Vermicomposters Unite! Official Worm Farmers Thread

[RuRu.The.Half.Elf]

Finally got around to uploading images, printscreen/paste mspaint (remove image info).
My dinky 10g.
Bottom and 3/4" pvc Stand 1/4 hole inside (for later worm travel), 3/16 outer
Sides
Stacked into catch-bin

 

[calliandra]

I came across an article that showed a guy that put a worm bin under his chicken roost. I thought that it was clever and I was going to follow his example. It just didnt cross my mind that the chicken manure would be too hot or something. I thought that it would be great to keep the coop clean and disease free, plus give me some castings. Anyways, I would like to hear some thoughts on it!

http://permaculturenews.org/2013/03/20/worm-bin-and-chicken-poop-compost-catch/

Being a permie myself I see the idea here is to save work and use resources where they drop.
To exploit the full work-saving potential however, the coop should also be close to other ingredient sources, especially those being added continuously (think food scraps - which may be brought out when one goes to collect eggs - a daily task, so best not too far from the house). So there is a perfect place in each system for each component where - and how - it works the most efficiently in- and outputwise.
Conversely, the placement, which is predetermined in your case since you are making use of the structure that is already there, may also determine what goes into that worm bin. But thats OK too, as long as your ingredients are balanced from a C:N perspective
Just things to think about when creating your new system - and they also may just evolve over time too as you finetune

As to the chicken poop being hot, I'd say it's a matter of the dosis making the poison. It's a difference whether you add chicken poop bucketwise to a pile or box, or the chickens drop small portions of poop at a time into the system. (The same goes for all those "no-no's" such as citrus and onion peels and all that!).
So you'll be fine as long as you have hi-carbon woody materials in there too!

What I get thinking about when I see the pix of your coop-in-progress is how you will extract the finished compost? Getting crazy images in my head of roll-out containers that can be pulled out from under the coop for that

 

[calliandra]

maybe when I have some lechate (if acidic pH) , soak the carbon and use it as top dressing? If leachate if alkaline, maybe for a ferment fertilizer to balance the pH and use that as dressing? Rather not just toss it if it has a use.

Personally, I have gotten a bit offish regarding passive leachate.
Yes I know all sorts of people (including some I'd think would know better) use the runoff from the wormbin (or even compost pile) as fertilizer, and it does work since there are humic & fulvic acids and some other good stuff in there.
However, since this runoff is created during the decomposition process (maybe leaning to the anaerobic - which is the case if your leachate is in any way smelly), it may also contain pathogens.

For this reason, I try to manage my wormbin such that I don't even get that runoff, and if I do, I dilute and feed it to non-edibles in the garden

That said, the carbon is great aeration material and yes you could charge it with (fresh! sterile!) urine

 

[Mohican]

Bubble your leachate in water for 3 days with some molasses and you will get the amazing results you expected.

 

[Rasta Roy]

Bubble your leachate in water for 3 days with some molasses and you will get the amazing results you expected.

Do you dilute the leachate when you bubble it? After? Does that kill off the pathogens?

 

[Mohican]

Yes, dilute, and the O2 and molasses promote aerobic life which will displace the bads. As for pathogens, let your soil microbes take care of those. Just don't use it as a foliar unless you pasteurize/boil it.

 

[Rasta Roy]

Yes, dilute, and the O2 and molasses promote aerobic life which will displace the bads. As for pathogens, let your soil microbes take care of those. Just don't use it as a foliar unless you pasteurize/boil it.

Word! I'm new to the whole leachate thing, thanks for the tips!

 

[RuRu.The.Half.Elf]

That said, the carbon is great aeration material and yes you could charge it with (fresh! sterile!) urine

I'm a little "blah" feeling about using my piss. I did read a while ago today that I could compost my fishtank's carbon. I think I could reuse it in the tank and the tanks old carbon for soil mixing.

Sounds like a win situation to me.

 

[Rasta Roy]

A little off topic but close...

So I collected too much rabbit manure and my freezer is full of food scraps for my worm bin, and I have a lot more coming...so I bought a tumbling composter. My apologies to the diy crowd, I've got a pretty jammed schedule so I didn't have the time to make one. I picked one up at Menards for 60 bucks. Not too bad for saving me the time.

It holds up to 45 gallons and is supposed to turn it's contents into compost in a few weeks.

It's not like you have to layer it, it's a tumbler...lol...but for the sake of some photos...

Lots of cardboard, I amass so much cardboard just by existing. The boxes the cans of soft food for my dogs and cats comes in, cereal boxes, eBay bullshit, etc.


A five gallon bucket filled with straight rabbit manure, some produce scraps from the freezer

About four gallons of rabbit manure mixed with litter (Alfalfa hay/cardboard scraps)


I moved into my new house in the winter so I didn't get to rake up leaves until the spring. The lady that lived here before used to grow as well but with synthetics so she had dirt dumped all over the yard. So I got two enormous yard bags filled beyond the brim with leaves and old dirt.


A bag full of recently pruned off cannabis leaves...cause they gotta go somewhere.


