Show me your worm bins and compost

Mary's Confidant

Mary's Confidant

Well-Known Member
projectinfo said:
Pics or it didnt happen
Click to expand...
Fair enough, here are the pics as promised.

The bin is a basic flow through design, I found the plans free online some where:




This is the top shelf where I've been adding all of the newest scraps and the new black soldier fly tenants love migrating up here for their feedings:








You can see some nice fungal growth as well:





Here's the 2nd shelf, this is where the BSFs live full time. I take the rent out of their ass, literally :) . They have dropped so much frass in the past 3 weeks it's incredible. It keeps seeping down to the lower bins where the worms continue to work their magic (on the bottom 2 racks). The food you see on the top two shelves is 24-72 hrs old (except the cabbage). They reached a peak breeding period in the past couple days and have died back a little bit but I'll take pictures again in 48 hrs to show you how quickly they eat through these scraps. They love melon rinds, apple cores, any vegetables that have lots of water. Not a fan of cabbage, that's been sitting there for a while :)






The two shelves below are where the worms currently stay. They like it down there, it's dark, plenty of nutrients flowing down to them and it stays adequately hydrated.








Here is the leachate that fills up quickly, especially after big rains:





I've been diluting the leachate quite a bit. Haven't put the insect frass on anything yet, just letting it pile up until it gets cold. The plan is to migrate the worms indoors this year and hopefully I won't bring too many annoying bugs with them.

Alright I showed you mine, now you show me yours.
 
Prince Vegeta

Prince Vegeta

Well-Known Member
Mary's Confidant said:
Fair enough, here are the pics as promised.

The bin is a basic flow through design, I found the plans free online some where:




This is the top shelf where I've been adding all of the newest scraps and the new black soldier fly tenants love migrating up here for their feedings:








You can see some nice fungal growth as well:





Here's the 2nd shelf, this is where the BSFs live full time. I take the rent out of their ass, literally :) . They have dropped so much frass in the past 3 weeks it's incredible. It keeps seeping down to the lower bins where the worms continue to work their magic (on the bottom 2 racks). The food you see on the top two shelves is 24-72 hrs old (except the cabbage). They reached a peak breeding period in the past couple days and have died back a little bit but I'll take pictures again in 48 hrs to show you how quickly they eat through these scraps. They love melon rinds, apple cores, any vegetables that have lots of water. Not a fan of cabbage, that's been sitting there for a while :)






The two shelves below are where the worms currently stay. They like it down there, it's dark, plenty of nutrients flowing down to them and it stays adequately hydrated.








Here is the leachate that fills up quickly, especially after big rains:





I've been diluting the leachate quite a bit. Haven't put the insect frass on anything yet, just letting it pile up until it gets cold. The plan is to migrate the worms indoors this year and hopefully I won't bring too many annoying bugs with them.

Alright I showed you mine, now you show me yours.
Click to expand...
Bro I'm just starting to get into organics.
I've been slightly confused on the worm bins.
Your post cleared 90% of my confusion.
Thanks so much
When i do get mine built (eventually)
It will be cause of you
Thanks again.
Organics is kind of a lot when starting out
 
Mary's Confidant

Mary's Confidant

Well-Known Member
Prince Vegeta said:
Bro I'm just starting to get into organics.
I've been slightly confused on the worm bins.
Your post cleared 90% of my confusion.
Thanks so much
When i do get mine built (eventually)
It will be cause of you
Thanks again.
Organics is kind of a lot when starting out
Click to expand...
Great, happy it was helpful. Organics can be very confusing. Like all things in life, the key is to take the first step and just keep stepping. You'll eventually arrive at your destination (or at least be a lot closer).

I'm not an expert, I've just been keeping this bin going for about 3 years now. This is the first year where I've actively managed the black soldier flies. I didn't add them. They just showed up one day and began breeding so I've been doing my best to keep them fat and happy. Keep reading, there are many different worm bin ideas for indoors and outdoors and I'm sure this isn't the best design. But it's a good one and it works for now.

I have plans for a very big worm farm but it won't happen anytime soon.

You can keep it simple and just get a couple rubbermaid bins, small ones if you prefer and go buy some red wiggler bait worms. Or order 500 online and be off to the races. I try to add broken down cardboard pieces and leaf mulch in the worm sections. Used coffee grounds are also great for the worms. If you have coir or peat, that's also a good carbon additive.

Let me know if you have any additional questions, there is loads of reading material out there.
 
Dryxi

Dryxi

Well-Known Member
My bin is quite a bit smaller than yours. I have one of those commercial worm farms. I never have leachate come out of it. Mainly the worms are fed composted horse manure. Whatever scraps I have from my family goes in there but it is nowhere near as much as you have in that picture. But my scraps are cut up extremely small to help it disappear quicker so it never really builds up like that. I also add malted barley meal to the bin whenever it is all gone off the top layer of the bin. But I feel as though the main part of their diet is the bedding of newspaper and manure
 
Prince Vegeta

Prince Vegeta

Well-Known Member
Do all worm bins require food compost?
If i were to do the Rubbermaid bins
Would there be odors?
What do you do with the liquid in the Tupperware dish? Add it to tea?
Which part of the 4 bins you have do you get the ewc from to add to the soil for super soil mix?
I'm still not anywhere NEAR a starting point for any of this. Im still gathering amendments and reading
Your pictures cleared up a lot for me tho
 
Mary's Confidant

Mary's Confidant

Well-Known Member
Disclaimer: I'm not the foremost expert on this but here's what I've learned thus far.

