What Types of Soil Attracts the Most Worms How Big Are Baby Worms
Worm Composting Basics
by Jen Fong and Paula Hewitt
- What is worm composting?
- Materials to utilise (and avoid) in a classroom worm bin
- Setting up a worm bin
- Containers
- Harvesting
- Using worm compost
- Biology of worms
- Successful vermicompost projects
- Worm bins
What is worm composting?
Worm composting is using worms to recycle food scraps and other organic material into a valuable soil amendment called vermicompost, or worm compost. Worms eat nutrient scraps, which become compost as they pass through the worm's torso. Compost exits the worm through its' tail end. This compost tin and then be used to abound plants. To empathize why vermicompost is good for plants, recollect that the worms are eating nutrient-rich fruit and vegetable scraps, and turning them into nutrient-rich compost.
Materials to use (and avoid) in a classroom worm bin
For millions of years, worms accept been hard at work breaking downward organic materials and returning nutrients to the soil. By bringing a worm bin into the classroom, yous are simulating the worm's role in nature. Though worms could consume whatever organic fabric, certain foods are better for the classroom worm bin.
We recommend using only raw fruit and vegetable scraps. Stay abroad from meats, oils and dairy products, which are more complex materials than fruits and vegetables. Thus, they have longer to intermission downward and tin can attract pests. Cooked foods are often oily or buttery, which can also attract pests.
Avert orangish rinds and other citrus fruits, which are besides acidic, and can attract fruit flies. Try to use a multifariousness of materials. We have establish the more than vegetable affair, the meliorate the worm bin. Stay away from onions and broccoli which tend to have a potent odor.
Setting up a worm bin
Setting up a worm bin is easy. All you need is a box, moist newspaper strips, and worms. To effigy out how to fix a worm bin, outset consider what worms demand to live. If your bin provides what worms need, and so information technology volition be successful. Worms need moisture, air, food, darkness, and warm (just not hot) temperatures. Bedding, fabricated of newspaper strips or leaves, will concur moisture and incorporate air spaces essential to worms.
You should apply blood-red worms or carmine wigglers in the worm bin, which can be ordered from a worm farm and mailed to your school. The scientific name for the 2 usually used red worms are Eisenia foetida and Lumbricus rubellus.
Containers
When choosing a container in which to compost with worms, you should go on in mind the amount of food scraps y'all wish to compost, and where the bin will be located. A practiced size bin for the classroom is a 5- to 10- gallon box or approximately 24" X 18" Ten 8". The box should be shallow rather than deep, every bit red wigglers are surface-dwellers and prefer to alive in the meridian 6" of the soil..
Whether yous cull a plastic, wooden or glass container to apply as a worm bin is a matter of personal preference based primarily on what is bachelor. Some teachers have actress aquariums available. Some have wooden boxes which they would like to reuse. Others may prefer to purchase or reuse a plastic container, such every bit commercially manufactured storage bin (due east.g. "Rubbermaid," "Tucker," "Sterilite").
No affair what material you cull, make sure to rinse out the container before using. For wooden bins, line the bottom with plastic (e.g. from a plastic bag or quondam shower curtain). Cover the bin with a loose plumbing fixtures lid. This lid should allow air into the bin.
Harvesting
If yous take intendance of your worms and create a favorable environment for them, they will work tirelessly to eat your "garbage" and produce compost. As fourth dimension progresses, yous will notice less and less bedding and more and more compost in your bin. After 3-5 months, when your bin is filled with compost (and very niggling bedding), it is fourth dimension to harvest the bin. Harvesting means removing the finished compost from the bin. After several months, worms need to exist separated from their castings which, at high concentrations, create an unhealthy environment for them.
To gear up for harvesting, do not add new nutrient to the bin for two weeks. Then try one of two methods for harvesting:
Button all of the worm bin contents to ane half of the bin, removing any large pieces of undecomposed food or newspaper. Put fresh bedding and food scraps in empty side of bin. Go on burying food scraps only in freshly bedded half.
