Vermicomposting in the cold-climate apartment- Frequently Asked Questions

Caveat – I’m not an expert. My answers are framed from my experience and observations. Please engage in debate on any of these points.

What are the advantages of tower vermicomposters over regular bins?

The footprint (floor area) is about the same, but they offer slightly more volume and better timing and aeration.

Volume: 4 pails of 25 litres each will give you a maximum volume of 100 litres. A 14-gallon bin will give you a maximum of 63.6 litres (21 gallon : 95.5 litres). In the tower, all but the top pail will be full, as the soil migrates downwards by gravity.

Timing: I indulge in preserving, so have periodic high-volumes of matter. The slow descent of the matter gives the worm population more time to cope with peak volume.

Aeration: there is a gap of about one centimetre between each pail, the pail base being about 2cm less in diameter than the rim. This gap and the continual movement and settling of the soil allows air to pass through each pail fairly freely.

Cost: Commercial enterprises might hate me for this; I can build tower composters out of 25-litre food pails, acetone pails etc and a few pieces of 1/4 inch steel rod or even scrap 1/4 inch bolts. My smallest footprint tower composter was built from muffin mix containers from a coffee shop. Those bins are 9 inches square and 13 inches high, about 17 litres each.

Can vermicomposting be done only inside? I'm moving into a new house shortly, and don't know if I should just get a 'regular' composter, or a vermicomposting composter. My kitchen is going to be very small, but I've got lots of room in my backyard.

I'm not an expert on Vermicomposting (or composting for that matter) but I do record my experiences, and am prepared to share them.

Vermicomposting is not limited to inside the dwelling; I have a vermicomposter tower on my east-facing balcony.

I started to think about vermicomposting as an alternative to composting when I moved out of a house-and-yard to an apartment-with-balcony residence. If you have access to ground-level, I'd recommend you build an outdoor composter (I can give you instructions for making a composter bin out of interlocking scrap timber, which (bin) won't fall apart). An outdoor composter is going to accept yard waste as well as kitchen waste, and can generally be a larger unit.

That said, we live in Toronto (Brrrr!) so an outdoor composter can turn into a frozen pile of kitchen waste in a short time. Enter the vermicomposter.

Your vermicomposter is suitable for kitchen-volume waste, and can accept meat products (unlike an outdoor composter) but does not have to be in the kitchen. I have used a tower composter in the laundry closet of a condo apartment. Such a laundry closet usually houses a dryer sitting atop a washer, with enough space (about 18 inches) alongside for a tower composter. My web site (http://www.chrisgreaves.com/vermicomposting.htm) has photos of the installation in the laundry closet. My current apartment has three closets, each of which is suitable for a vermicomposter.

Remember, when done right, your vermicomposter won't smell or breed insects or present any other annoying aspect. A kitchen vermicomposter can sometimes upset the strange guest who sees nothing wrong with storing decaying food matter in a plastic bag under the kitchen sink alongside the dish-cleaning gear, but thinks an enclosed soil tub where the scraps are converted to benign soil is somehow dirty.

My current downside to balcony vermicomposting, especially these past two weeks of unabated heat, is that my tower vermicomposter, built of plastic pails, seems to have heated up to air temperature, and then BAKED the worms with the full rays of the sun striking from about 6:00 a.m. to about 10:00 a.m. I have found two worms baked to the plastic sides, presumably trying to escape.

Why don't I know the fate of the other worms? Because generally I don't see them. I scoop soil from the bottom outlet of the tower (no worms there because they detest light) and cover food scraps placed in the top (no worms THERE because they detest light). The worms live in between, and rarely show themselves.

I have recently begun experimenting with very small vermicomposters as nurseries - four-litre ice-cream tubs covered with gauze. Although I have nurseries in mind, I daresay a series of such tubs could be used in rotation, perhaps being brought up from the basement, charged with kitchen waste, and returned to the basement to "mature".

