Have you ever heard of worm composting? The first time I had heard of worm composting, I was completely in disbelief. In fact, I had to ask the person who mentioned it if he was joking. Of course, the joke was on me. When I got home, I searched the internet and found out that those wriggly pals do assist in making garden compost.
Worm composting or Vermiculture is relatively easy, affordable, and low-maintenance way of producing excellent garden compost. It provides a great number of benefits. Definitely it needs less work, simply let the worms take up all your scraps and in two months you’ll have rich compost at your disposal. This simple composting system can help improve your soil and increase your crop yields.
The type of earthworms that are best used in composting are usually the brown-nose worms or redworms. They work best in containers and on moistened bedding. Night crawlers or large, soil-burrowing worms are not the best worms for composting functions. Simply stick to the red worms and things will work out well. All you have to do is include food waste to the container and soon enough the worms will eat them up and transform compost together with the bed linen.
Prior to placing your red worms inside containers, put a nice layer of paper to work as bedding for the worms. Any type of paper will do, however it has actually been observed that the worms will eat papers, cardboards, paper towels and other coarse papers faster. The worms will consume this layer of bed linen together with the scraps of food to transform them in compost. You can likewise include a little bit soil on top of the paper and a couple of pieces of leaves. If your red worm container is located outside your house, attempt thinking about including livestock manure on it. Red worms enjoy them.
Fruits, grain, or veggies are fantastic for worm composting. It’s also good to supply egg shells, coffee grounds, and even tea bags. Do not use any animal products, meat, fish, or oils. Using animal or fish carcasses will draw unwanted pests to your compost, and will create a nasty stench.
The percentage of worms you will need is directly proportional to the amount of food scraps you would like to be composted in a week. If you desire 1 pound of food scraps to be composted a week, all you require is likewise a pound of red worms. You don’t need to include red worms into the container unless you want to increase the amount of food scraps you intend to compost in a weekly basis. Of course, this is just a general rule of thumb and there are other factors that you’ll consider for the amount of worms you will want to have in your compost bin.
For your worm container, keep it well ventilated to let the air in and let the excess moisture out. You can make use of plastic bins, as well as wooden boxes for worm composting. Just be mindful of the ventilation and especially the drainage. I’m embarrassed to say that in my first container I did not have drainage, so the first rainstorm produced a worm swimming pool. It was not a happy moment when I realized my mistake.
The time to harvest would be when the container is complete. Scoop out the undigested food scraps as well as the works which are normally on the top couple of inches of the product. The remaining material inside the container is your compost. To get rid of the staying worms from garden compost, you can spread the compost under the sunshine.
Leave a couple of small mounds of garden compost. As the heat dries out the garden compost, the worms will collect in the mounds. Just beware not to leave the garden compost under the sun that long or the worms will die.
Afterwards, you can place the worms in the container again and repeat the process all over. You see, this is exactly how our wriggly friends assist make compost and for those who do not mind the sensation of worms in their hands, this may be an excellent and simple means to make garden compost. Certainly it requires less work than many other composting tasks. Just let the worms consume up all your scraps and in two months you’ll have rich garden compost at your disposal.
