As if the woman could get through the hordes of hired help to even touch a paper towel... :
That hired help includes the guy who deposits the checks sent over by the grateful staff of the American Paper Towel Manufacturer's Association...
You have a Can-O-Worms?
Is there some minimal level of food/scraps input?
Better to compost food scraps in a worm bin in a secure garage and when it gets full set aside a few cups of worms, empty the bin either in the yard or compost pile, and put the cups of worms back in the worm bin.
Yes there is a 'minimum' of sorts. The worms need to have enough to eat and be happy enough to reproduce. I would start off with a gallon of dirt with lots of old leaves, add coffee grounds and a couple cups of fruit/vegetable scraps and they shouldn't want to leave. They like to live about 5 inches or more below the top of the material. When scraps are added mix it up gently, you will see the worms - who will promptly retreat to do their thing.
The nice thing about they system until now was that there was zero maintenance. Since I was in no rush to get the compost, I just went out, dumped the stuff in, and I was done.
It sounds like with the worms I'll need to periodically lift and separate, etc. Yes? How often?
I've got Worms Eat my Garbage on hold at the library, so I'll take a look at that.
Every 8 weeks or so in my case because I was/am lazy and would just throw the veggies on the top of the pile (outdoor composter). The problem with doing that is that the veggies aren't in easy reach for the worms.
Everything makes much more sense with the book.
We attended a local workshop, which included materials and an ounce of worms. (The class helped our teen get over her "yuck" factor, plus she enjoyed working with a woman entrepreneur.) We started with an 8" flowerpot, filled it with yummy shredded newspaper, and added a few tablespoons of leftover veggies. The worms burrowed into the cellulose (they're photophobic) and waited for the veggies to decompose. All we had to do was add food every day or two and a few tablespoons of water to keep things moist.
The worms don't actually eat the food-- worms got no teeth-- they slurp up the decomposed slime that's left by all the other organisms eating the food. Vermiposters are full of critters, including earwigs and compost mites. If done wrong, vermipost bins they can also attract flies (unless wet newspaper is laid over the food) and maggots (don't vermipost meat products). The critters sound pretty yucky but they stay in the vermipost. They have plenty of food & company and see no reason to go roaming. I don't know why not, but ants and mosquitos have never bothered any of our vermiposting pots or the Can-O-Worms.
The thumbrule is that an ounce of worms will eat an ounce of food a day. When we started with one wormy ounce in a flowerpot, we'd put in a banana peel or other fruit rinds every day or two. With just two of its three trays in business, our Can-O-Worms is too heavy to lift without taking it apart.
Worms reproduce by trading sperm, so they reproduce faster if they're in a smaller volume that encourages worm encounters. With the conditions of your average pot, an ounce of worms will double in about three months. A Can-O-Worms may be sold with a pound of worms but ours ramped up just fine on eight ounces. We started with a pot on Dec 30 2006, doubled by the end of March (two ounces), doubled again at the end of June (four ounces), doubled again at the end of Sep (eight ounces), and got tired of taking care of multiple pots by the end of October.
Daily vermiposting is so simple that a [-]caveman[/-] teenager can do it. Ours clears the dishes off the table, lifts the lid, throws the fruit/veggie waste onto the pile, and closes the lid. (Cutting, grinding, mixing, and otherwise playing with the pile can speed things up but it's not necessary.) Decomposition & critters do the rest and the worms slurp up the end product. Every few days I'll throw a sheet of newspaper on top of the food waste to discourage flies, but it's not a problem even if I forget for a week or two. The worms enthusiastically ramp up reproduction to accomodate the food supply (it only takes them a couple weeks to catch up) and they'll breed to equilibrium. If we go on vacation for a couple of weeks we don't have to do anything. If we left for a couple of months we could cut up a few bananas or papaya and throw them into the vermiposter, but in our neighborhood we'd turn them over to a neighbor's kid for a science project.
We just changed out a Can-O-Worms tray yesterday. (See photo link below.) We drained the bottom reservoir through the spigot (a couple cups of leachate), lifted off the top food tray and set it on a stack of old newspaper, then lifted the bottom tray of vermipost off the reservoir. We pulled a few worms off the surface of the bottom tray and emptied the tray over a couple backyard gardenias that have been looking kinda scraggly.* The top food tray went on top of the reservoir to start a new stack. We'd let it get too full so we shook some of the contents into a second tray, which went on top of the first food tray. We added some shredded newspaper to a third empty vermipost tray and added it to the top of the stack, where we'll begin adding our new food waste. The critters will immediately go to work on the waste in the top tray. The worms will spread through the bottom two trays and eventually work their way up to the top one as they slurp their way through the waste.
In 2-3 months we'll pull off the top two trays, empty the vermipost from the bottom tray, and rotate the stack.
*
[-]Anal-retentive[/-] Frugal vermiposters would set aside the vermipost in a couple of covered two-gallon buckets for a few weeks, occasionally spritzing with water to keep them moist. Baby worms, only a millimeter or two long and difficult to see without a magnifying glass, would grow and congregate in the center of each bucket of vermipost. The buckets could then be cautiously emptied to expose the half-ounce or so of worms, which could be returned to the vermiposter or sold for profit. We decided that we have better things to do all day.
The rest of the photos:
Nords_Nords/Vermiposting - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting
