Posts Tagged ‘Worm Composting’

Why Worm Composting is Beneficial to Plants and Gardens

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

Hello! I hope you enjoy the article.

Worm composting is the process in which you recycle your table scraps into rich compost using live worms. Here we will outline the steps to follow to get your compost pile built and operational.Step one is to find a suitable box to use. The box can be made out of wood or plastic, but it must have holes in the bottom, top and sides to allow airflow. You don’t want the holes too large or the worms will escape. A hole size of an 1/8 of an inch will allow air into the container while keeping the worms inside. You can place the worm composting box in your basement, shed, garage, or outdoors. Where you keep the box depends on the space you have available and the climate you live in. Worms don’t tolerate extremes climates well. If it gets colder than forty degrees it best to keep them inside. What are the best composting worms? The most popular worm for composting is redworms. It is also referred to as the red wiggler worm. The red worm thrives on food waste and organic materials. These worms can be easily found online or even at some gardening centers.How many worms to start with.These worms have a big appetite. If you are going to add a pound of food waste a day to the container, you need about 2000 worms. If you are going to begin with fewer than 2000 worms reduce the amount of waste you add. The red wriggler is prolific breeder. Redworms reaches sexually maturity between sixty and ninety days. After that, their babies are mature within twenty-one days.Worm composting bedding You want the worms to have an ideal environment so that they thrive and reproduce. Shredded newspaper, grass clippings, leaves, straw, shredded cardboard and peat moss all make good bedding material for the worms. Keep the bedding material damp, not wet. Feeding the redwormsThese worms will eat almost of a vegetable of fruit origins. In addition, tea bags, eggshells, and coffee grounds make a good food source. You don’t want to use any dairy or meat products, they tend to attract unwanted critters.

Good luck!

To receive our just published book “How Do Plants Grow” visit our HOME PAGE To learn more about WORM COMPOSTING visit here.

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Discove the benifits that lie hidden in Worm Composting

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

Hello! I hope you enjoy the article.

Worm composting is the process in which you recycle your table scraps into rich compost using live worms. Here we will outline the steps to follow to get your compost pile built and operational.Step one is to find a suitable box to use. The box can be made out of wood or plastic, but it must have holes in the bottom, top and sides to allow airflow. You don’t want the holes too large or the worms will escape. A hole size of an 1/8 of an inch will allow air into the container while keeping the worms inside. You can place the worm composting box in your basement, shed, garage, or outdoors. Where you keep the box depends on the space you have available and the climate you live in. Worms don’t tolerate extremes climates well. If it gets colder than forty degrees it best to keep them inside. What are the best composting worms? The most popular worm for composting is redworms. It is also referred to as the red wiggler worm. The red worm thrives on food waste and organic materials. These worms can be easily found online or even at some gardening centers.How many worms to start with.These worms have a big appetite. If you are going to add a pound of food waste a day to the container, you need about 2000 worms. If you are going to begin with fewer than 2000 worms reduce the amount of waste you add. The red wriggler is prolific breeder. Redworms reaches sexually maturity between sixty and ninety days. After that, their babies are mature within twenty-one days.Worm composting bedding You want the worms to have an ideal environment so that they thrive and reproduce. Shredded newspaper, grass clippings, leaves, straw, shredded cardboard and peat moss all make good bedding material for the worms. Keep the bedding material damp, not wet. Feeding the redwormsThese worms will eat almost of a vegetable of fruit origins. In addition, tea bags, eggshells, and coffee grounds make a good food source. You don’t want to use any dairy or meat products, they tend to attract unwanted critters. Over time, worm composting will provide you with the organic matter that will improve any area of your garden. An added bonus it is environmentally friendly to recycle waste.

Good luck!

Steve Habib is an active gardener and researcher on the subject of growing and caring for a variety of plants. You can find more insights and receive our FREE BOOK “How Do Plants Grow” at HOME PAGE To get the full story about WORM COMPOSTING visit here.
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Guide to worm composting – Dealing with common problems found in worm composting bins

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

Hello! I hope you enjoy the article.

SOME WARNING SIGNS:

Some warnings that your worm composting bin is not going as well as it should be are:

If your worms are dying

And if your bins smells like rotten or it attract some flies

WORMS ARE DYING:

There are some causes why is your worms are dying:

Your worm may not eating the enough food which is you should bury it with more food into the bedding.