In summary:

1) Build an outdoor composter; they work well, and will process large amounts of waste, including rubbish from eavestroughs etc.

2) Build a vermicomposter and install it in an accessible place within the house. The basement is a good spot too.

Is there any reason why meat products can't be put into a backyard composter?

Yes. Meat and similar materials attract rodents and vermin (VERMIN!composter!!!) and we want no vermin. Indoors vermicomposters are generally isolated from rodents etc so meat can be used. However, if you have a very curious dog, cat or snake etc, meat would be unadvisable in a vermicomposter.

And anyway, not too much. I am usually dropping in chicken bones, steak bones (when someone brings me a steak!) with a small amount of meat. I'd never drop in 2 pounds of uncooked liver. I think that that would start to smell before the worms could digest it.

Are they really called Wigglers? I thought that they were Red Wrigglers

I thought that “wigglers” had only one "r".

I will use SOME of my English-language dictionaries which may demonstrate to you and anyone else with a desire to establish correct use of English in the Colonies that "wriggle" is the correct word.

My Passion is Vermicomposting. With Red Wrigglers.

We will start with my 1,800 page Canadian Oxford to defuse any parochial arguments about native adaptations of a culturally descriptive language.

• “Wiggle: move or cause to move irregularly and quickly from side to side”. Note “quickly” and “side to side”.

• “Wriggle: (of a worm etc.) twist or turn its body with short writhing movements; make one’s way by wriggling”.

My 1,300 page Concise Oxford, which is the largest one I can lift to throw at someone, were I to be the pedagogue

• “Wiggle: cause a thing to move repeatedly from side to side”

• “Wriggle: (of worm etc.) Move body with short twistings, make wormlike motions”

The vermilion New Webster’s dictionary does not have an entry at all, at all, for "wiggle", but does have one for "wriggle". Wriggle your way out of THAT one!

The New American Webster Handy College Dictionary maintains an entry for "wiggle", "See Wriggle", it says, right there on page 514.

My vermiculated Webster’s New Standard (1940) with a colored plate of Yellowstone Falls and Grand Canyon right there in the front, gives a definition of Wriggler in terms of worms (larvae etc) and for Wiggle says "You ought to have looked under Wriggle; that's the right word".

How deep do the worms go?

Being top feeders, Red Wigglers scavenge for food just 6" - 12" below the surface. They "eat on the go." Night Crawlers like to draw food down into burrows (up to 6 feet deep)

How hot can it get before they die? How Cold?

Red Wrigglers are most active when the temperature is kept between 60° and 80° Fahrenheit.

How fast will my worms breed?

Worms are Hermaphrodites (but you still need two to make babies), up to 20 fertilized eggs per cocoon, hence up to 40 per mating. 2 to 6 worms hatch per cocoon after 3 weeks. maximum rate of reproduction is and Minimum rate is

What do the worms eat?

Bacteria. Not food scraps. The bacteria in the soil go to work on the food, and the worms eat the bacteria.

So the worms don't eat Orange peel or banana skin

No. The peels are broken down by the bacteria, and the worms eat the bacteria. It might be said that despite the wide variety of food scraps we feed the composter, the worms have a diet that is limited to the number of different types of bacteria that your composter supports.

Could I raise worms on just newspapers and coffee grounds?

The bacteria are reducing food waste to elemental components. The worms aren't eating coffee grounds, they are eating bacteria-cell-contents.

What's the best temperature for raising bacteria?

What's the best temperature for worm appetites?

What's the best temperature for worm breeding?

What's the best temperature for cocoon hatching?

23C-43C for most rapid feeding and conversion. What records of temperature do you keep? have you any statement on optimum temperature for (a) decomposition by bacteria (b) consumption by Wrigglers (c) production of cocoons and (d) maturation of larvae?

One pound worms convert approximately one ton. That's 6.1 lbs./day, and indicates a ratio of 1:6, whereas most sources say 1: 0.5 (i.e. one lb. worms digests I lb. matter every two days)

excrete their body weight in a single day. Suggests weight-in equals weight-out. Would need to know ratio of earth to food on the weight-in side, since we assume weight-out is totally castings.

