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Vermicomposting- "Worm Composting"

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Alyssa Russ said #1 Mar 25, 2010 at 5:36pm

Composting your household organic kitchen scraps into great gardening soil, all while reducing the waste that goes into the landfills!

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Alyssa Russ said #2 Mar 25, 2010 at 5:45pm

I encourage everyone to give this a try! It is realy easy and interesting, if you have kids they will love it! And it is a great, simple way to help the environment.

I recently started my own worm compost, I read that 1/3 of our garbage every week is organic waste, which is 100% compostable! And yet it rots away in landfills. I watched this video,

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/03/build-your-own-worm-bin.php


and it really inspired me to start this new project. I bought a bunch of red wiggler worms from a local bait shop, made a bin like the one in the video, feed the worms my organic garbage once a week and that's it! In a few months I'll have fresh soil to add to my new garden.. hopefully.

I am extremely new at this and would love some tips, so if anyone else is a worm composter, or is interested in getting started I would love to hear from you!

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Tara Goulding said #3 Mar 25, 2010 at 5:49pm

I've had a worm farm for a couple of months, and I love it! It's so cool putting your kitchen scraps in (mine get lots of tea leaves too), and then they just disappear into compost! And I love having 'pet' worms :-)

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Alyssa Russ said #4 Mar 25, 2010 at 6:17pm

Ha I know right? I named them all Sally and Harold lol. How many worms did you start with? I got 100, but I know that's not enough, I read you should start with about a ound.. like 500? but I also read that the population doubles every month! And where do you keep yours? I'm worried if I keep it outside it will be too cold and they won't be as active...

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Tara Goulding said #5 Mar 25, 2010 at 8:00pm

I started with 1000 worms, and yes apparently they double every month! I suppose once there's no room they won't reproduce at the same rate, and I guess the original ones die off too.

I keep mine in the garage, as being in Australia if I had them outside they would cook in no time! The garage is also handy because we have internal access from the house and it's close to the kitchen to just pop in and feed them whenever I get a bit of scraps. Oh also a little bit of heat helps the scraps breakdown, so definitely don't keep them anywhere too cold.

Photos here of when I set it up: WORMS!

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Alyssa Russ said #6 Mar 26, 2010 at 1:35pm

yikes! 1,000! I knew 100 wasn't very many, but at 10 cents a worm, which I suppose is cheap, but that woulda been $100 on worms! lol. How much did you pay for yours, and where did you get them if you don't mind me asking?

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Tara Goulding said #7 Mar 26, 2010 at 5:35pm

My 1000 worms costs $25. I got them from a lady who works on a council-run experimental farm cottage thingy, which was recommended to me by the council when I bought the worm farm.

Don't worry, your 100 will soon turn into lots more, but you will just have to make sure you don't feed them too much to start with as obviously less worms get through less food.

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Alyssa Russ said #8 Mar 26, 2010 at 7:18pm

wow! I need to find me a lady who works on a council-run experimental thingy! lol. Compared to that price i'm getting ripped off.

And yeah, I feel like my worms are barely eatingggg. And i've done some research on breeding, it takes 3 weeks for a new worm to hatch, which I'm sure will go by fast, by my kitchen scraps are being produced much faster than they can eat, i'm keeping them all in an air-tight container in the fridge, only giving the worms a tiny bit at a time. Thanks for the tip though :)

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Tara Goulding said #9 Mar 26, 2010 at 7:42pm

My worms don't get through all my scraps either. Makes me think that maybe I've got too much scrappage and need to think more about what I throw out!

As I'm making the Braised Daikon for lunch, I just gave them the green stems and the tops, and whizzed them up in the food processor to make it easier for them to chomp through.

Oh and mine looooove porridge, and the corn bread (from TKD) that we didn't get through - they looked like a tin of spaghetti had been opened up inside the box when they were eating that LOL

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Alyssa Russ said #10 Mar 27, 2010 at 7:03pm

haha i didn't think to put that in there, I'm still learning what's ok to compost and what's not. I cant wait until they have babeis lol, they eat sooo slowwwwww...

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