Your worm may be too much dry, which in case it should be moistened in a box until it is slightly damp.

Your worm may be too much wet which in case it should receive bedding.

These may also receive too much heat under the sun which in case you should put it inside of your bin so that it may receive some shade.

Your bedding has been eaten and its time for you to add some fresh bedding to your worm bin.

BIN SMELLS:

Whenever you smell that your bin smells like its been rotten or your bin may attract flies these may be the three causes why your bin smells:

Maybe there is not enough air circulation whenever in case this may happen add some dry bedding under it and over of your worms and do not feed your worms for 2 weeks.

There maybe some non compostables may present some such as meat, some pet feces or some greasy food all of should be removed.

maybe some exposed food in the bin if in case you should be secured the lid cover the food scraps with a bedding and also cover your worms and bedding it with a sheet of plastic.

 

FRUIT FILES:

 

These fruit files are not harmful but these are a nuisance and a very common problem with our worm composting bins we should discourage fruit files by always burying our food wastes and by not overloading the worm bin we should keep always a plastic sheet, piece of an old carpet or some lid on the compost’s surface in the worm bin. The author of worms eat my garbage Mary Appelhof is acknowledges that she doesn’t found a perfect solution for the fruit files. If you add a spider this helps us to reduce fruit files if some flies persisted us, move the bin to the area where will not be bothersome.

Good luck!

My name is guy. I am the founder and owner of the urbangardenershop.com.au . I fell in love with hydroponics gardening. As time went by I gathered a vast knowledge base and 2 years ago I decided to find a way to make hydroponics gardening a hobby that anyone can peruse. I added a hydroponic gardening information center to our hydroponic supplies site that offers a large range of hydroponics articles. Thank you for your interest and feel free to ask questions on hydroponics gardening in our site
http://www.urbangardenershop.com.au/
http://www.urbangardenershop.com.au/page/hydroponicresource/default.asp
http://www.urbangardenershop.com.au/category/7/default.asp
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Guide to worm composting – maintaining worms in worm composting bins

Thursday, November 26th, 2009

Hello! I hope you enjoy the article.

Red worms/ Red wrigglers are the best kind of worms for composting. These worms are often found in the old compost piles. These worms are different from the earthworms you would normally find in the ground. These worms have a huge appetite and they reproduce quickly and thrive in the confinement. These worms can eat more than their own weight in food every day. When you purchase some red worms, 1 pound is all you need to get started.

The best suited for composting are red worms. These worms are often found in the aged manure, compost heaps and piles of the leaves. These worms are also known as brandling and manure worms. Their official names are Eisenia foetida and Lumbricus rubellus. On the other hand dew worms are also better suited to life in the soil and shouldn’t be used in a worm bin.

You can also get your worms from your compost bin; you can purchase them/find a horse stable/farmer with aged manure pile

In every 1 pound per day of food waste, you’ll need 2 pounds of worms. Whether you are unable to get this many worms at the start, reduce the amount of food waste until the population of worms increases. Red worms can mature sexually in 60-90 days and it can produce cocoons which take 21 days for them to hatch their baby worms. Once the worms start breeding they can deposit 2-3 cocoons per week with 2 baby worms in each cocoon. 

FEEDING YOUR WORMS   

 

Worms in composting bins like to eat many of the same things we human beings to eat, only when they aren’t so picky. Favorite foods they eat are:

 

Stale bread

Apple cores

Orange peels

Lettuce trimmings

Coffee grounds

Non-greasy leftovers

Vegetable scraps

 

Feeding your worms at the beginning feed them only a little at a time. You can add larger quantities of food waste. You should do bedding regularly, if you rotate the bin as you go.  If you return to the first spot, most of the food you have buried there should have been eaten.

 Your worms can eat your food scraps, fruits and vegetable peels, pulverized egg shells, tea bags and coffee grounds. To avoid some potential rodent problems do not compost meats, dairy products and soon.

 If you pull aside the bedding bury the food waste deep and cover it up with the bedding again divide the bin into 3 or 4 imaginary sections and bury successive loads in different areas in the bin. There’s a weekly waste food that will help us human beings to determine the size of your worm compost bin and the number of the worms you’ll need. Do this for 2 weeks to get an estimate the average of our food waste.

Good luck!

