February 3, 2009
Vermicomposting – An Overview
[UPDATE: Unfortunately (or fortunately lol) this video is no longer available]
Ok – as promised, here is a video I recently made (I know it’s been awhile). It’s actually intended as a bit of shameless self-promotion for the site (haha), but I think it provides a reasonable ‘big picture’ overview of vermicomposting – especially useful for someone completely new to the field.
I uploaded this video to YouTube, but was disappointed with the distortion, so I tried Viddler – definitely with better results, but still not nearly as sharp as the original. As our regular readers will know by now, I am definitely no video-making ninja – but hey, it’s the content that counts right?
I apologize for making YET another video with super-cheesy music! It’s a long story! I’ll leave it at that for now! (will actually be writing about how I made the video in my next newsletter, for those who might be interested).
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Just so you know, I also have some more normal videos planned, featuring some of the topics I’ve written about – in more detail and with me narrating (ok, keep your ‘boos’ under control please! haha). Hoping to get some of those completed in the next couple of weeks!
Stay tuned!
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“Extreme” Worm Farming!
Ok – it’s video day here at Red Worm Composting! (one of my own coming up next).
The title of this one (along with the dramatic music) made me giggle.
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Great advice though – freezing is definitely a solid strategy for speeding up the vermicomposting process. It is similar to blending / aging / cooking in terms of rendering the material far more accessible to microbes and worms.
You might want to be a wee bit cautious with this approach however – especially if you have a lid and don’t have drainage! It will be important to add lots of absorbent material if you have any hope of avoiding a lake forming in the bottom of the bin!
As you can see in this case, they have a nice drainage system in place. You’ll also notice that they are promoting the use of leachate as a worm tea. You know me and my cautions and warnings (haha) – I am at least glad they mentioned diluting it – this is definitely something I’d recommend. I also suspect that if enough liquid is flowing through the bin on a regular basis there will be less chance of nasty anaerobic metabolites ending up in the end product.
Don’t mean to be a supremely “negative Nelly” here, but I should also mention that leaving large amounts of soft food waste just sitting on the surface of you system is like an open invitation for fruit fly invasion! No, they won’t come from the food itself (one of the great things about freezing), but if you end up with even a few fruit flies in your house from some other source (fruit just sitting out before consumption for example) you’ll be battling an insane infestation in no time!
All that said, let me once again point out that I really liked this video, and commend the creator for a job well done! (honest!)
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Worm Tower
Hi everyone!
Sorry for the lull in posts as of late – I’ve been pretty busy with a variety of things, and just haven’t been hit with the inspiration to write about my own worming activities (nothing too exciting to report on).
Anyway, I happened upon an interesting YouTube video today and thought it was definitely worthy of posting here – especially given the need for something new! It is really interesting how people focused on the same field of endeavour, but working completely independent of one another, can come up with similar ideas! The ‘Worm Tower’ is actually very similar to a concept I’ve had in my head for a backyard vermicomposting system (in particular, I thought it would be great as a pet waste vermicomposter). The main difference is the fact that I envisioned the use of a plastic garbage can buried in the ground, rather than the plastic tube (which is actually a really nice way to simplify (and make less expensive) the concept.
As the person in the video alludes to, this type of system is a great in situ composting system. That is to say that you don’t even need to harvest castings from it. Simply locate it in the vicinity of some plants (you could have several of these in your vegetable garden, for example) so they can directly benefit from it. I’m not sure I agree 100% about the composting worms going out into the soil to deposit castings though – I suspect that most of them would remain within the tube. That being said, just via the activity of all manner of different creatures (including actual soil worms) and plant roots etc, the benefits of the castings would certainly spread out into your soil in general.
Pretty cool! Now I really can’t wait to construct my garbage can system.
Too bad we are still in the dead of winter here (oh and the groundhog also ended up scared by his shadow – haha)!
Oh well – I guess I’ll have to settle for playing with my big winter worm bed (should have an update on that this week for sure) for the time being.
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