Sooooo muchhh rabbit manure!


A bunch of produce I'd been saving in my freezer. Some pulp from my juicer, just some stuff that went bad. Not much citrus but a little. I wouldn't dare put it in my worm bin and fuck up their pH, but they say a little bit at a time in your compost pile (or in this case tumbler) is cool.


More of the leaves, old dirt mixture...


I buy a lot of amendments in bulk when they're on sale, or just to fuck with sometimes because I'm a neoliberal and believe the world's problems can be solved with consumerism (this is a joke I'm totally kidding lol). So I threw a handful of everything in
Neem Seed Meal, alfalfa meal, Crab Shell meal, Oyster Shell Flour, Bat Guano, greensand, a tiny bit of fish bone meal from the bottom of an empty down to earth box, and a handful of worm castings (the tumbler instructions say to add a handful of compost to get the other stuff composting...so whatever. Pretty sure I got enough stuff in there to get this bitch hot but I'll play along just to be safe.

And so muchhhh more cardboard.

Then I tumbled that bitch like crazy after I sealed it up. It says to tumble it every other day and I'll have compost in three weeks. Between this and my multilevel worm bin, I should have enough compost and castings to fertilize my personal garden and the other gardens I work in. I'm gonna publish a thread soon devoted to simple cheap growing, documenting a seven light pole barn room I take care of. Look out for that soon!

 

[Rasta Roy]

I'm getting so damn impatient waiting to harvest my castings! The bottom trays are so close to being done I almost started harvesting them earlier. All the food scraps and rabbit manure have disappeared and been replaced with rich looking black castings. There's perlite mixed in there (it was in the dirt I put it in the trays), and some of the alfalfa hay is in there still. I was willing to settle for the hay still being there and harvest anyway but I found a little bit of cardboard (pretty thin and close to broken down) amongst the castings so I'm letting them go for longer.

When do your guys and gals castings look like when you harvest? Do you wait til they're completely black? Anyone have experience with Alfalfa hay in their bin and if you wait for it to break down fully or not?

This is my first traditional worm bin, my other ones were force fed into a certain time constraint and it was easy to tell. This is very different but much cooler and I feel like the results are gonna be very cool.

I'm super interested to see what the heavy rabbit manure feed base does for the worm castings nutrient value. The worms are thriving and wriggling around like crazy in the bottom trays by the way!

I've also set up a second tumbling compost bin with a heavy rabbit manure base and then all the scraps of this tore up wood stump outside my godparents house. I also added all the amendments I would normally add to my soil (Alfalfa Meal, Crab Shell meal, Oyster Shell Flour, fish bone meal, greensand, rock dust). I'm leaving out the kelp because it's the most expensive of the amendments and it seems like it's qualities would be best utilized fresh. And I threw in a handful of the almost done castings and some worms from my bin.

My hope is I can make this killer compost with rabbit manure and my favorite amendments, and then make worm castings out of my food scraps and more rabbit manure. Then I want to make my soil mixes with peat moss, compost, perlite, worm castings, kelp, I'd like to try some red sedge peat aka black, like only 5% of the mix. I've heard it can make a solid replacement for forest humus, and just enough lime to make the pH kosher with the peat.

And then if my plants start to look hungry I'll just top dress with more castings. Cannot wait to use all this stuff!

 

[Dr.D81]

I came across an article that showed a guy that put a worm bin under his chicken roost. I thought that it was clever and I was going to follow his example. It just didnt cross my mind that the chicken manure would be too hot or something. I thought that it would be great to keep the coop clean and disease free, plus give me some castings. Anyways, I would like to hear some thoughts on it!

http://permaculturenews.org/2013/03/20/worm-bin-and-chicken-poop-compost-catch/

I have had worm beds under my rabbit pins and open bottoms. They love rabbit poo!

 

[Rasta Roy]

I have had worm beds under my rabbit pins and open bottoms. They love rabbit poo!

Did you ever feed the worms anything besides rabbit manure or can they thrive on the manure alone? Also what did you do for worm bedding? My rabbit manure is coming from a litter box so it's got Alfalfa hay mixed in. I mix that in with my old dirt and that's my bedding. I've got some tore up cardboard in some of the trays but not all.

 

[Dr.D81]

Did you ever feed the worms anything besides rabbit manure or can they thrive on the manure alone? Also what did you do for worm bedding? My rabbit manure is coming from a litter box so it's got Alfalfa hay mixed in. I mix that in with my old dirt and that's my bedding. I've got some tore up cardboard in some of the trays but not all.

Well i will put it this way. In parts of this country old times call red worms" manure worms" I have seen cast iron tubs under the pins and they will rase in there like mad! That is also all the piss too. I have seen them inside a sceptic tank liveing

 

[RuRu.The.Half.Elf]

An update. I had white fuzz starting upon anywhere a banana used to lay. I take it that is a good thing.

I also have fat slow white mites (see blurry arrow image), so I did the potato, removed after 30 mins into the yard, did it again and again, no end to these lil' things. Still doing it actually. The wild rabbits have it lucky being there is about 6 whole taters out there. Ignore the large chunks of egg shell, my roommate tossed some in.