My name is guy. I am the founder and owner of the urbangardenershop.com.au . I fell in love with hydroponics gardening. As time went by I gathered a vast knowledge base and 2 years ago I decided to find a way to make hydroponics gardening a hobby that anyone can peruse. I added a hydroponic gardening information center to our hydroponic supplies site that offers a large range of hydroponics articles. Thank you for your interest and feel free to ask questions on hydroponics gardening in our site
http://www.urbangardenershop.com.au/
http://www.urbangardenershop.com.au/page/hydroponicsexperimentsanarticlefortheClassroomteacher/default.asp
http://www.urbangardenershop.com.au/category/7/default.asp
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Guide to worm composting – intro to composting with worms and worm compost bins

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

Hello! I hope you enjoy the article.

A Guide to Composting With Worms

Worms can be useful in different ways. The compost worms are more easy to raise and can turn our unwanted food and organic wastes into a healthy rich plant food that can be use directly to the base of our  plants, or dissolved in water and it can be used as a foliar spray.

African night crawlers and European night crawlers are examples of large types of worms. This large type of worms can make for excellent bait and will almost catch freshwater species of any type of fish and other types of saltwater as well.

There are almost thousands of different types of worms, each of this thousands worms has its own purpose.Let worms eat our organic waste. They will be happily turned into some of the best fertilizers that can be used here at Earth. Worms also composts or it is also known as “worm castings” or “vermicompost”.  A fascinating and an easy way to recycle our wastes, vermiculture or worm composting:

Requires very little work

Produces no offensive odors

Help plants thrive

Only few things are needed to have good worm compost: a bin, bedding, worms and some worm food. By following some steps listed below, you will be easily learn how to make, maintain and you will easily learn how to compost your worm compost.

SUITABLE worm composting SPECIES:

A earthworm species are most often used Red Wrigglers but European night crawlers may also be used. There are names called at the European night crawlers including dendrobaenas, dendras, and the Belgian night crawlers.

You can also get your worms from your compost bin; you can purchase them/find a horse stable/farmer with aged manure pile

In every 1 pound per day of food waste, you’ll need 2 pounds of worms. Whether you are unable to get this many worms at the start, reduce the amount of food waste until the population of worms increases. Red worms can mature sexually in 60-90 days and it can produce cocoons which take 21 days for them to hatch their baby worms. Once the worms start breeding they can deposit 2-3 cocoons per week with 2 baby worms in each cocoon.

Good luck!

My name is guy. I am the founder and owner of the urbangardenershop.com.au . I fell in love with hydroponics gardening. As time went by I gathered a vast knowledge base and 2 years ago I decided to find a way to make hydroponics gardening a hobby that anyone can peruse. I added a hydroponic gardening information center to our hydroponic supplies site that offers a large range of hydroponics articles. Thank you for your interest and feel free to ask questions on hydroponics gardening in our site
http://www.urbangardenershop.com.au/
http://www.urbangardenershop.com.au/page/wormcomposting-vermiculturebuildingwormcompostbin/default.asp
http://www.urbangardenershop.com.au/category/40/default.asp
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Guide to worm composting – COLLECTING FINISHED WORM CASTINGS FROM WORM COMPOSTING BINS

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

Hello! I hope you enjoy the article.

METHOD FOR COLLECTING YOUR FINISHED WORM CASTINGS FROM WORM COMPOSTING BINS

After feeding your worms for 3-6 months, you have noticed the bedding has been eaten, and you may now begging harvesting the brown, crumbly worm compost. Whenever you are harvesting the compost and adding fresh bedding at least twice a year is necessary to keep your worms stay healthy. The bedding will be noticeably darker with your worms’ castings. After 2 and a half months have been passed, there will still few of the original beddings is still visible in the bin plus brown and earthly looking worm castings. Although our food waste is being added regularly, the bedding volume will be gradually decreased.

METHOD 1:

You should move the contents that you use at your worm bin to one side place the fresh bedding in a empty space and bury your food wastes there for a month/so. Harvest the other side after the worms you have migrated to the new food and bedding.

METHOD 2:

You have to remove one third to one half of the given contents of your worm composting bin, worms and all and add the worm compost to your garden soul. Add the fresh bedding and food to your worm bin.

 

METHOD 3:

Spread a sheet of plastic under a bright light of the sun. Dump your contents of the worm box into a number of the piles on the sheet. The worms will crawl away from the light into the center of each pile. You can brush away the worm compost on the outside by the hand.