Worm bins don't require food compost. And really, most of it is consumed by the BSF larva in my bin.

A little bit added to the worms is helpful but not necessary. If I were indoors, I'd be cutting it up in much smaller chunks or blending it so it was a soup. the important part is to have plenty of bedding: cardboard, brown leaves, coir, peat, etc. Then depending on how nutritious you want to make it, you can add things like Kelp, etc. or if you like to keep your vegetable and fruit cutoffs, throw them in your bin.

As the worms work through everything in the bins (wherever they currently live) they are breaking stuff down. Over and over again. Just let them do their thing. Make sure they aren't waterlogged but don't let them dry out either. Over time, they'll work through everything and it'll be completely broken down - aka - high quality worm castings.

I'd suggest at that point, getting some metal screen, 1/4" x 1/4" and putting a frame around it. You could also build another frame wiht 1/2" x 1/2" or whatever size you want. Then take everything from the worm bin and work it over the screens so you are screening for just the castings. The night before doing this, you could put some melon rinds or apple cores in the corners of the bins and come back to harvest the worms out.

It's a messy affair so I'd do it outside or somewhere you don't mind some dirt/soil spilling out. Once you've screened it, use whatever fell through the 1/4" or even the 1/2" if you like and throw everything else back in the bin and start a new cycle. The size of screening you want to do is really up to you but typically the smaller, the more broken down.

It's best to give the worms plenty of time to work it over. This isn't a quick process. At least not with worms. I'd prefer at least a year to let the worms really concentrate their castings but 3-6 months can be done in optimal conditions. Now, if you get black soldier flies - they produce insect frass at an incredible rate. (insect poop - the equivalent of worm castings but from other insects). Meal worms can be cultivated indoors and can be fed to any reptilian pets, from what I've read. Meal worms make a nice frass that can be fed to your plants and they are prodigious.

Bonus: Insect frass has chitin which has been shown to be a great additive for plants of all types.

My leachate is mostly from heavy rains because it's outdoors. If you keep it indoors and properly monitor water levels, I doubt you'd have anything close to what comes out of mine.

And you don't need 4 bins. 1 or 2 is fine. Google it and I'm sure you'll find tons of examples. Search it on youtube as well, lots of worm bin designs out there.
 
Dryxi

Dryxi

Well-Known Member
Prince Vegeta said:
Do all worm bins require food compost?
If i were to do the Rubbermaid bins
Would there be odors?
What do you do with the liquid in the Tupperware dish? Add it to tea?
Which part of the 4 bins you have do you get the ewc from to add to the soil for super soil mix?
I'm still not anywhere NEAR a starting point for any of this. Im still gathering amendments and reading
Your pictures cleared up a lot for me tho
Click to expand...
Worms eat most organic things. Paper, poop, fruits and veggies, etc.
Odor means the food is literally rotting, which isn't how it is supposed to go. The worms each it as it decomposes quickly, so there should not be a bad smell.
EWC is the worm poop, so if your doing a stackable bin, then you get the castings from each bin, it doesn't go anywhere, worms just move upwards as you add more bins when one bin is almost full.
The leachate means the bedding is too moist. Think of it as the runoff of your plants. It is the liquid that runs off food and moisture and sinks to the bottom. Isn't necessary and doesn't mean healthy or unhealthy bin.
You can dilute the leachate to feed plants.
 
Richard Drysift

Richard Drysift

Well-Known Member
Dryxi said:
My bin is quite a bit smaller than yours. I have one of those commercial worm farms. I never have leachate come out of it. Mainly the worms are fed composted horse manure. Whatever scraps I have from my family goes in there but it is nowhere near as much as you have in that picture. But my scraps are cut up extremely small to help it disappear quicker so it never really builds up like that. I also add malted barley meal to the bin whenever it is all gone off the top layer of the bin. But I feel as though the main part of their diet is the bedding of newspaper and manure
Click to expand...
If you give the worms mostly manure and newspaper you will never get much leacheate from the bottom spigot. I have a worm factory 360 and found if you feed them a lot of fruits that contain water like watermelon rinds or rotted peaches that's when you get leacheate flowing down through the spigot. It must rain down through the trays and soak all the layers of compost. It always comes out super heavy and wet. I try to add dry soil, coco coir, and perlite when possible to help increase airflow inside the bin. All my plants get diluted leacheate and it seems make them very happy. I will throw up a pic of my bin with a zillion fucking worms writhing around in it ASAP.
 
MustangStudFarm

MustangStudFarm

Well-Known Member
Greenthumbs256 said:
Could u expand a Lil on your operation? I'm very interested in seeing more pics and understanding what it is tour doing!
I myself do a worm bin and soon when I move I plan to have a compost pile or maybe vermicompost!
Click to expand...
If you listen to podcasts, Clackamas Coots(Jim) explains how he makes his worm bin in episode #3. This is what everyone is trying to follow now, so might as well hear it straight from the source.
https://www.kisorganics.com/pages/podcast
 
MustangStudFarm

MustangStudFarm

Well-Known Member
Greenthumbs256 said:
Thank you I'll check him out!
Click to expand...
He uses barley seed and it sounds like he is on to something. It has several different enzymes and promotes fungal growth along with worm reproduction. He really made it sound awesome, but I knew that I wouldn't do a good job of explaining it. From what I understand, he uses crustacean meal(chitin) and barley has the enzyme(chitinase) that breaks down the crustacean meal. There are other ways to get chitin also, I think any insect with an exoskeleton. I see these things all over my yard.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top