Smart pot worm farm

Was looking to make my own worm castings using a smart pot as a worm bin but had a few questions.

Does the bedding go in the bottom before everything else or in the top after everything else?

How do you get the worms out when finished and how do you know when it is finished?

If anybody had any examples or tips to doing a work bin in a smart pot please share. There is very little information on the web about this method.

redwormcomposting.com has all the info you need, tons of information there from first starting out to well advanced.

All my bins are totes and I have no experience with smart pots as bins, so no help there. IDK if I would really recc them for someone just starting with worms, but that's just my opinion and someone with experience will be along.

Wet

Thanks, I did see one post there with a smart pot being used. I might have to dig a little deeper in that website.

Just put down your pot, put in your bedding about 5 inches deep and put some damp not soaking newspaper on top of it. Bedding can literally be almost anything from shredded newspaper to composted horse manure (i use old composted manure). The amount of bedding really depends on the amount of worms. If your putting 2000 worms in at the beginning you need a good bit more bedding than 200 worms.

Not positive how you harvest from a smart pot but I assume you do the old-school dump it on a tarp, turn on the light so the worms burrow deeper and start taking layers off that are wormsless. As more is taken the worms have to go deeper until you have a huge ball of worms.

The amount of time it takes depends on the amount of worms. At the beginning it might take months if you started with a small number of worms, but after your bun is mature the amount of time it takes goes down. Typically I can harvest every 2 months in my stackable bins.

Fabric pots make great worm farms, just be sure to not start too small. I would use 15gal or up, 20 or 25 being even better. The bigger the better because arid conditions/drying out is the main enemy, since bacteria aren't as far reaching as fungi, which work together in subway tunnel type fashion ..

You can lure a herd (of worms) with their favs, such as watermelon rinds and halved avocados and this way, may be able avoid having to do the dump, light, and scrape technique. Just get the bulk herd out of the way, and use it to start another farm.

I agree, and would do a good 5 inches of bedding at the top and bottom, and always use a mulch as well..

You can tell when the castings are refined when all the bedding material has been turned to castings.. when it goes from heterogeneous to homogeneous. And when scraps and beddings become unidentifiable.

You can also dig a hole, place a pile of food or juicer scraps, and then cover with a hump of soil, and watch the hump.. then when it flattens you know that pile is gone, and you can place another in another spot.

Keep it cool, not hot or cold, and keep it moist, not dry or wet.. and soon you will get a feel for their feeding habits and also for the consistencies you like.

The more refined it gets, the more you may want to aerate, I prefer add biochar and pumice over perlite and rice hulls. More permanent, more robust, and more bacteria-friendly.

Hope that helps..Tis my good deed for the day

Thanks a lot Don, that was exactly what I was looking for. Filled in all the missing pieces in my head lol.

I would just use a tote... I don't keep a lid on mine but have a layer of garden fabric ontop. A big smart pot would be annoying to move imo... totes are easy to move and slide and stack if you have to.

I wait for sales at Crappy Tire then I get the collapsable platform dollies for 80% off. Then the worm farms go on wheels and can be moved around easily. I do enjoy strong totes myself.. little bit better for vacationing and passive set ups, plus they are stackable, and you can stand on them too. But I bet a smart pot would never go anaerobic..

Serverchris said:

Thanks a lot Don, that was exactly what I was looking for. Filled in all the missing pieces in my head lol.

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My pleasure, buddy, glad I could help.

I'm not sure about size, but here's my experience.

I started with a 15 gallon smart pot, then added another 20 or 25 gallon pot. Both are sitting on stands, which are sitting in appropriately sized saucers. The saucers were intended to capture leachate. The design of the smart pot allows the soil near the cloth to dry out; I have not yet gathered leachate from my bin.

I haven't harvested yet, so can't help there. Since starting the worms, I needed soil for some transplants. The earth worm compost is working great. That said, using the smart pots, the casual observer can easily see a 1-3 inch area of soil next to the edge of then pot that the worms don't process. I think it's just too dry. For my base mix, I used coco. The coco coir creates a 1-3 inch fluffy, brown layer near the edge; the processed ewc is a different consistency and dark black.

My most recent iteration of the design uses a 50 gallon smart pot, called the junior (22.00 on amazon). It's 36 inches diameter by 12 deep. It will probably be placed on pallets covered with panda film that would catch and funnel any leachate to a tote. I do not really expect much leachate from the larger pot, given my experience with the smaller ones. But, the larger one will have a way to catch liquid, should it be produced.

The coco coir went into the pot. Food for the worms is added either generally across the entire surface, (if using a ground worm meal type product), or in little holes that are covered with coco and the mulches..

A thick layer of rice hulls were placed over the worm bed; when I wanted to add or check something, I would scrape away the rice hull layer. Overtime, this is broken down by the worms, but in the interim it creates a great base layer. A thick layer of hay, which was innocculated in a compost tea (old ewc, fresh ewc, liquid and solid fish compost, humic acids, bokashi, crushed oyster shell, guano. Anything that can go into the grow can go into the compost tea and worm bin, I've found.

This site has a vermicomposting thread in the organic sections, I believe. Check it out. It's a wealth of knowledge.

peace

Thanks man, I've heard of people spraying the sides of the smart pot with water to keep it moist, idk if you could give that a try or not.

I wouldn't use a smart pot. Ill post some pictures of my home made worm bin. It's only been about 6 months but I've gone from maybe a hundred worms to easily over a thousand.

I worry about not having a lid on a fabric pot. What if the worms are not happy and want to migrate!

A home made bin or a tote will contain things better IMHO. Plus give you the opportunity to create dividers so you can lure the worms into a new section when harvesting castings.

(Yep many moons ago, I had worms that decided to leave an uncovered bin. Basement floor full of worms! Wife kicked the worms out of the house...)

Serverchris said:

Thanks man, I've heard of people spraying the sides of the smart pot with water to keep it moist, idk if you could give that a try or not.

Click to expand...

That's an interesting idea I may implement someday. For now, I'm not too worried about the edges drying out. I'm aware that that dry area inhibits worm activity, but that may represent an inch or so around an entire pot.

For now, the smart pots are doing well. A few worms attempted to flee during the initial introduction some months ago. But that lasted for a half an hour or so. They're quite content in the smart pots now, even after transferring batches to new pots.

Pieces of plastic are placed on top of the pots. The sides are then folded in, and something heavy placed on top. No worries about creating too moist an environment.

They're pretty idiot proof for a first iteration. I'm about 2 or 3 months in. Still figuring it all out.

I think the Junior is just right. Any larger and it would be difficult to move the pot around the pallet. Any smaller (2 foot diameter) and the height is 8 inches.

Plus, pallets are free at home depot and lowes. I use recycled plastics from build-a-soil 1 cf bags as light and humidity barriers, as tops to the pot.