Once you have made your decisions about your bin, including location then the next issue to address is the bedding material. These are some of the materials I use for my bedding material.
I am lucky enough to live in an area where I have a neighbor who has a horse. Any manure is good as long as it has composted. You don't want the bedding to heat up, it will kill the worms. An excellent choice is cow manure, pig manure, llama, and/or rabbit. Another name for redworms is manure worm. That's because manure is a natural habitat for them.
I also use leaves. Worms love rotting leave. Put them through the lawn mower or a shredder to shred the leaves up.
The last thing I use a lot of is shredded newspaper. I lay it on thick on top of the bin and wet it down. It takes a few wettings to get all the paper fibers saturated. Once the paper is evenly wet it lays on the bin like a blanket. You can pull it back and feed under it. Then when you want to see what the worms are doing you just pull back the blanket. Eventually the worms will work their way up into the newspaper and start consuming it. There will be a time you will pull the blanket back and it will fall apart. That's when you work it into the bedding and start over.
The variety of bedding helps keep a wide spectrum of bacteria in the end product. Add a variety of food stock and you have a bacteria powered product to add to your soil.
So get out there and start gathering bedding material.
If you can't find any of these there is a product called Coir. It is made from coconut shells. It is much like peat moss but it is a renewable resource unlike peatmoss.
Christy
wormn@motherearthsfarm.com
Where good things come from for the body and soil.
No comments:
Post a Comment