‘Vermicomposting’ Articles
Written by astoner on 26 May 2008
A couple days ago (5/24/08) the boys and I started a new experiment. A while back I got a couple large 55 gallon plastic barrels from a neighbor and I’ve been trying to finalize what I want to use them for. I have quite a list, rain barrel, recycle bins, chicken feed tub, and probably a couple others that I’ve already forgotten. The idea I came up with was to mix the fresh grass clippings and fresh alpaca manure in one of them, similar to a compost tumbler but much cheaper.
The first thing I did was have the boys drill a bunch of holes, don’t know the exact sizes, but somewhere in the range of 1/4 to 3/8, on the sides and bottom. There probably should be more holes but my help got tired or lost interest. We then gathered up the fresh grass and scooped the paca poop. We then layered it into the barrel. I had been hoping to get the barrel half full, but in reality it was full to overflowing. It would probably work better if it was only half full so could get mixed around when the barrel was rolled, but I left it full. The extra grass I sealed into the second barrel that had no holes drilled in it. I did also dump several gallons of water in with the grass clippings and manure. All the water must have gotten absorbed by the grass and manure though since none or very little of it has drained out.
Today (5/26/08), we checked the barrels and the one with the holes in was cooking pretty good. It was composting quite nicely. We actually busted up a couple dozen guinea eggs that I didn’t have room for in the incubator and added them to the mixture. It was actually probably reduced down by about 10% or so already. The mixture will work better if it does get mixed more thoroughly. The boys do enjoy rolling the barrels around. The sealed barrel with only grass has done virtually nothing in the way of composting.
Now that I have some garden planted it sure would be nice to find a way to process the alpaca manure into a more useful compost. I had been just dumping the alpaca manure into the garden and just got it tilled in (no I won’t be doing any root crops this year), but since I’ve started planting in the garden I need to do something else with the poop. What I would really like to get worked out would be to process the manure through a quick composting then process it through a worm bin. I think the output from this process would be a wonderful soil addition, a mixture of vermicompost and regular compost.
I think the next barrel will get used as a big worm bin. Attempting to get it setup as a layering bin, at foot or so of material for the worms and more added on top once that portion has been processed by the worms. I’m just not quite sure how many barrels I’ll need to get going to process the poop from seven alpacas.
Allen
Tags: alpaca, barrel, compost, grass clippings, manure, Vermicompost
Posted in Vermicomposting, composting | No Comments »
Written by astoner on 30 March 2008
Well Bentley over at RedWormComposting has inspired me, that and my boys bugging me to check out their worm bins. It’s actually been quite a while since I’ve checked out the boys bins so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was afraid they would be dried out and all the worms dead. What I found was the opposite, they were actually soaking wet, and almost decomposed down enough that the worms couldn’t get out of the standing water. And I was happily surprised to find some worms in the bins.
My older boy’s bin was the first one I checked out. The contents had settled down to about half the original size, but I quickly found some worms. The final count in this bin was 2 adults found and 7 juveniles, so they did reproduce some. I did see at least one cocoon, and I’m betting there were more but I wasn’t really looking for them.
The second bin was my younger sons. I was a little disappointed to only find two adults and no juveniles. I think this one may have just been too wet.
These two bins were in the small clear snack food containers so in the process of searching the bins I moved them each over to a bucket. The larger bin should enable the worms to hopefully find an area in the bin that is to their liking.
The final bin that I checked through was my bin which has been in a bucket the entire three months. I only found one adult, but did find 7 juveniles.
I may have set the bins back a little by my digging through them but hopefully they’ll all make a come back and continue to grow. My biggest concern is the bin with only two adults, hopefully there were some cocoons or small worms that I missed.
While doing my digging I did check on my main bin and found it quite active with LOTS of worms and much of the contents in the bin converted to worm castings.
Allen
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Written by astoner on 23 February 2008
Just a quick, long overdue, update on the four worm experiment that I’ve been doing along with RedWormComposting.com. I have several bins going but I only took a look through the one big one this evening. I didn’t do an extensive search, but was able to locate two large worms and the big news is there was at least one small worm. So hopefully over the next weeks there will be more cocoons hatching and more worms.
Allen
Tags: four worm experiment, Vermicomposting
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Written by astoner on 11 January 2008
I finally broke down and sifted through my four worm experiment bin. Remember, it was the one I had put the chicken feed in. Well I finally dumped it out onto a garbage to search through for any worms. It was smelling an awful lot like silage, I think the chicken feed was beginning to ferment.
Question: Can worms get drunk?
I was actually quite concerned for quite a while, i wasn’t finding any worms. I did ultimately find three so I’m hoping I just missed the fourth and that I threw him back into the bin with some bedding. It actually was going back into the bin much looser so it didn’t all fit back in. The extra I threw into a bucket that I’ve been aging for starting a new bin. What I’m hoping to discover was that there were some worm cocoons in the bedding and that it will self populate with worms. I wasn’t able to identify any cocoons. Ground corn can look an awful lot like a worm cocoon.
I think I’ll let the boys go for a little while before search theirs. At least we didn’t put chicken feed n theirs so they shouldn’t have the fermenting problem.
Be sure to check up on Bentley’s four worm experiment over at RedWormComposting.com. He is the one that gave me the idea for the experiment.
Allen
Tags: experiment, Vermicomposting, Worm Bin, worm castings
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