Marjorie Peronto: My name is Marjorie Peronto with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension,

and today we're going to talk about worm composting. Keeping a compost pile going year round in

Maine is a challenge. If you'd rather not trudge through the snow to dump your kitchen

scraps on your frozen compost pile in the winter, consider setting up a worm composting

system indoors. You can keep this going year round.

Worms will process your kitchen scraps, and having a worm bin is a great family project.

A box of worms fascinates children, and it's also a great conversation starter at dinner

parties. Pilot your new endeavor on a small scale, and expand as you learn. You can graduate

to bigger and bigger worm bins, and more and more worms as you go, over time.

To get started, you'll need a worm bin, some bedding, some water, the right kind of worms

and some food. Try a 10-gallon plastic tub for starters. This one's a little bigger,

it's 18 gallons. Drill 8 to 12 quarter-inch holes in the base of the tub for drainage,

and then drill some half-inch holes along the upper edge on both sides for air circulation.

Nest your tub into a plastic tray on top of blocks, or upside down plant pots in my case.

Don't worry that the worms are going to try to escape through the holes, they would rather

stay in the bin unless there's something very wrong inside the bin. Your bins should be

no more than 18 inches deep so that the material in the bin doesn't become too compacted. The

worms need to be able to move freely through the bin, and they need plenty of air.

Bedding is the medium in which the worms crawl around, and where you bury your food. It needs

to be light and moist and fluffy. My favorite bedding is a mixture of shredded autumn leaves

and wood shavings, which I... the leaves I collect in the fall and run a lawnmower over

them, and put them in a bag in my basement, and the wood shavings I get from a local fellow

who splits wood for a living.

The type of worms that you need for worm compost, or vermiculture are called Red Wiggler, or

Eisenia fetida. They're much smaller than earthworms, and they reproduce really well

in captivity. They process a lot of organic matter, and they don't mind being disturbed.

Don't try to do this with the large earthworms that you find in your garden. Those worms

need to burrow very deeply in the cool soil, and they do not survive when kept in a container.

You can order Red Wigglers from a garden supply catalog or perhaps find them at a bait shop,

or if you have a friend that has a worm composting bin, perhaps you can get some from them. How

many worms do you need, and what can you feed them? Well, get yourself a small kitchen scale,

and weigh the food scraps that you generate every day for one week. I'm talking about

fruit and vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, tea bags, and grains. No meat, bones, fatty

products, or dairy.

Worms can process about half their weight in food per day. If you generate an average

of four ounces of food scraps per day, then you would need eight ounces of worms in your

bin in order to process the food that you're going to be adding on a daily basis. If you

start with a smaller amount of worms, just feed them less. Their population will grow,

and you'll be able to feed them more over time.

When you get your worms, you want to sprinkle them on top of the bedding. Remember, the

bedding needs to be nice and moist. [pause] Then put the lid on the bin. They will quickly

burrow down into the bedding. On your lid, take a piece of paper and draw a grid with

eight equal sections. Every time you feed your worms, you'll put the food in a different

section, and you can mark the date that you put it then there.

You'll go in a clockwise direction around the bin. The worms will follow the food source.

By the time you get back to that first spot, you should no longer recognize the food that

you put in there. If you can still see recognizable food, then you shouldn't put anymore in until

it's gone. I put eight ounces of worms in this moist bedding, and here I have four ounces

of food scraps. I'm going to start in the section number one, just pull the bedding

aside and bury the food shallowly. [pause]

That's the extent of how you feed them. You put the lid back on, and put the bin in its

nesting tray. Be careful that you don't overload your bin with food. If you do, it can become

smelly and you can develop a fruit fly problem. You want to go at the pace that the worms

can consume. Take it slowly. It's normal to see molds and very tiny creatures inside your

worm bin. They're all part of the worm bin web of life.

Now here we're fast forwarding to a bin that has been operating for several months. It

looks quite different in here, much darker material. The bin will gradually fill with

worm droppings or worm castings as they consume the food and the bedding that you put in here.

This is a nutrient-rich material that you can put on your garden.

Once every few months, you're going to need to harvest the castings from the bin, and

then put the worms back in with fresh bedding to keep them going. Get yourself a sheet of

plastic, and then scoop out the composted material. You can create a little windrow

or some small cone-shaped piles. The worms that are in this material will quickly burrow

down to the bottom of the pile. They don't like being exposed to light or dry air.

One way to make them move a little more quickly is to set up a light and shine it right on

the pile. You have to wait a few minutes, just continuously brush the composted material

aside. The worms will continue to burrow down to the bottom of the pile to the point where

eventually all you'll have left is a pile of worms, and a separated pile of composted

material.

This is the material that can go in my garden as is, or I can make a little quarter inch

screen and run it through that. Then I get a much finer material that's screened out.

This can be put in potting mixes.

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