How will I know if my composter is too acid?

If you've added a large batch of citrus peel and your worms try to escape, chances are that your composter is too acidic.

Add crushed egg-shells and stir them in.

Or obtain a small piece of limestone rock, pulverize it and add it.

Where should I keep my kitchen-waste bucket?

Handy to your chopping board. Some keep it under the sink, some who have a double-sink keep a tub with drain holes in one sink to receive waste. If you keep the waste tub in the refrigerator (a) it might corrupt good food and (b) you'll delay the growth of bacteria, which is, after all, what the worms eat.

How often should I add food?

Several sources say 'Don't add food for 2-4 days/1 week". What's your experience"? Surely early addition of food allows bacteria to make a head start and be available for worms once they require it?

How many worms will I need to digest all my kitchen waste?

weight scraps per person per day. have you determined a USEABLE formula to let people (1) weight their food waste for a week and (2) determine the volume of bin(s) required to deal with this? I developed my towers mainly because I'm lazy, and don't want to think about where/which bin to bury waste. They also act as a buffer for fluctuating volumes, as when I'm bottling fruit or making jam (volumes of apple cores etc)

"reproduction" 14-21 days, 2-20 babies, 60-90 days indicates that Maximum maturity rate is 1.85 days for a mature worms per worm, minimum is 27.75 days per worm.

How do you tell if the newsprint is safe?

I can’t, because I have no tools for chemical analysis.

Common sense tells me that if I wring wetted shredded paper and coloured dye runs out, it might not be a good choice.

Regular newsprint is popular with the professionals, and it runs a very pale brown – probably a weak mixture of some colour and black.

I’ve tried soaking stamps from bright red Christmas Envelopes, and that dye runs something horrid. That much dye should be avoided.

Can I introduce red Wriggler worms into my houseplants soil?

I don’t know for sure.

Let’s assume you refer to a houseplant whose soil is Not to dry out completely between watering; assume also that the plant is in a large tub – say about 20 litres or 4 gallon capacity. The worms would have a large enough range or territory. The houseplant soil has some rotted material, compost maybe. The worms excrete on the surface and your watering rinses it down.

Could you add kitchen scraps on a periodic basis? Yes, but don’t tell your admiring guests about it. Carrot and potato peel or anything that is not inclined to attract flies would be good food sources, buried well.

In theory the worms will be attracted to the bacteria in the rotting scraps.

In theory the bacteria will not devour living things, such as your plant roots, so your plants should be safe.

Try it! You might end up with a self-aerating self-feeding house plant.

How can I tell if my worms are alive without disturbing the soil?

I often would like to know if there is life in the old nursery. I take a paper egg-carton and tear it up into one-inch squares. Moistening the carton first makes it easier to tear. I soak the pieces in water for five minutes, then place them atop the nursery. Retreat to a safe distance for two days, then lift the cover and inspect the damp shreds.

If you can see worm castings across the top (exposed) surface of the shreds, you know that there’s only one way they can have got there.

No castings doesn’t mean you have no worms, but castings means you do. If you see castings you can nurture your nursery on the assumption that worms are active. If you see no castings, you may then consider investigating the contents of the nursery in a suitably gentle manner.

Did I harm my worms by putting heavy food scraps on top of them?

It depends.

If you are starting a new bin, placed the damp bedding, placed the worms, then laid a lettuce-leaf atop, probably not.

If you quartered a large carrot and tossed it in a parabolic arc across the kitchen and it landed knife-edge down on a worm, probably yes.

Treat worms as friends or as pets. Would your dog or cat give you a filthy look if it were hit with a cabbage stalk? Yes.

Have Red Wrigglers survived landslides, trees-crashing-to-the-ground, Cow-hooves? Yes. But give them a fighting chance. Be as gentle as you can.

