What's With The Worm Trench?

I have read of a few people who simply dig a small trench and add some food and some worms and that's it. That isn't too hard, is it? I have begun mine. It is not doing much right now. The reason I dug the trench was because of a natural disaster. The disaster was caused by strong winds and a poorly thought out compost heap.

I had wired 4 wooden pallets together and added some yard and kitchen waste. I added a few leaves and some chicken manure. Then, the best part was adding the palm leaves. I added them by weaving them into the pallets. When the winds came the leaves were tall enough to cause the whole thing to fall over. I didn't want to have a big heap in the yard anymore anyway (although I am thinking that a proper compost heap may help out our recycling efforts). So, I dug a trench and stuffed the contents of the heap into it. Most of the heap was composed of cardboard and other carbon sources.

Now I want to get the pile a bit more active. I have been wetting the pile down every morning but it still seems to be taking a long time to break down. I am going to add more chicken manure and possibly some horse manure to the pile. I know the horse manure will be good for the worms but the chicken manure may be a bit too hot. I don't have enough to fill the whole trench anyway so a little at a time shouldn't hurt. I am excited to see the effects of a worm trench next to the garden.

The Shoe Box Bin Revisited

I am still happy with the shoe box bin. It is a little slow but it is good for creating a bit of castings for some worm tea or something like that. These little systems would be good for a fisherman. You feed them a few scraps every now and then and they will eat and grow and multiply. If you are fishing everyday then you may need a bigger system. I would guess you could take a dozen per week, after a few months when the population grows to the point of being able to produce that many worms per week.

I haven't noticed too many cocoons or eggs or whatever you call the things that worm babies come out of in my bins lately. I have also been using less cardboard as bedding too. I have heard from a few sources that they like cardboard for "laying" their eggs. Now I know what to add to my bins, or at least it is something to try out.

I am going to have to check out how many worms I now have in the bin. I wonder if they are increasing population or not. I don't know what the next step should be with the shoe box bin. Should I keep checking the population monthly or weekly and track the growth or should I add them to a bigger bin and use the castings on some plants in my garden?

I think I will set up a new shoe box bin every week with one hundred worms. Each week I will be feeding a new box, until the first feeding is devoured by the worms. That's when I can feed them again and that's enough bins to keep me on a weekly schedule. Once I am feeding and having the worms finish their food weekly then I will have to find a way to finish the compost. So, maybe the new bins should be made until I am harvesting a box full of finished castings and a setting up a new box every day.

I started a new bin on Sunday. The first bin I set up is a few months old and going strong. Each has had 100 worms added to it. Next Sunday I will make a new bin with one hundred worms and feed last week's bin. I will have to see if the oldest bin needs food or not. The food is going to be some Bokashi compost. If I get real motivated I will weigh out the food. The oldest bin is almost ready to be harvested. I may count out the 100 worms out of that bin to start the new bin. After a few weeks I will harvest the rest of the worms out of it.

The extra worms will go back into the indoor fabric pot bin. I want to get that bin going strong too. I mean I want some castings coming out of it constantly. I want to fill it to capacity with worms. Once I have it full then I want to start a new one. I need more worms but I don't want to buy them. It is really hard to wait for them to reproduce. They reproduce rapidly but it still seems to take forever when I have all these huge plans for them.