By: Chris Dailey

One of the major costs when delving into the fun filled hobby or profession of organic gardening is the cost of maintaining the proper levels of nutrients in your soil each year that you grow your food. Healthy organic vegetables are a mainstay with many people and those obsessed with good health will often start their very own organic garden. One of the best ways to maintain sizable crops that are full of robust and healthy food is to make sure that you add nutrient filled compost on a regular basis. By purchasing a worm bin and raising worms which will in turn create compost for your garden is one of the most economical and smart ways of creating one of the best gardening experiences of your life. Here are a few tips on how to make sure that you can provide the best organic compost for your garden using worms and worm bins.

The first thing that you are going to need if you are going to begin to in essence to grow your own organic compost is to find an affordable worm bin. Worm bins can range from about $50-$150. You could use old wine barrels (not made from oak due to their acidic nature) or a more modern choice would be the plastic containers that have lids that come in different shapes and sizes. One thing you should consider is making sure that your worm bin is not too tall. Often times you will see pictures of them and assume that taller and larger is better whereas in reality unless you are going for worm cocoons which are often laid on the top level of the soil and compost with in the bin, you would be better off to get a short one, more like a bucket that holds five to 10 gallons, which will consolidate the worm’s efforts for creating compost and through consistent rotation generate far more compost than large worm bins ever will (think surface area not volume).

Just like an organic garden that you are growing, where drainage is a necessity for the excess water in your soil after watering, worm bins also need to have drainage holes at the bottom and also several holes that will allow air into the bedding within the bin. Depending upon the type of material that your worm bin is made of, you could probably take a power drill and bore five to 10 holes about a quarter inch in diameter around the perimeter near the top and also, if there is a lid, holes in that is well. By having proper aeration for your worms, as well as proper drainage, it will create a habitat that is conducive for optimal worm breeding as well as compost creation.

Remembering that the worms are the producers and generators of the compost that you need for your organic garden, you should know a few things about worms to make sure that they stay healthy and happy in their compost producing environment. Worms of course are made of about 80 percent water and if you let the soil within the container get to dry, they will actually begin to excrete water from their bodies in order to maintain the proper moisture balance. This of course will cause damage to the worms and they will inevitably die. Therefore, in order to make sure that their habitat stays in balance, there are a few things that you should add to the soil such as biodegradable bedding.

Biodegradable bedding can be things like dry grass, cardboard, peat moss, or even horse manure that has been heated to over 140 degrees to make sure that any bad bacteria was killed off. Using these types of bedding which have anywhere from a mildly acidic to a mildly basic p.h., help regulate moisture content within the bin and almost act like a sponge maintaining a moisture level that is adequate for the worms on a consistent basis.

Once you have the proper amount of moisture, it is time to feed your worms. Taking into account that worms are typically photo phobic to almost all kinds of visible light, make sure that some of the food scraps that you place in the bin for the worms are somewhat buried which will act as a beacon for them to crawl up and begin to eat their food. With the addition of the lid over the composting mixture, the worms will come to the top and begin feeding in a frenzy which is exactly what you want because the more they eat, and more compost they will produce. Worms love to eat most any vegetable scraps. You can also feed them bread, most grains, but always avoid dairy products and fatty foods which will actually cause the typically fragrant odor found in most worm bins into a rancid smell that you will regret later.

The end result will be a composting mixture that is rich in many necessary nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and of many other trace minerals that create one of the best organic fertilizers on the planet. By adding worm bins to your repertoire of organic gardening necessities, you will create for yourself not only an extremely productive organic garden but a vermiculture factory that will provide you with the best compost you could ever add to your garden’s soil.

By: Mac Bartine

Big Oil, the meat industry, chemical fertilizer manufacturers and queasy people everywhere are shaking in their boots due to recent scientific and agricultural innovations brought about by worm farming.

The buzz is: worms may well save the planet. Consider: worms are one of the easiest animals in the world to farm, and all you have to do to harvest 100% organic meat is to raise earthworms in organic soil.

Home worm farms are a breeze to set up; they compost your fruit and vegetable waste and your dog and cat’s poop; and their droppings diluted in a water solution to the color of a weak tea make the best fertilizer you’ll ever use in your garden.

And your fruit and vegetable crops won’t be the only bounty you can eat. Raw worms are not the most desirable food, but meat scientists are fascinated with the possibility of processed worm meat.

People will never know what they’re eating was ever worms by the time the processors get through with it. It will taste just like beef, chicken, fish, pork or turkey; and processed worms can be poured, mixed and molded to look exactly like those meats, too!

