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| Photo: Pexels: Sippakorn Yamkasikorn |
When I was in Germany, I watched my family deposit their food waste in special buckets that were collected and used for community composting. It’s nice to know that food waste is going back into food production. One convenient method to do this with your own food waste is to have a worm bin in your garage. It’s easy to do and it’s not even smelly. Your worms will eat the food and process it into worm castings (poop) you can use to compost your garden. The garage is a good home for your operation because the worms need to be shielded from the cold.
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| Photo: Epic Gardening |
Having the right healthy worms is the most important aspect of
vermicomposting. Red wigglers are the
standard worms used for producing compost.
Worms are available on the Internet, and if you have gardening friends,
you might find a local source of worms.
Next you’ll need a container. You
can find bins specifically designed for vermicomposting on the Internet or you
can easily make your own from a bucket or a plastic or wooden box. You might
have an appropriate container in your home already that you can repurpose.
Oxygen is needed for the whole operation, so drill some holes in homemade
containers. If you want to have your
worm bin outside, a commercially built worm bin might be a better choice.
So now your worms need an appropriate living situation provided by bedding. Many use the easiest one, which is torn up newspaper with no color. Other appropriate bedding choices and they can be mixed, are shredded brown cardboard, wood chips, straw, coco coir, and peat moss. Worms need a damp environment, so you will use unchlorinated water to wet the bedding. Instructions on the Internet tell you how you can dechlorinate your tap water. You want nothing toxic in your bedding mix to provide a healthy home for your worms. You should let your bedding sit for several days before you add worms.
Numbers of worms and size of containers are all very dependent on the size of your household and the food wastes available. You want to feed your worms once a day, amounts of food will depend on the number of worms and their bedding environment. You want to feed appropriately so the worm food is constantly being consumed and digested quickly. This keeps the worm bin from smelling bad. There are some very good instructions on the web, including our own Plant Talk site:
https://planttalk.colostate.edu/topics/soils-amendments-composting/1622-composting-worm-composting/
If you are searching the Internet, look for
University and Government sites for good information. Add “edu” to your search qualifications for example, "vermicomposting site:edu" and
you will tap into other states’ Extension Offices that present scientific
information.