“SOME FUSS” HERVESTING

Some of the worm composting can involves moving the finished compost over to the one side of the bin. Placing the new bedding in the space created, and placing our food waste in the new bedding  the worms will be gradually move over to the fresh bedding and food waste. The finished compost can be harvested

“MORE FUSS” MAINTENANCE

If you want to use all of the compost at once, dump the bin’s entire into a large plastic sheet and that can make piles of the materials. You can use the sunshine or a hundred watt light bulb to drive the worms to the under of the piles. Worms don’t like bright light because the single cells on the epidermis that reacts to the light. Scoop off the tops of each pile until all you have left is the worms in your composting bin.

 USING YOUR WORM COMPOST:

Your worm compost is more concentrated rather the most composts it’s because the worms great at digesting your food wastes breaking them under into a simple plant nutrients so you should use its sparingly for you to get the best results.

 

Good luck!

My name is guy. I am the founder and owner of the urbangardenershop.com.au . I fell in love with hydroponics gardening. As time went by I gathered a vast knowledge base and 2 years ago I decided to find a way to make hydroponics gardening a hobby that anyone can peruse. I added a hydroponic gardening information center to our hydroponic supplies site that offers a large range of hydroponics articles. Thank you for your interest and feel free to ask questions on hydroponics gardening in our site
http://www.urbangardenershop.com.au/
http://www.urbangardenershop.com.au/page/hydroponicresource/default.asp
http://www.urbangardenershop.com.au/category/7/default.asp
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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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Home Composting, Getting The Mix Right

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

Hello! I hope you enjoy the article.

The concept of composting has been around for quite a long time in the forests. Leaves fall to the forest floor, decompose, and their nutrients will be absorbed back into the trees through the roots. Farmers and Gardeners have been taking advantage of the nutrient rich by product from this decomposition for thousands of years and you can too. Composting is a great way to add nutrients to your garden or potting soil. Not only is it good for your garden and plants, it also is a good way for you to help reduce your overall garbage going to the dump. There are no hard and fast rules in what you should do your composting in. In fact you could do it in a pile in the yard, although it will probably not be well accepted by the rest of your family. While you can go out and buy a commercially sold unit that will do well for all your composting needs, I prefer to save a few bucks and build one myself. The real hero’s in the world of composting are the fungi, bacteria, worms and other insects that will take your yard and kitchen waste and turn it into the black gold you want for your pots and garden. Now it is in your best interest to keep these guys in good conditions so they can digest the food you give them. Their basic requirements are just like you and I, they are food, water, and air. If you want to help these insects and microbes along, keep your compost in a nice cool corner of your yard. To better understand these basic needs for your compost let’s start with the food. Essentially there are two types of food. There are the brown foods that include straw, autumn leaves, wood chips/sawdust, and dead plant material. These materials mainly consist of long chains of sugar molecules that the microbes digest and use as a source of energy. There are also the greens such as green grass and weeds, kitchen fruit and vegetables, coffee grounds, and tea bags. These materials have a lot more nitrogen in them than the browns. This nitrogen in your compost pile acts as a source of protein to all those microbes for them to feed off of as well. The next part is the air. It is very important to get good airflow into your pile. The microbes you want to decompose your pile cannot do this without air. If there is no air supply then other microbes will move in. They will also do the job but they work a lot slower and tend to make the compost smell like rotten garbage. So unless you want your backyard to smell like the city dump you will have it “fluff” your pile. “Fluffing” your pile is easily done with a spade or a garden fork. You will have to completely break it apart and then pile it back together leaving it in a “Fluffy” condition. Some “food” like grass clippings or wet leaves will sit heavy on the pile and not allow good air flow through that portion of the pile. You should mix this sort of ingredient into the pile to avoid a spot that won’t decompose very easily. Straw is a great ingredient to add to your compost because unlike grass they will not mat down into slimy layers and add to the airflow. Water is the last important ingredient in your compost. This is where it gets a little tricky. You need to get the water just right to aid and not hinder the work of the microbes. Too wet and the pile gets too heavy and the airflow gets cut off to the middle of the pile. Too dry and the microbes will not be able to break down the waste as easily. Ideally you want to get every particle wet but not saturated. In wet climates you may need a lid or a tarp to avoid saturation. Having a good mix of the greens and browns is a good thing for a few reasons. Not only does it supply all your little microbes with a good diet, but it also helps in airflow since the browns are dry and “light” and the greens are wet and “heavy”.

