Composting worms, being the adaptable creatures that they are, hold the possibility of a food production revolution for us humans here are just a few of the more unusual places you might find composting worms.

Composting Worms at Sea

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has a ship way out in the Pacific Ocean that collects information about ocean temperatures.  The crew has installed an aquaponics system on the deck in an attempt to have fresh vegetables on their long voyages.

One problem the crew encountered was seagulls digging up the worms and eating them, among other things.

Composting Worms Swimming in Coffee

These worms aren’t really swimming in coffee, but they do turn the discarded coffee pulp into lovely, rich compost which is then put back onto coffee plants.

I mentioned this before in a post about coffee wilt.  So far, this particular coffee company has worms employed in Panama and Rawanda.  Kudos to them!

Composting Worms in Tea

What, you haven’t drunk any worm tea?  Good.  It’s not for you, it’s for the plants.  If you don’t know about worm tea, it’s made from vermicompost which is aerated in water.  The tea is teeming with beneficial bacteria and fungi which fight disease and provide the means to make nutrients available to plants.

You can find out more about worm tea in the posts below:

Wonderous Worm Tea

Worm Tea Simple to Brew

How to Make Worm Tea

In what unusual places have you found composting worms?

worm tea in a 30 gallon garbage can

I’m taking a break from my worm tea marathon.  I started more than a month ago brewing worm tea for my dad’s lawn.  Fall, as you probably know, is a great time to fertilize and also add compost.  Well, I don’t have a truck to go get 1/2 a yard of compost, so I decided to hit the lawn with worm tea instead.

I’m brewing in 30 gallon batches, inside a garbage can propped up on a flower pot.  It’s propped up so I can easily siphon the tea out after it’s done.

How to Brew Worm Tea

These are the steps I’m following at the moment.  If your air temperatures are warm, you won’t need a heater.  I’m brewing 30 gallons at a time, but you can apply the same steps to brew 5 gallons at at time.

Step 1:  Bubble water for 2 hours to remove chlorine.

Step 2:  Allow water to come to 68 degrees Fahrenheit if it’s not that temperature already.  The heater is set for 74 degrees.

Step 3: When water is 68 degrees add bag of worm compost and about 1/2 cup of molasses.  Shake and agitate the bag in the water and then let sink.

Step 4:  Brew and bubble for 3 days.  Agitate the bag every day.  Note: I don’t always agitate every day.

Step 5:  Siphon out onto the lawn.  I  spread the used compost on the lawn as well and water it in a bit.

Step 6: Clean out the can with direct spray from the hose, and clean the bubblers, hose, and heater.

Worm Tea Ingredients

5 gallon bucket or larger – you can go as large as you want, but it doesn’t seem worth the effort to go smaller than 5 gallons.

worm compost – For each 5 gallons of tea you will need a good handful of worm compost.  You can put it in some sort of cloth bag or just add it to the water.

air pump – To brew 5 – 10 gallons you can use one of the really small goldfish kind from Wal-mart.  If brewing larger batches, larger pumps can be found at pet stores.  They’re not that expensive

bubble stones – I like the large bubble stones because they have weight of their own and will sink in the water.  I recommend the larger ones even for small batches of worm tea, because they’re so much easier to deal with.

check valves – don’t forget to add a check valve to each air tube.  The check valve keeps water from backing back up the tube if the power fails.  That will save your pump.

aquarium heater – totally optional.   I’m using one because it’s winter here in Texas and I want to keep the water temp about 72 degrees so the bacteria and fungi will grow.  If you live where it’s really cold, an aquarium heater won’t cut the mustard.

molasses- the sugar in the molasses feeds the microorganisms from the compost so they multiply and make a powerful worm tea.  Different people give different amounts to add.  I’m adding about 1/2  a cup to 30 gallons.

Worm tea is an excellent way to stretch worm compost and is an excellent soil enhancer.  Worm tea can bring dead soil back to life by infusing living organisms back into the soil.  Worm tea also helps plants fight disease.

You can read another how to of worm tea at My 20 Minute Garden.  And there’s an entertaining video of worm tea in a previous post.

How do I separate worms from compost?  How do I harvest my worms?  These are very common questions.  A very common answer is to use light harvesting.

What is light harvesting?  Light harvesting uses a worm’s natural aversion to light to help separate them from vermicompost.

