Vermicomposting - Plans for a better Worm Bin

[gandalf]

Greetings and Salutations:

FYI. As I am sure you know, you can use your kitchen scraps to make fertilizer for your garden / plants / etc. It also helps reduce the amount of garbage in our garbage cans.

In 2008 I posted plans for a simple worm bin. Since then the worms, molds, fungi, mushrooms, etc. have taken their toll on the box and completely disintegrated the structure. I have designed / created a better / bigger worm bin that will hopefully last 12 to 15 years.

This is a description of how to build the simple and more complex (and sturdier) worm bins:

Included are the plans in PDF.

Plans for other garden structures are located at:

Any questions please feel free to ask.

Ken

--------------------------------------------------------------- Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards for they are subtle and quick to anger. Ken Hollis - Gandalf The White - [e-mail] - O- TINLC WWW Page -

Trace E-Mail forgery - Trolls crossposts - Woodworking For Geeks -

[Fran Farmer]

The only question I've got is why did yougo to so much trouble when an old bathtub as the worm home works so well? In addition, with a bucket under the drainage hole you get effortless worm wee as well.

[Brooklyn1]

Unless there's direct contact with the ground composting cannot occur, with its closed bottom those wooden containers are fermentation vats. Worms cannot survive very long in so shallow a vessel as a bathtub, to survive and flourish worms need to have control of their environment's temperature and moisture by constantly altering their depth in the ground, earthworms typically burrow to depths of six feet.... as temperature climbs at mid day and soil dries worms burrow deeper, same as when temperatures drop and soil freezes.

[songbird]

[e-mail] wrote: ...

i use free plastic buckets. when they get old and start cracking they go to the plastic recycler. so far i've been going for five years and only one bucket has failed and cracked in that time.

songbird

[songbird]

Brooklyn1 wrote: ...

no, worm composting is not like regular composting.

it depends upon the species of worms.

i have some here that are in 6-12 inches of cover and they do well. other buckets are deeper.

as for temperature control, i keep the worms right here in this room, they don't get frozen and they don't get above 90F too often and they do just fine.

i have about 200,000 worms, hmm, maybe 300,000 now, my larger bin is very full these days.

songbird

[Ken Hollis]

We don't like to use plastic because of the various materials in the plastic (not organic). The bathtub is interesting but not esthetically appealing.

[Brooklyn1]

There are large plastic livestock watering troughs that are safe.

[David Hare-Scott]

We are talking about compost worms here not earth worms. I have seen a commercial worm farm (using compost worms) that had row upon row of old baths on stands with drain below just as Fran described.

[Fran Farmer]

Clearly you don't understand the meaning of the word 'vermicomposting'.

If you'd looked a the URL provided by the OP you might understand.

to

Go do some reading up on vermicomposting. You obviously don't have a worm farm or you'd know why a bathtub works and works well. and it would work exceptionally well in the situation of the OP who should shoved a bathtub inside his beautifully built box and then he'd have a worm farm that looked good and never needed rebuilding because of rotting.

[Fran Farmer]

Bathtubs, or old freezers or old refrigerators laid on their side can all be made aesthetically appealing and be used very effectively for vermicomposting.

All it takes is a bit of imagination and a bit of work.

[songbird]

that's understandable, the buckets i'm using are all food safe plastics so they should not be a hazard, but perhaps they could be. all but one are pickle pails, so they've had pickle juice in them for months before i ever get them. if there are any obvious hazards from using them i'm not seeing any affects upon the worms. all of them are used for multiple years too, if they're leaching anything it would likely be in the pickle juice (which is not anything i use -- i get them used from the subway shops). not that i think they are perfect to use, but an alternative would be very expensive (glass, ceramic, stainless steel). these buckets are indoors and they can't leak at all and i have to be able to move them when they are full.

if i were doing something large outside it could be surrounded by about anything else to make it look better. since we freeze here i don't plan on such a setup...

songbird