Good luck!

Hi my name is Doug and I live in the Okanagan Valley in British Colombia BC. I have spent most of my life working my way through various different career paths that has helped me develop a diverse knowledge base to which I write on. For more on gardening and more for your home and health needs go to
Home and Health MishMash
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Home Composting, the Good the Bad and the Ugly

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

Hello! I hope you enjoy the article.

I hope you found my last article on composting informative but there were a few things I didn’t go through last time that I would like to touch base on now.    You found out last time that there are basic needs that you need to give for a compost to be productive. Those basic needs are air, food, and water. Now that we have the basics down, and we know how to properly deliver these basics I will now get a little more in depth into what you should and shouldn’t put into your compost. Let’s start off with what you shouldn’t put in your compost bin. This is an area I really could have used some more knowledge in my first time using a fresh batch of compost in my garden. 1)    Any wood product that has been chemically treated (pressure treated lumber) should be left out of your compost. When the wood or sawdust from these types of wood get broken down the chemicals that were used to treat the wood leach into the compost and will ruin the garden or plants that you use the compost in.2)    Diseased plants may infect your garden if the compost was not hot enough to kill off all of the disease. So unless you want to play Russian roulette with next year’s garden I would stay away from composting diseased plants.3)    Human and pet waste should never be used in a compost by a back yard gardener. Although possible to effectively compost these materials you take the risk of your pile not being hot enough to kill off all of the diseases that are carried in the waste. There are people who do this type of composting but they are well trained in hot composts and know the temperature and time it takes to safely decompose this type of matter. For the back yard enthusiast I would recommend staying away.4)    Fatty foods and meat waste (including bones) should be left out as well. They will take forever to break down and the local rats and mice may make your compost their new watering hole. If you want to still use these materials you can bury them in your 8″ deep in your garden. This will make sure the little vermin can’t smell and then get at your leftovers.5)    Pernicious weeds can be a particular pest to compost because even if you chop them up really well these types of weeds will still be able to sprout new roots while in the compost. But there is a way. After weeding leave the uprooted weeds in a pile in the direct sunlight for a couple weeks until they are nice and brown. Then they are safe. Remember How I said I could have used some of this info in my first compost bin. I found out #5 the hard way. I chopped up a few morning glories into my first compost and the next season I was pulling dozens of them out of my garden where there was none before. The next thing to learn is what you should put in your compost. 1)    Grass is a good material to put in your compost but I have always found it easier to leave it on the ground to help the lawn. But if you decide to use them in your compost make sure to add your grass in thin layers, and mix thoroughly to avoid a slimy layer that will not want to break down.2)    If you want a great material to put in your compost bin, kitchen waste is the way to go. Form fruits and vegetable leftovers, to tea and coffee grounds, this stuff is great to compost. One thing to consider is to make sure your compost bin is secure so this type of waste does not attract the local vermin population like meat products would. Although this type of kitchen waste will break down a lot faster than the meat products will it may still be tempting for a mouse or rat so you may want to think about a bin with a secure top. Avoid milk products as well since this also is a big lure for rats and mice.3)    Leaves can be a great source of material for your compost. Just to think people just rake up and throw away this stuff. If you are feeling energetic why not rake up the neighbor’s lawn too. Think of all the point around the block you could earn with your neighbors. Like grass leaves should be mixed in well to avoid clumping up and turning into a big mat in the middle of your bin.4)    Hay and Straw will make an ideal “Brown” ingredient to your mix. Not only will they supply a good nitrogen source for all the little microbes to feast on but they also help your pile from packing down and not allowing enough air to the center of the pile. Remember when you have a “Brown” ingredient in your pile you will also need “green” ingredients (grass, fruits and vegetables) to make the decomposition go quickly. Thank you for taking the time to read my article on the materials best suited for your compost bin. I will be writing one more article on composting to go along with this and my last one so I hope you will come back soon to check it out.

Good luck!

Hi my name is Doug and I live in the Okanagan Valley in British Colombia BC. I have spent most of my life working my way through various different career paths that has helped me develop a diverse knowledge base to which I write on. For more on gardening and more for your home and health needs go to
Home and Health MishMash