Converting Organic Waste into Compost With Worms

Welcome!

I learned about vermiculture backwards. I visited a coffee processing plant in Palmichal, near Tabarcia, in Costa Rica, and witnessed a large industrial vermiculture operation. They were composting their waste coffee hulls with more redworms than I even imagined could exist. They were using a windrowing system that is now the standard of the industry. They had learned most of what they were doing from a scientist from Pinar del Rio, in Cuba. I hope you have time to watch the slide show. My aroused curiousity started a search that seemed to always end up at very large or very small systems. There seems to be a need for a medium-sized system. You can't go wrong by reading the book "Worms Eat My Garbage", by the late Mary Appelhof, if you want a small system. I bought my first pound of Eisenia fetida from her.

A VermiChester system is a simple arrangement of stackable bakery trays on a raised base. The trays are completely filled with composting worms and screened composted organic waste.

Water is added until the system drips dissolved worm castings into a pail. The drippings are siphoned to remove large sediment, bottled and labeled VermiJuice for sale at Farmer's Markets, etc. Scroll down for a post about "Compost Tea" The liquid can be diluted as much as 8 times for plant feeding and irrigation. Some users have seen a reduction in plant pests as well as increased growth of healthy plants.

Rotation of the trays allows the bottom tray to be removed for harvesting, and stirring of the contents during the rotation loosens the contents to ensure full trays and more even access by the worms. The percolation of the castings exposes the slower decomposing materials to a longer period of digestion. In time, the contents become VermiCompost which is harvested and placed in plastic trash bags inside of double-thick paper bags of about 10 pounds each for garden and greenhouse purposes.

While it would appear that the purpose is to restore humus to depleted soils, the big picture involves eliminating organic waste from landfills, etc. The really big picture has to do with processing the spent effluent from methane generation, but that is another story.

In Costa Rica, small farmers with 6, or more, pigs, collect the manure in a modified septic tank with a plastic "bladder" cover. The manure produces methane which is piped into the kitchen for cooking. The digester drains out of the bottom. Vermicomposting the spent effluent would increase the value at least 8 times. The potential application for CAFOs in the USA should be obvious. That would require a much larger system.

"Food Balls"

            This last summer, 2012, I had a nice visit with Brad Morgan (Morgan Compost) at his vermiculture operation. His goal is to have a herd of 10-million redworms and to sell at least 4-million a year. That would be 4000 pounds or 2 tons. You can’t have big dreams without doing some things that other people aren’t doing.     

From Vermiculture

      What has caught my interest is the use of “food balls”. Watch the YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U27Aizi64Wg&feature=endscreen&NR=1 (Vermicomposting - The Morgan Family Pt.1)

            If you have been following the process of VermiChester, you know that rotation of the trays ends up with the most developed bread tray on the top, drying, while the worms migrate down into the wetter environment.

            Last spring, I was bothered by the numbers of hatchlings that were wriggling around after screening the dried vermicompost through the VermiHarvester. They were ending up in the VermiCompost bags as fertilizer. This is my plan for May 2013.

            I will blend our vegan kitchen wastes into a vegetable mush. Then I will mix this with an equal part of very wet “BioPreta” (equal parts of VermiCompost and biochar). This will give me a 25% biochar blend and hopefully a consistency that will form a “snowball” of a convenient size.

            After harvesting the top tray through the 1/8” screen of a VermiHarvester, I will put the screenings in another tray, and put a half dozen very wet “Food Balls” in the top layer of the dry tray.

            According to Brad, messing around with the worms causes enough stress to force them into a mating frenzy that increases the number of cocoons, which will fall through the 1/8” screen of a VermiHarvester. According to his son, Jeremy, who is in charge of converting cocoons into adult “breeding stock”, in about 10 days, at 85 degrees, the cocoons will hatch and the new baby worms will rush to the very wet food balls, where they can be collected and saved from the bags going to market. Jeremy then transfers the new hatchlings to a 65-degree breeding environment where in about 50-days they will become “breeders”.

            I love learning new things about vermiculture, and this is new for me. If you have been using food balls, or if you start now, I think your comments will be a great service to those of us who are learning about vermiculture.

Why compost organic waste first?

In a small worm bin you can add your household waste directly to the worm bin, but in a mid-scale system I have found it to be advantageous to combine the materials in compost bins first. My compost goes anaerobic immediately and I encourage it by keeping it damp. My leaves, grass clippings, and household wastes tend to begin as layers, sandwiched between the coffee grounds and filters from the local coffee shop. When I use my pitchfork to toss the contents of one bin into another the materials get mixed better.