I guess that any trauma to red Wrigglers, be it impact, heat, light etc sets back their demeanor and delays their work in converting bacteria to castings. You’d go off your tucker if I lobbed an apple core at you.

My new worms became active after I moved them to the warmer upstairs.

Maybe.

You obtained your worms last week and bedded them down in the basement. You added food scraps. A week later they seem not to have eaten the food. You move them upstairs where it is warmer and the worms appear to take off. Scraps-be-gone!

I feel sure that red Wrigglers have an optimum temperature range, and that the basement may be close to the cold end, while the top floor may be close to the high end.

But consider at least two other factors:

Transporting worms from one place to another involves vibration, light etc and it may take your worms a week to settle down in their new home before they feel like eating

Worms eat bacteria; it may take a week for the bacteria to multiply sufficiently to provide a food source for the worms. Without lots of food, the worms aren’t going to be very active.

What’s the most disgusting mixture you have fed your worms?

The mixture started with the shells and carcasses of a one-pound packet of prawns, celery, tomatoes, onion, tea bags and egg-shells from the previous night’s dinner, left to “stew” for 24 hours in my plastic scraps bin. I made about 20 litres of shredded paper and left it to soak in water. The food scraps went into the blender with an occasional cup of water on Turbo. I added the goop to the shredded paper, then added about four litres of soil, mixed the whole lot together with a garden trowel, and spooned it into two regular composter bins.

Having in mind that the worms eat bacteria, I figured that the 24-hour stewing period gave bacteria in the food scraps a head start, adding soil augmented a supply or variety of bacteria. Mixing the whole lot with damp shredded paper added a reservoir of moisture. The surface area added by the grains of soil should increase the breeding area for bacteria.

Can I put dead mice in my vermicomposter?

I’ll leave aside an apparent rodent problem in your building. This should be addressed separately.

I’m a tad squeamish about adding ostensibly unhygienic elements to the vermicomposters. I believe that rodents carry disease, and I don’t want to add disease to my system.

That said I think that most vermicomposting bins can accommodate meat products about the size of a mouse.

If I had vermicomposting bins in the garage, not in the house, I might dispose of a mouse this way. The volume won’t hurt.

But be very very careful about diseases. It’s just not worth the risk.

I don’t have a zero-tolerance obsession with scraps; I just want to reduce most of my landfill garbage.

What is the correct spelling of Eisenia Foetida? is there an "o" or not?

(See also: http://www.significantbooks.com/biol1.htm )

Yes.

However.

The words is, I believe, "fetid", as in foul-smelling; the correct "English" spelling is "foetid", and the "oe" might be one of those wotchacallems, glued together like. And then many modern writers seem to think that showing the origin of a word by its “weird" spelling, is pretentious, so they drop the "o".

In general I don't trust anything in the www as truly dependable information; anyone with a keyboard can write a definition (just as I am doing now!). A BOOK that gets mentioned on the www is different, because a book, especially a reference dictionary, tends to have a lot more work and checking in its production. (Same reason that people will be more inclined to believe Mary Wossname's books and videos than anything we might HTML regarding our experiences).

That said, try a search in the same search engine, once for "Eisenia Foetida" (Google 2,510) and once for "Eisenia Fetida" (Google 1,470 hits). The number of hits will tell you the POPULARITY of each spelling, but not whether either one is accurate. I believe in printed dictionaries and hence "wrigglers", but if enough lazy writers use "wigglers", we are doomed.

See also foehn - we were taught fohn by our excellent geography teacher - and foetus or is it fetus?

How can I tell if my worms are there?

Assuming that your bin is suitably moist, your worms might be playing hide and seek. But what child can resist an ice-cream, right? And what worm can resist banana, right?

You peel your banana the normal way, right? Three strips.

Lift the damp cardboard, carpet or bedding that you use to cover your composter and place a strip of banana soft-side down. The worms will come to dine. Check on the skin once a day.

Other

Tuna-tin vinegar makes an excellent fly trap. I can't remember the source.

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