Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Now Leasing

My worm farm arrived a few days ago, but with all the chaos surrounding the steps going on, it sort of got lost in the dust. 

Look at the cute little hand rake that came with it!  The worms should arrive tomorrow-- they shipped out of Portland, OR yesterday.  I and several kiddos on my street are eagerly awaiting the mail delivery.  I'll be getting the condo ready for leasing tonight...

3 comments:

Dallas Fruit Grower said...

Have fun with your worm composting. I bought the same set-up about a year and a half ago, and it works great. It will produce a lot of vermicompost liquid that is great as a fertilizer for your garden. In the summer, it can produce about 1 to 2 quarts a week. Some vendors sell it for $50 a gallon, so it's a pretty good deal.

I've had a couple of disasters where I put in way too many melons and tomatoes (high water content) and overwhelmed the worms. Serious disaster, and they made a pretty bad smell. Don't make my same mistake!!

Project Girl said...

Thanks for stopping by. So do you live in Dallas? I'm struggling with where to put my worm farm; I want to put it outdoors but I am worried it will be too hot. Do you have yours outdoors?

Does yours produce more liquid in the summer than other times of the year? Why is that?

I'm still quite new to this, but so far, so good..

-- Project Girl

Dallas Fruit Grower said...

Yes, I am in Dallas.

Location is a bit tricky because the worms don't like a lot of variation in temperature. I have read that they prefer 60 to 85 degrees, more or less.

I had been keeping our bin in our utility room, but I had to move it to the garage when I had one of the disasters mentioned above/below and it started to smell before I was able to clean out the carnage in the top bin. The garage stayed around 55 degrees even during that cold spell when it hit 15 degrees outside. The remaining worms survived, but I am not sure if they liked it. I am going to move it back inside now that I have the bin back in balance.

I don't know if you will want to keep your bin outside. You are probably going to be putting food scraps in it, and that might attract rats, possums, etc. If you do put it outdoors, you should probably keep it on a northern or eastern exposure in shade.

I get more vermicompost liquid in the summer because that is when we are composting a lot of fruits and vegetables from the garden - peels, discards, etc. We seem to eat more produce when it's coming out of the garden and have more compostible material as a result.

Have fun with it. It's kind of gross, but very interesting at the same time.