuvenates your lifestyle! But there may come a time that you find something quite odd about your worm compost bins.

It may be that you find moldy food inside the tumbler, or you detect an offensive odor coming from your compost bins, or you may find your worms trying to escape from the tumbler! When you notice any of these things, do not panic. Your worms are not going to die. But there is something wrong about your compost bins. And if you do not fix it, this might affect the environment inside the compost bins.

Worm Composting Problem #1: Moldy Food

Sometimes you may find the food inside your compost bins covered in molds. This is a very unpleasant situation for you and for your worms.

Molds are fungi which aid in the natural decomposing process of organic materials. But their presence in your worms’ food is not going to help in the worm composting process! Worse, worms do not eat moldy food so it does not get processed and decomposed as fast as you want it to be. This can cause infestations of the worm compost bins with other microorganisms which can disrupt the natural cycle of the system.

Worm Composting Problem #2: Offensive odor

Another problem that you may encounter during your worm composting is offensive odor. There are some cases wherein your compost bin becomes a home to bad odor. This happens when the food you left in the bin becomes anaerobic. Food becomes anaerobic when there is a lack of aeration to provide air to it. When this does happen, the advisable thing to do is to make sure that there is a hefty layer of cardboard or damp newspaper covering the food. You should also stop giving food to your worms for a period of one week. And for added measure, add rock dust or crushed oyster shells to the worm composting bin.

Worm Composting Problem #3 : Worms climb on top of the bin

This problem causes some level of panic among those who do worm composting. Sometimes some people find their worms trying to climb out of the compost bins. This happens when your worms find the environment inside the compost bins disagreeing to their preferences.

Although very few worms actually do escape from inside the tumbler, it is necessary that you mend this problem as early as possible to prevent it from hindering the worm composting process. Usually, worms come out of the tumbler if they find it too wet or too dry for their liking. If the bin is too wet then adding more dry bedding should solve the problem. If the bin is too dry then moistening the bedding inside can do the trick.

Worm composting is generally and easy task to do. But you have to watch out for these problems as any of these can make your worm composting fail.

Good luck!

Camille Joyce Lozano loves to learn and write about organic gardening. She is also a big fan of using Red Wiggler worms for worm composting.
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