I’ve done plenty of light harvesting myself and find it to be a very tedious process.  Part of what makes it tedious is that I raise my worms in plastic bins and the compost tends to be very moist, even wet.  So, unless I set the compost out ahead of time to dry out some, it’s difficult to tease the worms from the compost.

What I’ve been doing these days is passing the compost through a 1/4″ hardware cloth screen first onto some newspaper.  I screen a layer that is only a couple inches thick and then pick the compost off the top.

That’s not to say that worms don’t get caught in the screen on the way through.  They do and I have to pick them off the screen as well.

Someday I will build some type of harvester  that will either rotate or shake and hopefully save me some work!

If you just want to move worms to a new bin, the potato bag method works well.

This video is a really great illustration of the light harvesting method  in an ideal world.  You can really see how the worms move further and further down as the bedding is removed, until all that is left is a giant ball of worms.

His bedding is light and fluffy and not very wet.  Perhaps this is because it passed through the harvester first.

Thanks for the video Sierra Worm Solutions.  It’s a goodie.

harvesting worm compost

I’ve got a bin about 1/4 full of excellent vermicompost.  I’ve tried harvesting using the light method, and it’s just too labor intensive for me.  I’ve tried moving the compost over and feeding only in 1 corner.  But, there are still worms all over the bin.

This bag method seems to hold the most promise.  I took an ordinary plastic potato bag that holds 5 lbs of potatoes and filled it with worm food.

The bag has lots of holes in it that look like they were made with a hole punch.

I placed 2 of these bags on the surface of the worm compost in the bin.  After 3 days, I removed the bags which were then full of worms, and dumped the contents in the new worm bin.

This picture is not the greatest, but you can see how the worms have congregated under the bag.  What you can’t see is the same congregation in the bag.  Author’s note:  sorry, that image has been lost.

I’m sure it will take several tries to get all the worms into the bags and out of the bin, but it sure beats trying to separate them by hand.

As a side note, since I want to harvest, I’m not adding any more bedding to the bin.  All the food is in the bags.  As a result, it’s getting really wet in there.

In the picture above, you can see shredded paper in the right hand corner.  I cleared the compost from the right hand edge and have been adding paper to that corner only.

I’m also leaving the lid open for a few hours during the day to help air circulate and things dry out.

Reply to this post if you have any methods of compost harvest that work well for you.

red wiggler worms

I found a pretty cool video on You Tube on worm composting in an apartment.

In it, 2 ladies go through the basics of setting up a worm bin.  They use the same type of plastic worm bin that I do.

If you’re wondering how many holes and what size,  see the video on my worm composting page.

An easier way to shred newspaper is to use an office paper shredder.  That’s what I use.  Invest in a little better one and you’ll be able to shred cereal boxes and other press board.  Worms love it, love it.  Egg cartons are great too.  Office paper works as well.

I don’t wet down my shred/bedding because in a plastic bin, it will get moist very quickly.  And, if you let the bedding a food sit even for a few days before adding worms, dryness shouldn’t be a problem.

I agree that harvesting worms using the light method is a meditative exercise, translate that to mean it takes forever!  I’ve tried to get my worms to move over to one side of the bin, and that didn’t work well at all.  I don’t have 2 months to wait.

Now I don’t live in an apartment and I hoard all my compost!  Well, I do give a little away.  And yes, it is your number 1 garden fertilizer and soil amendment.  I cannot have too much of the stuff.  It’s great for starting seedlings.

If you do live in an apartment, check the prices on worm castings.  You might be able to make some extra money for yourself while recycling.

I totally agree with the philosophy of living by example.  Change starts small, just one person at a time.  As well, I have noticed that the volume of garbage that goes to the trash can since I started worm composting, has reduced quite a bit.  It’s noticeably smaller.

I’m going to start asking friends for their kitchen scraps because I’m starting to run low, and I still have only 1 bin of worms.

I give the video 5 stars.  It covers just about everything you need to know to start your first worm composting bin.

I posted an update on my garden at You Tube.  In the video I show the worm towers and even take one out so you can see it.

In my opinion, the worm towers are doing their job of delivering nutrients right to my plants in the form of worm castings.   But, I don’t have a raised bed with no towers, so there’s nothing to compare.  Maybe next year.

Watch the Video

me and worm towers