Vermicomposting & Worm Bins

Vermicompost is the product or process of composting using various worms, usually red wigglers, white worms, and other earthworms to create a heterogeneous mixture of decomposing vegetable or food waste, bedding materials, and vermicast.

What do you do when you can’t have a compost pile at your rental and, equally, can’t live with the guilt about wasting the scraps that can’t be given to the chickens…

You build a little worm bin!

What good is a homestead without a compost pile, right?

It’s smaller than a big ol’ compost pile, yes.  Much more compact, much less able to turn over all of our food and misc. waste, but helpful none-the-less.

It can also be moved inside at night while the temperature still drops below freezing and it will be easily movable when we move to our next rental.

Of course, we thought about purchasing one for about a minute before deciding to build our own, save a good chunk of money, and make it something workable for us.

So, we hit the closest hardware store and purchased three big plastic bins/tupperware tubs.  Once home, we drilled holes in the bottom of two of them to create the trays where the worms will eat and make their magic soil and left one bin intact.

• Bin One – The Compost Tea Collector – We drilled four screws into the top of this bin to hold up Bin Two just a bit higher than it would normally sit in order to hold a bit more Tea before we have to empty it.
• Bins Two & Three – Vermicomposting Trays – We drilled holes in the bottoms of each bin so the worms can make their way up to the fresh scraps when necessary and so the Compost Tea can drip down through the layers and into it’s holding area (Bin One).

The bins fit into each other perfectly (as they do), so when the worms have made the most of their first bin, we’ll simple add the third bin on top and start adding our scraps to that bin so they’ll make their way up into it through the holes. Once they’ve all moved up, we will use the compost from the bin below.  This rotation will continue on through eternity…or at least until we can have a good old fashioned compost pile again 😉

For a more thorough worm bin DIY, check out Attainable Sustainable’s post on How to Make a Worm Composter for Less Than Five Bucks.

Also, the folks at Root Simple have a great piece called Getting Started with Worms to go along with several other (super helpful) worm bin posts.

Do tell, what’s your compost set up look like?

xoxo,
M