Wormtopia

Breeding ten thousand worms is a great hobby that’s wonderfully rewarding. Every year we harvest at least 50 gallons of rich compost from our backyard Red Wiggler farm. Yep, worms! 

I started learning about vermicomposting in 2019 while experimenting with natural fertilizers for my small gardens and indoor plants. Vermicomposting is basically using worms to turn biodegradable material into a rich compost full of valuable nutrients for plants. Worms have no teeth. Instead they have what is essentially a circular grinder in their throat that they use to ingest food. Worm poop, called castings, is like gold to a gardener.

Worms have voracious appetites and can manage an astonishing variety of materials. We feed our worms all of our kitchen scraps (except meat or dairy). They also feast on a healthy diet of ground up eggshells, paper egg cartons, newspapers and cardboard boxes. I cannot tell you how much it pleases me to know that our Amazon boxes are nourishing our Japanese maple garden!

My first worm bin was a stackable worm hotel. I thought it would be easier to manage them inside but soon realized that we had way more compostable material than an in-home unit could handle. So, I spent that summer digging a 5x5, two foot deep hole in the ground and lined it with cinder blocks. I built a heavy framed wire lid for the top as I had learned rather suddenly that snakes have an appetite for worms! 

To populate my bin, I started gathering earthworms wherever I could find them. I thought it was especially ecological of me to find my own worms around the house and neighborhood, but I ran into a couple of important issues with that approach. First, there was no way I’d be able to collect the number of worms I needed in order to successfully compost the way I wanted to. I also learned that local worms don’t particularly like the scraps that humans produce. They like their own stuff that’s lying around like dead leaves, roots and animal manure. After a little research I discovered the magnificent cravings of the Red Wiggler. I thought it would be worth giving them a try so I invested $250 for 10,000 high quality worms from a reputable wiggler farm. An interesting tidbit: some worm farms are massive, multi-million dollar operations, some even backed by government funding. 

Red Wigglers are actually small and skinny. This misleading appearance does not explain their mighty appetite. They can consume half their weight in food every day! Melon rinds and banana peels quickly vanish without a trace, except for maybe a few Chiquita stickers.

The one downside about these little guys is they will mostly die off once our zone 7 winter sets in. They do lay eggs, though, which interestingly, can survive the cold. That makes it especially nice because the eggs will travel in the harvest to their new garden home. When they hatch in the spring they get to work as soil aerators. 

There’s a weekly rhythm involved in caring for these industrious little workers. I like to call them our worker tenants. I toss them every other day which means I put fresh scraps in and toss all the goo with a three-pronged open hoe. It’s not a good idea to let things get too compacted, preventing the air from properly circulating. I like to keep everything nice and fluffy. The tenants seem to like it too. 

Twice a month I do a full rotation. There are several steps to this process. I start by tossing, then I use a little handheld three-pronged hoe to dig the corners until I reach the bottom. For some reason worms love to pack themselves into corners. Perhaps it provides some leverage for grinding or something. I'd love to know their thoughts on this.

Next, I vigorously work the humus by punching and turning it with a composting tool. This contraption looks something like a pogo stick, with handle bars at the top and four prongs at the bottom. On top of the handle bars, there’s a round plunger. After driving the prongs into the compost and vigorously turning it, pushing down on the plunger drives an internal rod that forces a small round metal plate to scrape unfinished material off the prongs. Once the whole lot has been evenly turned, I add strips of brown paper bags and boxes, and a little sand to help with drainage. A fun fact: sand also helps keep the worms’ tiny throat grinder in tip top shape! I finish by giving them a light shower from the garden hose. 

The trick to maintaining a healthy vermicompost is adding just the right amount of moisture, striking the right balance of brown and green materials, and providing sufficient drainage. 

One year we got maggots. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Maggot dung can add a great variety of nutrients to soil. The problem is, maggot dung smells exactly the way maggot dung sounds. Gross. Worm castings, on the other hand, smell like rich healthy soil. 

My wife felt especially bad about the maggots because she thought she was responsible for the invaders. She had placed a paper bag of pulp from our juicer in the bin. The bag was my idea. But with that amount of moisture from the pulp in an enclosed container, the bin needed to be tossed more than usual to prevent what indeed happened. Soldier flies gathered their troops and found their way into the bag and dumped eggs. The eggs turned into larvae which turned into maggots before they finally turned into new soldier flies, and so forth and so on. Poor dear, she took it upon herself to dig maggots out by hand, her stomach lurching to her throat with every scoop. I felt terrible that she did that because I could have made sure everything was properly turned, but she was actually quite proud of herself. Marriage is fun in this way, isn’t it?

Pre-harvest, usually around mid to late September, I close the bin while the weather is still warm. No more scraps are added for 3 months, but I often throw in old soil from re-potted plants and exhausted raised gardens. If I’m lucky enough to get an even ratio of old soil and compost, I can expect upwards of 100 gallons or more of luscious, deep-earth smelling super soil after letting the mix cook for a few months. 

Harvest! And finally, the new super soil is shoveled out and put into 30 gallon tubs with lids. I usually let those tubs sit through February. Pre-Spring, I start adding the super soil to all of our gardens and around trees and bushes. 

Since this journey into vermicomposting, not only has the super soil produced beautiful plants and gardens, but all the natural foliage in our yard, especially nearest the worm bin, is flourishing beautifully.