Hi I'm Tricia an organic gardener. Worm castings or worm manure has five
to eleven times more nitrogen phosphorus, and potassium than regular soil and
worm compost has more micro nutrients than regular aerobic compost. Today
we're going to start a worm bin to unleash the power of worms.
To get started you're gonna need a bin,
and that can be a plastic bin, wooden box or a specially-designed worm bin
like this Can-O-Worms.
Worms eat food scraps so the size of your bin is gonna depend on how much food scraps you
can generate within a week.
After one week of collecting then go ahead and weigh them, you want one square
foot of surface area per pound of food scraps.
The depth of the bin should be about eight to twelve inches.
Whatever kind of bin you use make sure that there's holes in it
because the worms need oxygen.
If you're making your own worm bin make sure it's not sitting on the ground.
It needs to be moved up away from the ground so that you can put a collection
tray underneath.
I'm using this Can-O-Worms bin which has its own built in collection
tray.
Shredded newspaper, cardboard or coconut coir are a couple of great bedding
options.
You want to moisten your bedding you want it to be wet like a damp sponge.
We're going to start building our first working tray.
So the first thing I'm going to do is put down some newspaper
and that way the bedding material won't fall through the little holes.
So now you just want to start adding your bedding material
about two-thirds of the way up to the top of the tray,
make sure that it's nice and fluffy,
and then you can add a little bit of builders sand or coffee grounds or
something to give it a little bit of grit to help the worms digest.
Put your worm bin in a sheltered, shady area a, garage
works great.
Worms can tolerate temperatures between forty and eighty degrees but they do
their best work between fifty five and seventy five degrees.
Now were ready to add the beautiful little creatures, the worms.
Your garden soil variety earthworm isn't the type of worm you need for
your bin.
Worm composting is done by Brandling worms, European night crawlers and Red
worms.
These red worms prefer an aged
compost or manure type of environment,
regular earthworms from the garden won't survive in a worm bin.
To start a new worm bin get about a pound of composting worms, that's about a
thousand worms.
Spread them on the bedding
and they should burrow in quickly to get away from the light.
Start feeding your worms slowly, don't give them too much at once.
Feed them about one to two times a week to begin with, if the food starts
to stink before it is eaten back off on the feeding.
Bury your food scraps an inch or so under the bedding changing location each
time.
Worms like all kinds of organic matter including tea bags and coffee,
but there are some things that you shouldn't feed your worms. Anything that
has insecticides on it,
fresh manure
or meat or dairy,
and no spicy foods like garlic or onions.
A little bit of citrus is ok but not a lot.
You wanna make sure that your worm bin stays moist and a good way to
do that is put a moistened piece of burlap over your worms.
As your watering your worms to keep them nice and moist the water
is going to penetrate through the worm castings and end up in a little
collection tray here.
After time goes by you'll be able to turn on this spigot on this
Can-O-Worms bin and get a rich liquid fertilizer.
Once the worms have consumed most of the bedding and the scraps you'll see it
starts to look like a nice rich worm compost.
Then it's time to create your next layer
and this layer
does not require any newspaper as a bottom layer it just requires some
bedding material and some food scraps,
and what's gonna happen is your worms are going to find their way up through these little
holes
and begin the process all over again.
Then you can harvest
the first tray of compost.
The art of raising worms is called vermiculture.
Hi babies, how are you doing?
So adopt some worms and grow organic for life.