Alasgun
life's good Today!
- Joined
- Jun 25, 2018
- Messages
- 212
- Reaction score
- 151
I put this bin together almost two years ago. At the time i knew nothing about it so i followed the instructions and everything worked, sorta! Its 4 ft long, 2 ft wide and 2 ft deep. My bedding is 50/50 promix and weed dirt and its a little over a ft deep. Theres an 8 inch wide piece of gutter flashing along the bottom to channel off any extra moisture, Which plants like. Its kept in the garage which stays around 60 all the time. My asperations were to "grow my own" castings to use as a soil amendment AND as the basis for the tea ive become so fond of.
I started with 5 lbs of worms and fed them all of our table scraps. I never felt good about feeding them cardboard or news paper, its all Organic around here even the worm ****! Growth seemed slower than i expected so we changed gears and began blending their food. Bought a big honkin blender that handles anything up to Artichoke leaves and Avocado shells with aplomb. This made a huge difference however, two years later the bin is only 3 inches deeper than when i started! We just dont generate enough scraps. They end up getting one blender container every other day and itll be mostly gone by the next feeding. Before blending it took them forever to clean up the scraps which i believe were too dry and hard. This gave fungus gnats a nice home too! I use to augment their feed with alfalfa hay which promoted more gnats! That went away too.
I use 60 lbs of castings when putting a batch of soil together and that would almost wipe out my bin so now days i maintain the bin solely for tea makings. I believe were at a happy place now as theres always plenty of fresh worm **** no matter how often i make tea and we feel good about being able to utilize the kitchen waste. During the garden season i make tea monthly using a gallon of worms and castings at a time (i dont seperate them) and during the indoor season about a third of a gallon monthly.
Its all good and doesn't add an appreciable amount of work to our setup and the rewards are huge. Soil augmentation using organic ammendments and vermicompost tea provide all the nutrients we'll ever need.
I started with 5 lbs of worms and fed them all of our table scraps. I never felt good about feeding them cardboard or news paper, its all Organic around here even the worm ****! Growth seemed slower than i expected so we changed gears and began blending their food. Bought a big honkin blender that handles anything up to Artichoke leaves and Avocado shells with aplomb. This made a huge difference however, two years later the bin is only 3 inches deeper than when i started! We just dont generate enough scraps. They end up getting one blender container every other day and itll be mostly gone by the next feeding. Before blending it took them forever to clean up the scraps which i believe were too dry and hard. This gave fungus gnats a nice home too! I use to augment their feed with alfalfa hay which promoted more gnats! That went away too.
I use 60 lbs of castings when putting a batch of soil together and that would almost wipe out my bin so now days i maintain the bin solely for tea makings. I believe were at a happy place now as theres always plenty of fresh worm **** no matter how often i make tea and we feel good about being able to utilize the kitchen waste. During the garden season i make tea monthly using a gallon of worms and castings at a time (i dont seperate them) and during the indoor season about a third of a gallon monthly.
Its all good and doesn't add an appreciable amount of work to our setup and the rewards are huge. Soil augmentation using organic ammendments and vermicompost tea provide all the nutrients we'll ever need.