Worm Blog Entry #4 - April 14, 2006

I have wanted to do two things for a while now.  First of all, I have wanted to make a worm bin that is continuous flow.  That is to say that you just keep adding stuff to the top and the castings fall out the bottom ready-made, worm-free, and worry-free (at least that is the theory).  Second, I have wanted to make a worm bin that is capable of disposing the average yard and garden waste of a household in my neighborhood (a middle class Santo Domingo area).  Oh, and I want it be cheap and easily made and have good drainage and air flow and be rat and ant resistant, long lasting and low maintenance and not look too bad.

I have thought for a while on how to combine those two ideas. I can't say that I have the perfect formula, but I at least did come up with a formula.  A few days ago, I went to the hardware store and bought all of the necessary materials that I didn't already have for a total cost of about US$50 or 1,600 pesos.  The main expense was the 1 inch PVC pipe and fittings for the framework.

Yesterday, I invited over some young friends, and we had a worm bin building party.  We cut the PVC pipe up to the specs I had in my head and glued it together making the entire framework first.  Then we added chicken wire on the sides and end and then we added weedeater string for the bottom where the castings were to fall out and then painted the whole thing with a can of silver paint that I happened to have on hand.

It took us about four hours or so to make the bin or maybe a bit longer.  The final bin is about 4 feet long, 3 feet wide and the worm bin part is about 2 feet deep and then it is set off the ground about a foot on PVC legs.  It is set off the ground to allow the castings to fall out the bottom and also to limit the ants possible points of entry to six- the number of legs.

Almost as big a job as building the worm bin was moving my worms from their old house to the new one.  First of all, we wanted to put the new one on the exact spot where the old one was located.  That necessitated first moving the old one.  We shoveled it out bit by bit, basically separating it into three parts.  First was the top that was just starting to decompose, but had some worms in it.  Second was the middle part that was about half decomposed and had a lot of worms in it.  Third was the bottom part that was mostly castings with some larger chunks of organic matter like clumps of paper and sticks.  There were still a number of worms in this part, but interestingly, the large majority of them were really small.

We quickly realized that the last part of the worm bin was almost totally castings and that there was a LOT more than what we had counted on.  We decided to run it through a piece of chicken wire as sort of a rough filter, and then picked out the worms one by one since we had a lot of help.  It would have been better using a filter that had about one-half inch holes instead of the one inch holes that the chicken wire had to filter the not-yet-decomposed rubbish, but it worked fine for our purposes. 

After all, this is worm farming, not rocket science.  If a rocket launch is off slightly, you miss the target.  If your worm bin isn't completely optimal, well, the stuff still decomposes and everything comes out just fine. 

In all, I think we got about two large wheelbarrow loads of castings out of that one pile.  We put it into old feed sacks for temporary storage.  I gave one bag of castings to my helpers along with maybe about 500 worms that we picked out of the last castings layer and kept five other bags of castings for my plants.

Finally, we covered the bottom and sides of the new worm bin with a layer or two of newspaper to keep stuff from falling through the bottom and sides while it settles in and then put the worms and materials from the top two layers of the old bin into the new one. We put the stuff that was mostly decomposed on the bottom and then the stuff that was newer on the top. Generally, it isn't recommended to pack it so deeply and to add the stuff a little bit at a time, but I think it will be fine since it is quite loosely packed and the sides allow free air flow. If it were a larger volume, I would be concerned about it heating up after moving it, but it seems to be staying pretty cool so far.

Since we built this bin yesterday, I have had several ideas that would reduce the cost slightly and make it easier to build. Hopefully, I will be able to build another one within the next month or two incorporating my new ideas.

-- Luke Townsley