Trouble Shooting Guide For Vermicomposting
By AMY MUNCY,
Master Gardener, Kosciusko County
You may run into a few problems with vermicomposting that don’t affect you with anaerobic composting in an outdoor bin or pile. Some problems can be cured simply. Here are some of the main problems and their cures.
PROBLEMS
Smells — there shouldn’t be any, but sometimes it happens. Worm casts have a pleasant, earthy smell, like forest soil. If the worm bin starts to smell, there’s too much feed in it. More than the worms can process. You have overloaded the system.
Stop feeding the worms, add more dry bedding, a little sprinkled lime, and stir the bin with the hand cultivator (hand-fork). Repeat until the smell vanishes. This will not hurt the worms.
Fruit flies (actually vinegar flies) can get into the box, but they do no harm. Lots of them mean too much feed — cut down the feeding rate and cover the surface with a damp newspaper.
The bin can also have an influx of soldier fly maggots, up to an inch long (they’re a favorite with fishermen). Vinegar fly larvae are much smaller. Actually the maggots benefit the composting process, but if you don’t like them, add more bedding and lime and stir as above, or put a chunk of bread soaked in milk on the surface. In a couple of days it will be infested with larvae; take it out and get rid of it (give it to a fisherman or a chicken).
GARDEN WASTES
Outdoor boxes can be bigger. The simplest way of all is a 12-inch-deep trench in the soil about 2 foot wide or more with 8 inches of bedding and/or compost to put the worms in. Red worms can’t survive long in ordinary garden soil. So they won’t crawl away or go into the surrounding soil.
To keep moles away, line the trench with 1/2 inch chicken wire or wire mesh. Add garden wastes as they come, putting it in a different part of the trench each time, and cover with a sprinkling of soil and lime. Bury kitchen wastes at the bottom, under the garden wastes. Remember way back when you would see people bury the refrigerators and put worms in them. All they had to do was this.
Fresh garden wastes might get hot, but the worms will have a place to escape to until it gets cool enough for them to handle. That’s why you move the waste around in the trench in order o give them hiding places.
Or make a four-sided wooden box with four 18 inch by 36 inch boards (or nail narrower planks together), treat it with vegetable oil or linseed oil, and stand it on a layer of bricks on top of the soil. This method will keep the box from sinking into the soil as the liquid ‘compost tea’ leaks out of the box.
Put 6 inches or so of bedding in the bottom and put the worms in it. Add wastes to the corners in succession. Shake the soil off clumped roots. Chop up big bits with the edge of a spade. Add more bedding as necessary. Bury kitchen scraps.
If you have large amounts of bedding and manure, such as chicken manure, a larger box or trench would be in order and use more worms. Your best bet with manure is to just pile it in with your regular compost and leave it set for a year. Add to the pile at the ends and wait a year for each addition.
Check out “Friend Earthworm: Practical Application of a Lifetime Study of Habits of the Most Important Animal in the World” by George Sheffield Oliver for more information — online at the Journey to Forever Small Farms Library.
There will be one more informative article about this type of composting.
Due to personal circumstances, this will be my last article. I have enjoyed writing these and all I can hope for is that if you have learned anything from these articles, that they pass on the info to others. The more anyone knows about gardening, the more they can grow and become self sufficient.