Are sub-freezing temperatures on their way? Composting with worms does not have to stop in the winter! If you live in a cold climate, your composting worms can continue working when winter approaches. You need to make some decisions. Here are your choices: Do nothing. Insulate. Move the worms to a sheltered location. Move the worms to a heated location (such as in the house, heated outbuilding or basement). Wild worms fend for themselves during freezing temperatures.
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A rabbit hutch is a mess unless you can automatically dispose of the waste. Rabbit poop, urine, spilled food and water, and bedding need to be cleaned out of the hutch regularly. Did you know that a rabbit hutch wormfarm cleans itself? Waste falls through the floor of the bunny hutch, straight into a composter populated by worms. The results are a clean hutch and valuable organic fertilizer. How do you make a Rabbit Hutch Worm Farm?
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Composting worms speeds up the composting process. New worm bin owners tend to make mistakes. Once you get the hang of vermicomposting, you will love it! Reducing trash, saving the earth, and creating free fertilizer makes worm composting worthwhile. Your household might even adopt the worms as members of the family! Watch out for these five common mistakes. Mistake #1: Overfeeding Enthusiastic worm bin owners toss every available scrap into the bin. The worms cannot keep up. The bin starts to smell terrible! In theory, worms can eat their weight in scraps per day. However, that number might be lower, depending on air temperature and other factors. A fool-proof method is to feed them every 2 to 3 days. Be conservative in the quantity. Soon, you will get a feeling for how much food they can handle.
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If you are feeling hot in the summer, so are your composting worms! Unless they are snuggled indoors in air conditioning, your wiggly composting helpers need help staying cool. A few precautions will keep your worms operational. What natural cooling techniques do worms have? Where should your worm bin go? When should you intervene? What’s the worst that can happen? Natural Worm Cooling Worm in the wild knows what to do when they feel too hot. They dig down deeper in the earth or bedding
Read MoreDid you know that there are different types of composting? Aerobic composting and vermicomposting require ventilation. Anaerobic composting works without oxygen. How do you make compost? Which type is best for households, farms, businesses, institutions, and schools? How Composting Works Composting takes advantage of the natural process of decomposition. When leaves drop on the ground in the fall, Mother Nature breaks them down. Ants and other insects, bacteria, and fungi do their work. Soon, nothing remains except brown matter, which becomes part of the topsoil. This rich organic matter nourishes plants, helps regulate water saturation, and creates air pockets.
Read MoreEarthworms make great fishing bait, and they also speed up composting. Maybe you are tired of using artificial lures or over-paying for small quantities at the bait shop. Or perhaps you’ve decided to start composting kitchen scraps. Adding European Night Crawlers or Red Worms to the composting bin will make the waste break down faster. Either way, you can catch the worms yourself or get them cheaper online. Types of Worms First, you want to figure out which types of worms to catch. There are around 182 taxa of earthworms in North America. Of these, two are especially useful: The European Night Crawler is called Eisenia hortensis or Dendrobaena veneta in Latin. This earthworm grows to 6 inches long. They grow to the diameter of a pencil. It has a bluish, pink-grey color with bands or stripes. The end of its tail might be pale yellow or cream. At Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm, we call them “Super Reds.” These are especially good for fishing because they continue to wiggle for quite a while on the hook underwater. The smaller Red Worms are also known as red wiggler worms, manure worms, panfish worm, brandling worms, tiger worms, trout worms, tiger worms, red Californian earth worms, and Eisenia fetida. Red Worms are smaller and thinner than European Night Crawlers. These champion composting worms are ideally suited to turning waste kitchen scraps into finished compost quickly. Get Ready for Worms When you get ready to go worm hunting, prepare a container with holes …
Read MoreIf you are thinking about composting with worms, you will need to weigh the pros and cons first. Some folks start composting to reduce trash and help save the environment. Others are motivated by the end product: nutrient-rich compost for gardens, indoor plants, and lawns. Parents and teachers engage youngsters with a vermicomposting project. Whatever your reason, composting worms have both pluses and minuses. The most common concerns are waste reduction, odor, time, and cost. Reduces Waste Composting diverts organic waste from landfills and incinerators. You can compost food trimmings, leftovers, spoiled food, coffee grounds, compostable napkins, compostable takeout containers and utensils, garden trimmings, and certain agricultural waste. Pros: Composting requires sorting out organic matter from the trash. Sorting is easily accomplished by tossing vegetation into a container. Unsorted trash develops a terrible odor, due to anaerobic decomposition of organic matter. Foul odors attract pests. Collecting trash requires time, fuel, trucks, and expense. Landfills lack enough oxygen for proper composting. They are prone to buildup of flammable methane gas. Garbage is essentially entombed for eternity. Burning mixed trash is an utter waste of valuable organic matter. Incineration creates air pollution and toxic ash. Cons: Participants need instructions on what can be composted and how to separate it. Unlike recyclables, compostables start to break down quickly. Collection is highly time-sensitive at room temperature. Stored compostables should be refrigerated or frozen. Organic matter that has already been mixed in with other trash is difficult to separate. Composting Worms’ Odor You might be …
Read MoreA composting worms project at school provides many opportunities to teach STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) in the classroom. The school curriculum often covers the lifecycle of the earthworm. Students will retain more if they have hands-on experiences with the worms. A composting bin allows students to compost organic food waste generated at school. The composting process results in worm castings, a fertilizer for growing new plants. The project can easily pay for itself if the worm castings are put up for sale. Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm shows you how to get started with a classroom composting project. Customize the Project Teachers can pick-and-choose the scope of the project and which STEM elements to include. A minimal project would involve setting up a worm bin and depositing classroom waste. Many STEM elements can be included such as measuring trash volume before and during the project (math); worm anatomy;
Read MoreComposting worms make food scraps break down quickly, but some foods can hurt them. Vermicomposting with worms is increasingly popular with people who want to reduce trash, produce free fertilizer, and save resources. Therefore, vermicomposting fans have a vested interest in keeping their Red Worms or European Night Crawlers healthy. Worms can break down a wide variety of organic materials, with a few exceptions. Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm explains which foods can hurt composting worms. In a Tight Space In the wild, worms will wiggle to a suitable food source. They have an entire smorgasbord outdoors. A composting bin is a tight space. We set up this
Read MoreWhen you rake the fall leaves, you are handling valuable organic material. If you compost these leaves, you will have free fertilizer in the spring! Leaves and other plant waste are the perfect food for composting worms. If you have a yard or garden of any size, you can capture these valuable nutrients by composting. Composting with worms, called “vermicomposting,” is fast and efficient. It’s easier than you might think! And you can start anytime. While your neighborhood might have leaf pickup, question where that material goes. Can you get free fertilizer from it in the Spring? Chances are that you cannot. You would likely have pay and pick up fertilizer during business hours. Keep the leaves working for you by composting in your own yard. Types of Composters You will need a location for your vermicomposting project. A variety of
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