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Letter from JP in Baltimore
From: JP in Baltimore, 4/30/09
Our first weeks with worms went well, if quietly.
We decided to build our own vermicomposting apparatus
based
on a great
Instructable we stumbled across online. After buying scrap wood from
the Home Depot (maybe $15 on supplies, including a box of screws and
wood glue) and synthetic fabric (another $10 perhaps), we put together
our vermicomposting unit, which ended up looking more like a clothes
hamper than a compost container.
The worms arrived looking good. My friends and I
divided them up, we put ours in with some potatoes, apple cores and
skin, and the sort, as well as shredded paper (all moistened), and
sealed it up. My friends elected to go th
e
route of using a Rubbermaid storage tote for their worm bin. They
drilled in plenty of air holes on the cover and sides. This approach
seems like a good idea in retrospect due to ease. However, I expect ours
will pay off in the long run by make the removal of composted materials
easy.
For the first couple weeks, nothing happened that was, well, terribly exciting with our worms. My friend did come home one day to find that six or seven worms had escaped out of his sealed compost bin, a couple of which did not make it. They continued to see escapees over the next few days as the worms settled in. To my knowledge, this didn’t occur with my setup.
The only real challenge I’ve observed is keeping
everything moist (ours is outside). It’s more a matter of remembering to
check than an actual challenge, though. We did run into some trouble
with mold – initially w
e
put too much food in the bin, and so the mold spread. The worms didn’t
seem to mind, but the mold was everywhere, so I repacked the bin
with less food, and will now leave it alone for some time. All in all,
these guys are very hardy, doing well, and my recent census seems to
indicate quite the population growth.
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More to come every week!
Your Host
Jeff Kurtz, Da Vermister
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We are going to make every effort to find creative and current articles for you, relative to vermiposting and Organic Gardening. We are initially doing Vermiposting first..
As we source then we'll out them in groups for their level of significance relative to your level of interest.
Index of articles:
- Fast Composting on a Show String Budget - Vermiposting Systems
- Worm Castings - Nature's Time Release Fertilizer
- Compost Tea - The Tea of Worms Explained
- Home Composting - Compost Indoors for Pennies
- Building a Worm Bin
- Stopping Weeds With Organic Compost
CompostCritter.com is here to help you find Organic Gardening resources which we have discovered and are organizing for you. Bear with us while we continue our organizing.
First up is the Vermiculture Blog, where you can learn all about improving your soil and recycling everything from your kitchen, office and back yard with the help of tireless Red Wigglers!
Active with your local Penn State Cooperative Extension office. We offer speaking at garden shows, garden clubs throughout Pennsylvania (further with transportation costs). Significant counties locally include Schuylkill, Dauphin, Cumberland, Lancaster, York, Berks, Chester, Delaware, Lehigh, all of which have master Gardener programs.
We also offer seminars and public speaking for home school kids, Youth Groups, Agricultural Organizations, garden clubs, birder and birding groups.
You can check us for references in several places: www.agmap.psu.edu www.soilsecrets.com www.pasafarming.org Pennsylvania (PA) Association for Sustainable Agriculture
We are organizing a seed and garden tool exchange.
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