12/03/2021
Vermicompost
I've had my red wigglers worms bin going for slightly over a year now. This is a great solution to recycle your food scraps and create your own vermicompost for your indoor or garden plants. The bin has no smell to it, only a slight odour similar to earth. If there is any foul smell to it, it might indicate that the bed material is too wet and some more dry material should be added or (in some cases) changed to a new bed entirely.
With the regular compost you have to follow the right ratios of brown (carbon) to green (nitrogen) materials, ensuring that the compost mass is warm enough, turning and so on. There is no need for all this fuss over the correct ratios and so on with the worm bin, just make sure to use food that worms do like and avoid introducing any foods that they don't like, easy-peasy! I usually use coco coir and pet wood shavings as a worm bed, but you can add shredded paper, ground up leaves as well.
Don't have the money to buy expensive worm tower? No problem! Kevin from Epic Gardening has a great video on how to make your own worm tower from 2 or 3 heavy duty plastic bins. I followed his directions and it has been working great for me for over a year. Opinions divide on whether someone should use the leechate - liquid that drain form the bin and is a by-pprduct of the worm metabolism. I personally don'r want to take the chance and alasy dump it (you can see how much of it does accumulate at the bottom bin over time so if you ever questions whether you should drill the holes at the bottom of your worm bin, the answer is yes, it's a must!
https://youtu.be/UaajjQ0FhM4
I haven't found a perfect way to separate the vermicompost from the worms yet. I recently bought the sifter but even that was fairly time-consuming. However, I do change the worm bed only once in a few months and sometimes even longer than that so I guess I'll just have to deal with it for now. Here is my 2d harvest this year, approximately 10 pounds of sifted through vermicompost. I'd let to dry out ever so slightly and planning to sift it again through 1/8" sifter to get even finer texture. It is not strictly necessary, but imho fine vermicompost texture blends easier with the soil and less chance of worms slipping through the cracks.