Also, the fruit flies, wow! Maybe I can harvest them and sell them to dart frog owners? I am sure the 90%ish feed of fruit has something to do with it.

I had an infestation of Pissant (Ghost Ant) raiding my bin and I had to moat the bin, it's clear so I can keep an eagle eye on the water level.

Also, I noticed my worm population dwindled to near non-existent. I know Ghost ants go for beetle larva, but do they eat worms? I can not find any documentation on it.

 

[RuRu.The.Half.Elf]

Another update and some exploration towards another composting idea...

I am not a germophobe, but I do have a mild arachnophobia, but only if it involves small brown spiders. I'll play with a large huntsman, orb weavers, crabs, jumping, etc. Those spiders I don't mind, minus the rare encounter inside my shirt (Surprise!). But I'm weary of the dangerous brown recluse, I wear gloves just in case.


It seems the worms have started making a comeback. I did not feed from 5/29 - 06/09, when all chunks of matter "dispersed" into granular black matter. The bin appears to be 1/3 of it's original mass, and the coir is hardly distinguishable and few fibers exist. The white mites have died down to a few small spotting that seems to shrink as the days age by.

I lined one side wall with a friend's frozen cut/mini corn cobs he was throwing away. It was loaded with ice crystals from a stashed away lair of last Thanksgiving. Needless to say, they thawed well in the multiple plastic bag containment, sitting in a hot car for hours on it's tour of town and venture home. The wall fit 5 of these damp mushy cobs perfectly. Today I removed some top litter to expose it, to see how far along it has degraded, and to my surprise, a good amount of small white wiggle'n do-hickeys that my camera phone couldn't even focus on. I reapplied the litter on top and feel great that some good is happening.

----

Side note, curiosity, and wonder.
A search of the site and I can not find anything on high carbon (80%+ C - N ratio) composting (wood and fungus), which I guess it understandable since wood compost is better suited for trees and a few perennials from the articles I have read. So... I was wondering if anyone has experience with this? Most google searches involve people wanting it removed from their mulched gardens. Mostly about "Dog Vomit" and spotty white mycelium. Go figure, aesthetics over function.

I see that the leaf and twig matter in several wooded areas full of thriving fungal activity is shallow, but wide. Maybe a "container" emulating this would be best suitable, tarped of course, moderate aeration holes, for o2/co2 exchange and humidity control. I am thinking of a small dollar store kiddie pool roughly 4ft in diameter, 1ft tall [oddly enough, the only MADE IN USA item I've seen in this store].

I do have several unused, sterile centrifuge tubes from a DIY "Popsicle Cloner" I used to play with. I wonder if I can snag a few chunks of spore bearing fruits and propagate them.

Some pix of my now dead maple, smothered in wild muscadine grapes, my bird habitat. Some woody shelf guys, and a progression of "Witchs' Butter" (I love that name!) underneath.

 

[RuRu.The.Half.Elf]

Then I tumbled that bitch like crazy after I sealed it up. It says to tumble it every other day and I'll have compost in three weeks. Between this and my multilevel worm bin, I should have enough compost and castings to fertilize my personal garden and the other gardens I work in. I'm gonna publish a thread soon devoted to simple cheap growing, documenting a seven light pole barn room I take care of. Look out for that soon!

Nice, I was thinking about a tree litter humus(see my post above), also a yard waste compost tumbler (7gal DIY) similar to what you got going here. Have you opened it recently to see how far along it has come since you've started?
I, myself, am fascinated by the day by day progression visuals of my worm bin. Curious about the bacterial degradation of a compost tumbler.

 

[Rasta Roy]

Nice, I was thinking about a tree litter humus(see my post above), also a yard waste compost tumbler (7gal DIY) similar to what you got going here. Have you opened it recently to see how far along it has come since you've started?
I, myself, am fascinated by the day by day progression visuals of my worm bin. Curious about the bacterial degradation of a compost tumbler.

Yeah but I've also recently added some more materials...I'll snap some pics later when I get home and throw em up. I started a second bin after this one.

 

[Rasta Roy]

Here you go @RuRu.The.Half.Elf

The rabbit manure and other nitrogen inputs I put in didn't get the compost quite as hot as I was hoping. I've been collecting coffee grounds from my wife's work and I added some to heat it up. Boy did it work! You take the lid off this bad boy and you can feel some heat!

All the food waste, yard leaves, and cannabis leaves have broken down into a material resembling compost. A lot of the little rabbit nuggets have broken down as well, but you can still find a couple nuggets. The straw from the litter and the bigger cardboard pieces are taking their damn sweet time tho!

 

[RuRu.The.Half.Elf]

View attachment 3706657

Looks good. Really quick method compared to the basic pile. I guess it really just matters about the matter. That bit of blue is part of a cereal box?

 

[Rasta Roy]

Looks good. Really quick method compared to the basic pile. I guess it really just matters about the matter. That bit of blue is part of a cereal box?

Frosted flakes. Cause they're great.