Guess What?
We decided it was long past time to separate our vermicomposters from their vermicompost. Here's one pile of the contents of one of the worm hotels.
Vermicompost, black gold, worm castings - call it what you prefer - the stuff is magic for plants.
Did you know that one-third of the stuff being trucked to landfills is worm food in the form of kitchen, grocery store, food processing, garden, restaurant and other edible wastes?
A worm bin serves the planet in two ways: 1) provides your garden with invaluable nutrients; 2) keeps the landfills from filling up with plastic bags full of perfectly good worm food. Well, in my case there is a third benefit: Now we have pets that do not give me asthma attacks.
If you like scientific information to back up my casual statements about vermicompost's value to your garden, click here. Someone analyzed samples and uploaded the results.
This company points out its benefits for organic gardeners.
You can buy a bag of worms from me to start making your own homegrown worm castings, email me at MollyDay1@gmail.com and we'll figure out the best way to get them to you.
By the way, I read in a garden blog a few days ago that to clean out the bins, you can just remove a few worms to start a new bin and dump the rest of the container onto the garden where the worms will live a happy life. Not true. Vermicompost worms cannot live in the ground. They are not earth worms.
Just needed to clear that up.
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We keep the worm hotel (in the photo) in the garage in the winter and in the shade outside when freezing weather has passed.
My brother does the worm and compost stuff professionally in Albuquerque and tells me I do not have to bring them in. But, they are my pets and I don't want them to die off in the winter.
Do you have a worm vermicompost bin yet?
It's 4 plastic containers from a dollar store. He cut out the center of the top three. The bins are reinforced with rebar.
If you want to see more photos of the construction of the hotel, let me know.