Winter Worm Composting – 02-23-09

Nice and toasty warm in parts of the winter worms bed

Just a quick update on the winter worm composting front. I popped by my dad’s place on Friday to see how things were doing in the outdoor bed. He had been providing me with encouraging temperature updates (you may recall that we buried the sensor for the remote weather station in the bed last time), but I wanted to check temperatures throughout the bed.

I also wanted to add a considerable amount of food waste that had been piling up at home. I originally started stockpiling it so that I could make some ‘homemade manure‘, but the time involved (and the fact that my blender seems to have gone missing – I suspect foul play! haha) made me decide to simply take it over to my dad’s. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough time to add it to the pile on the day I took it over, so it was frozen when we added it on Friday.

Lots of frozen food waste added to the top of the heap before being covered in straw

This actually makes things a little more interesting, since I’ll be really interested to see how/if it affects the overall bed temps, and how quickly it becomes worm food. One thing to point out – if you are wondering why there are plastic bags mixed in with the food waste, it is because these are made with biodegradable plastic.

Temperatures in the worm bed seem to be even higher than when I last checked, but certainly aren’t off the charts (always a good thing). The lowest temperatures I found were in the 10 C (50 F) range, while the highest was about 30 C (86 F).

Lots of worms seem to be really active up near the surface – I actually ended up feeling badly about the fact that I was digging around at all (to look for worms, and to create a bit of a depression for the food waste), since it was brutally cold outside at the time. My dad and I were more than happy to quickly pack it in and head inside after the food waste was added!

I will more than likely head over this Friday to see how things are looking.
Stay tuned!

Previous Winter Worm Composting Posts

Winter Composting Extravaganza 2.0
Winter Worm Composting – 12-08-08
Winter Worm Composting – 12-15-08
Winter Worm Composting – 12-30-08
Winter Worm Composting – 01-23-09
Winter Worm Composting – 02-09-09

Written by Bentley on February 23rd, 2009 with 5 comments.
Read more articles on Large-Scale Vermicomposting and Winter Composting.

Donating Composting Worms

Hi everyone. It’s been awhile since I added anything to the “Share Board”. Remember – if there is anything you’d like to share with the rest of our readers (information, requests, opportunities etc) that relates to vermicomposting, and is non-commercial (feel free to submit these too and I’ll let you know if they are appropriate), I will be happy to add them.

A little while ago I wrote a response to a couple of people wondering what to do with all their extra worms (a hypothetical situation, should their worm bins end up doing really well).

I recently received an email from Kristine P., letting me know that she would be more than happy to take extra worms off anyone’s hands. Here is what she wrote:

I work for a non profit organization that could GREATLY benefit from
donated worms! Could you please contact me for more info? Or send my
contact info to someone who might help?
Thanks so much!

I asked Kristine if it was ok to post this on the Share Board and she encouraged me to do so, mentioning that if anyone DOES have worms they can donate, they should contact:

Monica Jeske
Education Manager
Friends of Boerner Botanical Gardens
(414)525-5659

Written by Bentley on February 23rd, 2009 with no comments.
Read more articles on The Share Board.