Create A Worm Bin for Natural Fertilizer While Reducing Your Waste
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Do you love to garden? Nothing is better for your garden than worm castings and worm tea, and this little tutorial will teach you everything you need to know to enrich your garden.What you need:
1. Two 8-10 gallon plastic storage boxes (dark color and not see through), Cost: about $5 each
2. Drill (with 1/4" and 1/16" bits) for making drainage & ventilation holes
3. Newspaper
4. About one pound of red worms
Step 1: Drill ¼ inch holes in the bottom of both bins for drainage.
Step 2: Drill ventilation holes about 1 – 1½ inches apart on each side of the bin near the top edge using the 1/16 inch bit. Also drill about 30 small holes in the top of only one of the lids.
Step 3: Use shredded newspaper for the worms bedding. Shred the newspaper in 1 inch strips. Moisten the strips, and ring any excess water out of them. Fill the bottom of each bin with 3 – 4 inches of fluffed up newspaper strips. You can add any old leaves from the lawn, and a handful of dirt or grit to help the worms digest.
Step 4: Add your worms to the bedding in one of the bins, and put that one on top of the other. One way to capture red worms is to leave a piece of cardboard on the garden for the night, and when you lift it up in the morning you will have worms. You can also buy them. An earthworm can consume half its weight a day, so if you have a half a pound of waste, you will need 1 pound of worms. There are about 500 worms in a pound, but if you start out with less, they will multiply fairly quickly.
Step 5: Cut a piece of cardboard to fit over the bedding of the top bin, and moisten it. Worms love the cardboard and can digest it in a few months. Put the one plastic lid with wholes on the top worm bin.
Step 6: Put you bin in a well ventilated area, like a garage, laundry room, or outside in the shade. Put it on top of bricks to keep it off the ground, and place plastic containers to catch worm tea, a great liquid fertilizer.
Step 7: Feed your worms slowly at first, and as they multiply you can add more food. Gently bury the food in a different section of the bin each week, under the cardboard. For a list of food worms can eat, see the list below.
Step 8: When the first bin is full and there are no recognizable food scraps, place new bedding material in the second bin and place the bin directly on the compost surface of the first bin. Bury your food scraps to the bedding of the second bin (now the top bin). In one to two months, most of the worms will have moved to the second bin in search of food. Now the first bin will contain almost worm free vermicompost for your garden. (You can gently lift out any worms that might remain, and place them in the new bin, or put them into your garden!)
Worms enjoy eating:
- Breads & Grains
- Cereal
- Coffee grounds & filters
- Fruits
- Tea bags
- Vegetables
Worms will not eat:
- Dairy Products
- Fats
- Meat
- Feces
- Oils
Source:
Cheap and Easy Worm Bin
http://whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/compost/Easywormbin.htm
Labels: compost, fertilizer, recycle, waste, worm bin
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