Worm Farming

The New Vermiculture

This presents a problem, as I live in a climate that although warm in the summer, can be pretty cold in winter.

From October to April, the temperatures are around freezing, even during the day, which prevents worms from being active.

I have several worm bins that stay in the root cellar for the winter, but out of the three Rubbermaid containers filled with worms, horse manure and some kitchen scraps, two still contain some active worms and the other one has an overgrowth of some kind of white mold.

Worm Farming in Compost

This method of vermicomposting obviously won’t work in my climatic conditions.

In my compost bin outside, however, I was overjoyed to find that there were millions of wriggling happy worms in the middle of March, when normally all is still frozen solid.

What was different with this year? Well, first of all, I only moved out about half of the finished compost and sprinkled it into some new compost bins in the garden in the fall; the other part was left in place near the house to be used over the winter as a compost scrap accumulating station.

I surrounded the wire mesh with another larger bin of stucco wire, and filled the space between them with lots and lots of fallen leaves, hoping to keep it a little warmer and be able to access it sooner in the spring.

Over the winter, even though the top surface of the kitchen scraps added periodically was frozen, underneath, the warmth of the slowly decaying vegetable matter was keeping the worms happy and warm.

The sheer numbers of the teeming organisms is what makes the heat, and the worms thrive in the frequent and generous additions of coffee grounds, carrot peelings and tea leaves, with the judicious contributions of newspaper, celery tops and other organic matter.

I plan on making this method of worm farming my technique of choice, given that I always have a healthy stock of fall leaves and lots of organic matter from the kitchen. Composting with worms can be fun, not work. Now that’s smart gardening.

No more rancid kitchen scraps in a soggy bin, or one that’s too dry. I will have a happy herd of worms to take care of the detritus from soup making, or cleaning out the fridge, and I won’t have to wait until spring.

See more about Worm Biology 101 on this site - link opens in a new window.

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Sustainable Gardening

Vermicomposting