VermiVenture: My Experiment with Vermicomposting

I have never been so excited about worms! I have them living in my house! Okay, so they aren't just crawling around my house, they are happily confined in a bin in the back of my dining room. “So, why do you have worms in a bin,” you ask... Vermicomposting... “Whaaa?”
Vermicomposting is an expedited form of composting. As I explained in a previous post, “Basically you feed a bunch of worms your organic waste and they poo and that poo is magical dirt.

If you missed said previous post (Compost, Fertilizers & Pesticides, Oh My!) here is the definition from Wikipedia again:

Vermicast

Vermicompost is the product or process of composting using various worms, usually red wigglers, white worms, and other earthworms to create a heterogeneous mixture of decomposing vegetable or food waste, bedding materials, and vermicast. Vermicast, also called worm castings, worm humus or worm manure, is the end-product of the breakdown of organic matter by an earthworm. These castings have been shown to contain reduced levels of contaminants and a higher saturation of nutrients than do organic materials before vermicomposting.

Containing water-soluble nutrients, vermicompost is an excellent, nutrient-rich organic fertilizer and soil conditioner. This process of producing vermicompost is called vermicomposting. 

So, for the beginning of this adventure I made my way to Walmart and bought myself two 18 gallon non-transparent(or lucent) storage bins at $5 each and 2 containers of worms at $3 each. Yup, they have worms at Walmart. Now, because I came unprepared and unreseached to Walmart, because that's how I roll, I bought one of each kind that they carried. Red wrigglers and Canadian night crawlers... Well, come to find out, the Canadian night crawlers don't do so well in temperatures above 50°F, and they aren't really the best kind of worm for composting. Sooooo, the night crawlers were dead after day one. Whoopsie, guess I shouldn't have promised them that they weren't going to be fish food and that they would get to live a long life of eating and being merry... Thus, I am left with my red wrigglers, which just happen to be perfect for composting. Some time later I decided to go ahead and get another container of red wrigglers to help out my first batch overwhelmed wormies.

Item	Cost
2- 18 gallon bins	$10.00
2- Containers of Red Wriggler worms	$6.00
1- Container of Canadian Night Crawler worms	$3.00

Red Wrigglers on the left and Canadian Night Crawlers on the right

I am going to put the Canadian Night Crawler worms in the unnecessary expenses column (in the sidebar to the right), since any of you reading this and thinking of doing it will know not to buy them. So, $16 necessary and $3, not so necessary.

Silly me, I didn't take any photos of my process, but I used this to help guide me. Only, I used 18gal. containers instead of 10gal. And I don't have mine up on blocks. Oh, and I used far less worms to start.... They'll reproduce anyways.

Wormy Eggs!!

A worm in the bin and the bin in my dining room.

Yea, I heard you earlier, when you asked, “What?! You keep rotting food and worms in your dining room?!... doesn't it smell or attract insects?” Yup, I do.... and nope, it doesn't..... Welllll.... if it's done right. In my life if something can go wrong, it will, but I've learned to roll with the punches. I'll admit it, I did have a small battle with fruit flies.... because I apparently didn't do it right. But I am now happily fruit fly free. (Say that 3 times fast.) Let me share what I learned... It is crucial that the bedding (shredded newspaper) be of adequate thickness and bury everything under it. This is what keeps the smell in and the insects out.

Here's my story of how it all went wrong:
I read that coffee grounds are good to add to your bin, but I don't drink coffee (for shame!) and neither does my husband, but my thought was “I have to get coffee grounds to them!” I had a plan: My husband travels a lot and thus stays in hotel rooms where they leave free samples of coffee and he brings them home occasionally to have on hand for guests to our home that drink coffee. So, unsure if the coffee grounds should have gone though the brewing process or not, I decided to be safe and make the pot of coffee and then give them the grounds (after they cool down). Then I thought, well, the instructions say I need to get the bedding wet... so I guess I'll just use this (cooled down) coffee to wet the newspaper. Well this made the bin smell very strongly... Aaaand, it also didn't help that I mixed my food scraps into the bedding instead of putting them under it.

How I got rid of the fruit flies:
Being the stubborn person that I am, I was bound and determined that I was not going to be starting all over. So I sifted through everything that was in the bin, moving it from one bin to another and killing anything fruit fly related in the process. It was actually kind of interesting (if you are into that kind of thing) to see the fruit fly in all of the stages of development. Then I piled on another layer of clean bedding and waited.... and to my delight the fruit fly problem was gone!

Tip: The bedding needs to be black print newspaper only (color ink is toxic), which is kind of hard to find in abundance these days. I found the Greensheet to be mostly printed in black ink. If you don't have a Greensheet where you live, try sifting through some of the free local publications at your grocery store or gas station. (Also, no glossy paper.)

Things to avoid putting in your bin:
Fruits from the citrus family, veggies from the allium family (onions, garlic, etc.), meat and bones, foods that have been cooked in oil. Cores are fine, but they don't seem to do much with pits. Also, my worms left behind the tomato skins...?? Optional: don't use non-organic scraps if you don't want any chemical residue in your vermicast.
 
Tips: 

• Chop your scraps into small pieces and they will be eaten faster.
  
• Coffee grounds and egg shells are great additions to your bin.
  
• The worms prefer food that has been left to rot a few days.
  

Now, if you want to do vermicomposting but really aren't sure about the homemade bin and just want all of the guess work taken out of it try one of the ready made worm factories in the Tools & Equipment department of my store.  Also worms can be found in the Creepy Crawlers department.