Processed worm meat, which will be branded as “Weat” by a very large agricultural conglomerate that you know very, very well, is coming soon to a store near you. Weat is nearly 100% fat, cholesterol free, low in calories, high in protein and high in fiber.

Having trouble losing weight? Experiments are still in early stages, but the Weat Diet is expected to be the most successful weight-loss and nutrition regimen in the history of dieting.

Worm counters offering battered and fried Weat, Wilk, Wice Cream, Wenderloin and Wurgers will be introduced in every Starbucks and McDonald’s in America.

Weat will be the end of world hunger. The State of Utah alone would be able to produce enough Weat to provide Weat for every person in the world, three meals a day, indefinitely!

The global-warming-causing methane and ecosystem-leveling solid toxic waste that’s produced by beef, pork and poultry farming will be a thing of the past.

Because worm farms can be packed with worms wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling, the farms will be easily designed and manufactured to capture, collect and ship the fertilizer and methane produced by worms for use in all facets of life, business and industry.

Methane is an ideal fuel for creating hydrogen, and the carbon by-product will be easily converted into carbon nanofibers, which are currently revolutionizing every manufacturing process in the world.

And the biggie: worm farms can and will flourish anywhere, and the hydrogen that’s produced will be plentiful enough to be piped and tanked short distances to gas stations all over the nation.

As Al Gore has said, “thanks to worms, the hydrogen economy is now finally becoming a reality, and global greenhouse emissions are expected to drop by 50% in a previously unfathomable space of 10 years or less – all due to the humble worm.”

Are you Weady for the Wevolution?

By: Casey Coke

There is no need to let kitchen waste go to waste! Gardeners can spend lots of money buying good soil or compost to make the garden grow. There is, however, no need to do that if you eat at home more than once a week! Composting kitchen waste solves several problems simultaneously by converting kitchen scraps that would otherwise be thrown away into rich, organic soil for the garden. Incorporating compost into the soil helps keep the soil alive and life-sustaining. Creating your own compost saves money and helps the environment.

Composting 101 There are a few things that every new composter needs to know: · Kitchen compost can include any vegetable matter or paper. Do not add oils, meats or fats to your kitchen compost, as it will cause your compost to smell and attract animals. Additionally, you need certain conditions of heat and bacterial activity to properly compost these materials. · Shred your scraps or tear them up into the smallest pieces possible. This will help the scraps break down faster. · Compost operations need green and brown materials. Kitchen waste falls into the category of green materials. In addition to the kitchen waste, you will need to add dried shredded leaves or other brown matter. · One of the most efficient ways to compost kitchen waste is to use worms. Vermicomposting can be done outside or under the sink, depending upon the space available and the winter climates. (Worms cannot sustain chilling temperatures.)

Kitchen Composting Many successful gardeners make all of their compost in the kitchen! You can compost in the space under your kitchen sink, especially if you employ worms to help. This is how you build an under the sink worm bin: 1. Get a Tupperware or a small trash can and poke holes in the top for air. 2. In a separate container, soak a mix of grass clippings and dry shredded leaves overnight. 3. Put about two inches of gravel in the bottom of the container and fill with water up to ½ inches below the rock line. 4. Drain the grass/leaves mix and place it in the container. Let it sit for 48 hours. Once the temperature has stabilized to 100 degrees or lower for at least 24 hours, you can add the worms. 5. Let the worms become acquainted with their new space for about a week. At that point, you can begin adding food for the worms. 6. One pound of worms can consume about one pound of kitchen scraps per day. After about two months, you can remove some of the composted material and continue to add food.

Composting Kitchen Scraps Outside

If you have plenty of space outside in a part sun/part shade area, consider a compost pile to compost your kitchen waste outside in the garden. You can decide whether you want to maintain a hot compost pile or a cold compost pile. Hot compost cooks faster, but you do have to turn it and monitor it. With cold compost, you can employ worms to help break down your kitchen scraps. With either type of pile you will need a combination of green materials and brown materials to start your pile. If you are composting cold and not using a container, build a bottom framework of larger twigs and materials. Alternate layers of green materials (kitchen scraps and freshly cut grass) and brown materials (shredded leaves and straw). You can continue to add layers to the pile, occasionally building in a layer of sticks. The layer made of sticks allows oxygen into the pile that helps the bacteria and other soil organisms that will eventually break down the kitchen waste in the pile. Composting kitchen waste is a simple and rewarding way to recycle your green kitchen scraps and have rich, fertile soil for your garden.