Over the next 2-3 weeks, the worms will movement over to the new side (where the food is), conveniently leaving their compost behind in one section. When this has happened, remove the compost and replace information technology with fresh bedding. To facilitate worm migration, cover only the new side of the bin, causing the old side to dry out out and encouraging the worms to go out the old side.
Hands-On Method: 
Dump the entire contents of the worm bin onto a sheet of plastic or paper. Make several individual cone-shaped piles. Each pile will comprise worms, compost and undecomposed food and bedding. As the piles are exposed to light,, the worms will migrate towards the bottom of the pile. Remove the elevation layer of compost from the pile, separating out pieces of undecomposed nutrient and newspaper. Afterward removing the top layer, let pile sit under calorie-free for 2-3 minutes as the worms migrate downward. Then remove the next layer of compost. Echo this process until all of the worms are left at the bottom of the pile. Collect the worms, weigh them (for your record keeping) and put them back in their bin with fresh bedding.
Regardless of which method you choose, the compost you lot harvest will most likely incorporate a worm or two, along with old food scraps and bedding. If you are using the compost outdoors, there is no demand to worry--the worms volition find a happy home and the nutrient scraps and bedding volition eventually decompose. If you lot are using the compost indoors, you lot may want to remove old bedding and nutrient scraps for aesthetic purposes and ensure that there are no worms in the compost. Though the worms will not harm your plants, the worms may non like living in a small pot.
For both methods, y'all may continue to compost your food scraps after harvesting. Just add fresh bedding and nutrient scraps. If, for some reason, you exercise not want to continue composting, delight offer the setup to some other teacher or to someone who will take the worm bin home. Anyone with a garden will notice the worm compost extremely valuable. Equally a concluding resort, if you cannot find anyone who wants good worm compost, y'all may add the worms to a garden bed.
Using worm compost
You can use your compost immediately, or you tin can store information technology and use it during the gardening season, or whenever. The compost tin can be directly mixed with your potting soil or garden soil equally a soil subpoena, which helps make nutrients available to plants. Or, the compost can be used as a peak dressing for your indoor or outdoor plants.
You can too brand "compost tea" with your compost. But add 1-ii" of compost to your water can or rain barrel. Allow compost and water to "steep" for a day, mixing occasionally. Then water plants as you normally would. The resulting "tea" helps make nutrients already in the soil available to plants.
Biological science of worms
Worms can alive for about one year in the worm bin. If a worm dies in your bin, you probably volition not find it. Since the worm'south trunk is about 90% water, it volition shrivel upwards and get office of the compost rather quickly. New worms are built-in and others die all the time.
Worms are hermaphrodites, which ways they are both male and female at the same time. In order to mate, they nonetheless require two worms. The worms line up in opposite directions well-nigh their band (or clitellum), which contains some of the sexual organs. The worms are fastened for well-nigh 15 minutes while they exchange sperm cells. Several days later, eggs come in contact with the sperm cells and form a cocoon, or egg case. The cocoon separates from the worm, and then fertilization takes place. Within the cocoon, 2-5 infant worms may exist institute.
The infant worms live in the egg case for at to the lowest degree 3 weeks, sometimes longer depending on the surrounding conditions. For example, in the winter time, babe worms may stay in the cocoon for many weeks until the temperature warms up again. When the babe worms somewhen crawl out, they are the thickness of a piece of thread and possibly ane cm 1/iv" long. Unremarkably the worms appear white, as they have not yet developed pigmentation, or exercise not have enough pigmentation (or claret) to be seen.
Successful vermicompost projects
Many schools take been successfully composting with worms over the past few years. Some unproblematic school classes go on worm bins as part of an ecology unit, others for science. In most cases, teachers observe a diversity of multidisciplinary ways to utilize a worm bin. For example, one class called their room the "Worm World." Writing assignments, math lessons and art work focused on worms every bit a theme.
©Jen Fong and Paula Hewitt
Cornell Waste Direction Institute ©1996
Soil and Crop Sciences
Bradfield Hall, Cornell Academy
Ithaca, NY
607-255-1187
cwmi@cornell.edu
Source: http://compost.css.cornell.edu/worms/basics.html
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