Compost

You have started a worm bin, congratulation you are now a worm farmer. The goal is to harvest the best worm casting.

It takes about 3 month for a standard bin to get ready. Until there you need to think of a strategy for feeding the bin. There is two ways you can feed your worms. The horizontal feeding or the edge method and the vertical feeding.

The edge method.

This method is simple dispose the food only on one side of the bin and let the worms consume it. Then repeat on the other side. It is best if you have to harvest your bin from the top.

The way I proceed here is simple I make a trench on one side of the bin, I wrap the food in a paper that I soak with water. Then in burry the wrap and cover it.

The big pro of doing this is that the food is never on top of the bin and it will attract less flies and unwanted visitor into the bin.

The next big pro of this is that the worms will migrate inside the bin where the food is. The other side will have less worms and you will have less worms to sort from the casting where there is no food.

It does not reduce the time to create the casting but it facilitate the maintenance of your bin. You will have to deal with less troubles.

The vertical method.

The vertical method is best if you have to harvest your bin from the bottom.

All you do is layer the food on top of the bin wait that it is consumed and repeat. When you will be ready to harvest your worms will be feeding on top and you will have less worms in the bottom.

Why I like this method is that you can reduce the time to harvest. Especially if you give pre-composted food your worms will be super active on top of the bin and visible when you open it.

I can have a bin ready in a month and a half if I use well-cured compost as a bedding.

You simply layer bedding and compost and repeat the process.

Always remember to chop the food and the bedding very finely.

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The earthworms that are in your bin, are called composting worms. In nature, they thrive in compost piles and eat the organic matter that is in the topsoil. They process compost very fast and it is their favorite food.

To maintain a healthy worm bin the rule, if there was only one rule to observe is don't overfeed your bin. You will keep your worms happy and limit the troubles that can happen inside the bin.

If you keep a bin of pre-composted food, you can simply add the volume of food they need and not worry about what to feed them if you don't have food available.

Get a composting bin

Here the size of the bin does not matter, it could be a simple bucket with a lid with a few holes on top of it.

Your bin will need air so that your compost does not lack oxygen. If compost has no more air in it it turns anaerobic and this is where bad bacteria will start to create troubles for your plants and your landscape. Your bin and pre-compost have to stay aerobic at all times.

The simple way to notice if compost is anaerobic will be the bad smell. If it is the case, add some more bedding to fix it or start fresh with a new one.

If your compost is aerobic it will not smell bad and instead will smell like forest soil.

My only recommendation is to get a bin where you will be sure that your pre-compost will stay aerobic and moist enough.

What pre-compost food will achieve?

A compost pile has 3 phases

• the mesophilic phase
• the thermophilic phase
• the maturation phase

With a pre-compost bin, you will stay in the first phase of the mesophilic. The goal is to maintain the temperature at around 70F so that the bacteria of this phase will thrive.

Once you add the pre-composted food to the worm bin the worms will achieve the maturation phase, they will digest all of the compost and produce the good bacteria that will feed your plants and your garden.

The thermophilic phase is where a pile reaches high temperatures, it will pasteurize the compost and make it safe for your garden, and it will kill seeds and pathogens. This does not happen in a worm bin because the worms will die at this temperature.

So you want to be careful with what you put into your pre-compost bin.

Start your pre-compost bin

The way you want to deal with the volumes of your pre-compost bin is pretty simple. You want to put more Carbon than Nitrogen to avoid the bin to heat the material.

Here is the basic recipe for your pre-compost bin:

• 1 volume of carbon
• 1 volume of nitrogen
• 1 volume of soil

Everything you put in this bin should be chopped finely, it will make the composting process faster. First you always put the layer of carbon in the bottom. Then you put the layer of nitrogen. Then you put the layer of soil. When the compost starts the levels will mix by themselves. This compost is ready when you can't tell the levels anymore. It will not look as fine as a matured compost that will be the job of the worms to finish this stage.

Feed your worms the pre-compost bin

Once the compost is ready it is very easy, just give them the volume of pre-compost they need and this is done. Layer it on top of your worm bin and give them enough food for 3 days.

Then all you have to do is repeat the process it will give you an opportunity to feed your worms on a schedule and you will never have to worry about shortages of food for your worms.

Because i do this system i never have to buy any food or bedding for them. I just collect what i find nearby.

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