By: Derrick Walters

To restate a popular phrase: “compost happens” and indeed it does. Make a pile of shredded leaves and grass clippings, stir it up every now and then and as long as it gets rained on occasionally you will eventually get compost. Worms and microscopic creatures will do their thing. While this process is simple enough it does have drawbacks. Not everyone has a good location for this pile of compost wannabe. Another problem is that it is hard to control the moisture level of an open pile of composting material which you do not want to wet or too dry. With the open pile design you can not readily remove some compost when you are ready for it, you need to wait until the pile has finished composting. Therefore you may end up with multiple piles of compost that are at various stages of completion.

To help address some of these issues we have come up with ways to improve the process. Many people use upright bins to compost. These can be as simple as a frame of shipping pallets on their sides to form a box. This type of composter will certainly help to make your composting more than just a spreading pile. This type of composting will also allow more critical oxygen to reach all areas of the composting material. You will also find it still fairly easy to mix up the composting material. Two problems still remain. First this is still primarily a batch process and second, moisture control is difficult unless you tarp the container.

There are newer manufactured bins that come closer to getting it right, with the idea being that you add the material in the top and remove compost from some type of drawer in the bottom as you need it. The concept sounds good but with many of these composters it is difficult to properly mix up and add air (aerate) the compost. Even if you are able to do a good job stirring it up you are back to basically a batch process without the planned downward and out flow. Yet if you do not stir it up well and just keep adding material to the top, the lack of oxygen will greatly slow or halt the composting process with this type of composter.

The next big step in composter evolution was to move to a simple drum style compost tumbler. Basically, a barrel was attached to some type of stand that allowed it to be rotated. This was a real leap in composting technology because you now could monitor and control moisture content, thoroughly mix and aerate the composting material and the composting could take place on a tidy enclosed space. For all of the advantages, one big drawback still remained. This was the ongoing problem of the batch nature of almost all composters. How could a composter be designed so that the composting would continue as an ongoing process with finished compost removed as it is needed? The answer was the development of a composter with a drum inside of a drum. This double drum system allows material to be added through a door in the side of the outer drum and as it breaks down into compost it will exit out a discharge port in the end of the rotating drum. This development has solved the last of the major hurdles to effective backyard composting. No more batch composting! With this type of composter, a good mix of greens and browns, and a little water, you will get your first compost in a few weeks and keep producing throughout the warm part of the year or all year long in warm climates.

If you are looking for the fastest most practical backyard composter, you really need to consider a composter that incorporates the double drum technology. Another benefit we have found is that children love to see how the compost seems to magically appear from the output port even though it was grass and leaves etc. that was added to the feed port moments before rotating the drum. This has allowed these high tech composters to be an interesting educational tool to help us impress upon children how they can be involved in the stewardship of our fragile earth. 

By: MIKE SELVON

Building up sustainable soil for organic gardening starts right after the garden soil testing has been completed. The testing of the soil helps to identify the additional fertilizers and conditioners that can be added. When attempting to garden organically, testing, maintaining and improving the soil is a constant process and one that is well worth the effort, according to those who advocate organic farming and gardening.

Creating sustainable soil for gardening organically means that you have to be able to replenish the topsoil of the garden. One of the best substances to have for keeping the soil rich and healthy enough for an organic garden is a good supply of compost. In addition to compost, it is good to have enzymes, earthworms, and beneficial microbes available to add into the soil mixture as well.

In most cases, when the garden bed has been established with great quality soil that is able to support and sustain organic gardening, it can then be maintained by simply adding home composting on a routine basis. This can easily be done by replacing a layer of the garden soil with a layer from your compost.

Backyard composting is a terrific way to improve your soil structure and also enhance moisture retention. In the average compost heap there are billions of bacterial organisms that will grow, feed, reproduce and die. Through this life-cycle of the microorganisms, the organic waste material that has been added to the compost pile will be recycled into a robust organic fertilizer and effective soil conditioner.

Many people say that composting is truly the ultimate in recycling because it benefits the soil in so many ways and supports organic farming and gardening in its highest and best sense. In addition to improving the structure of the soil and the moisture retention ability of the soil, composting also provides excellent aeration, full fertilization and nitrogen storage. Composting also creates a beneficial pH balance in the soil, releases a stream of nutrients and supplies food for the beneficial microbial inhabitants in the earth.

Shredded alfalfa hay is one of the best types of material that you can add to your compost heap, and some say it is “the” secret to a great compost recipe. Worms really thrive on alfalfa, making worm composting even more effective and faster, and it provides excellent mulch and soil additive components for your soil.

When you want to get your compost ready for your organic gardening undertaking, you should make the compost pile about four feet high and also about four feet wide as well. It needs to be located in an area that allows for good drainage and it should be surrounded with chicken wire so it will have proper air circulation. After about three to four months, your compost will be ready to mix in with the soil and begin working wonders for your garden.