After it has been tossed once and has heated again, I screen the worm food through a 1/2" screen. This gives me a uniform texture. The people down at the coffee shop tend to throw bottle caps, etc. into my pails, so the screening also gives me a chance to remove the inorganic waste. Sticks, stalks, and big lumps go back through the compost bins for another cycle.

Worm Farming

Since composting worms live in the top 6"-8" of forest litter, each tray represents about 3 square feet of forest. By stacking them up and keeping them full, the worms can travel in every direction just as in nature. One full stack of seven would be like 21 square feet of forest space. I thought that the vermiculture manager at La Palmichal told me that he doesn't allow their litter to get deeper than 20" deep, but in retrospect he must have said 20cm. He wouldn't normally use inches.That would be about 10", which is why I prefer the shallow bread trays.



I designed the system with the cloud forest rainfall in mind. Even a steady rainy season won't harm the system. It merely washes out "VermiJuice" and leaves worms and undigested organic waste behind. During the dry season, or indoors, the system should constantly drip into a bucket. When it stops dripping, your moisture content has reduced to under 50% which is too dry.

harvesting

First, I rotate the trays in the system, setting aside the bottom "drawer". I sprinkle water on the restacked system until it drips. Then I set the drawer from the bottom up on top of the system. This drawer is still dry.

You probably know how to use bright lighting to inspire your worms to burrow down into the deeper compost. If your system is inside, this will speed them along. Outside the sun will work for you. Fluffing up the material in the top tray annoys the worms a bit and inspires them to burrow down quicker. I come back the next day, or longer, when the top tray is drier. By then, many of the worms will have left the dry top tray for a wetter and darker neighborhood.

When the worms have completed their work, it is your turn. To preserve your herd and remove a nice uniform vermicompost from the system you need to harvest your product. This can be a tedious and boring task.
Build an inexpensive VermiHarvester.
Click on the tab above for details.

Build a base - A "Beyond Compost" update

If you bought the book, there is an Appendix that describes building a VermiChester base unit in great detail, but sometimes a picture is helpful. The Appendix deals with how to determine the correct sizes for different sized "bakery trays".

You could begin by building something different. I have built some too heavy to lift, some that were soggy, some that leaked leachate all over, some that dried out around the sides, and made lots of errors that you could repeat if you are stubborn.
Some of my other photos show earlier versions that didn't work as well as I wanted them to. This is a work in progress, so if you come up with something we can all benefit from please share it.

"Beyond Compost" y "Mas Alla del Compost"

I have written two instruction manuals, called "Beyond Compost" that are for sale at Amazon.com

The Spanish translation of the same manual is "Mas Alla del Compost"


For more information, click on the tab above.

Inorganic Soluble Salts

Have you ever wondered what was being sprayed on the farmer's fields? Plant roots can only absorb "inorganic soluble chemical salts" (not table salt, of course), so the spray is not organic material. Organic material must be converted by soil microorganisms into these inorganic salts, so it follows that if soil contains lots of microorganisms it will grow better plants. The spray is a quick-fix. Putting organic material like compost into the soil will release these salts for as long as five years. Vermicomposting increases the microorganism content by eight times. The best farmers incorporate lots of composted organic material into their soils for a long-lasting improvement of their yields. Bad farmers consider this too much work and want short-term profits.

The VermiChester story is not about commercial composting. It is about MEDIUM-SIZED vermicomposting for large gardens and small truck farming.

What is BIOCHAR ?

In 2011 I saw the word "biochar" for the first time (or at least it was the first time I paid any attention to it). I could give you a sermon on it, but you will do better to look it up for yourself. Start with Wikipedia. There is a quick link up above. Strangely enough, your next stop may be YouTube or Michigan Biochar. Both will keep you fascinated for hours. I am not exaggerating when I say that this may be the most important information you have ever seen.

When you are done with your personal research, reserve at least one 40-quart bag from us, or from Michigan Biochar, for under $50. We'll have it available by Spring, on a first-come-first-serve basis.

Next, after you understand the connection, imagine a product that is a 50/50 mixture of biochar and VermiCompost. Help us out with a comment.

Note: The first comment is from a person who is well-known in the field and deserves your attention. He has included many valuable references for us.