Monday, April 20, 2009

Moving Material


One aspect of a worm bin is what to do with the material after the worms have worked it and need fresh bedding. This is some of the most awesome stuff on earth! Seriously, if you are a gardener you will be in heaven when your bins get to the point that they need regular fresh bedding.

The container in this picture is one of the Large kiddie wadding pools you can pick up every year at KMart, or any such store. I have a number of them I have salvaged from the trash or yard sales. They are perfect for handling large quantities of material as they are not too deep and provide a good amount of surface area for drying the material.

This batch sat all winter and the bacteria and microbes continued to work the material until it was so fine it looked like soil. Mind you, I do not use any soil in my worm bins, not even the handful so many tell you to add to your bin when you start one out. I use manure so maybe I get enough soil mixed with the manure I don't need it, but my bins have never needed it.

I have a harvester that I put the material through that has an 1/8th inch screen on it and separates the finer castings material from the coarser compost. I estimate about 60 lbs. of castings came out of this batch (it would have been heavier but the material dried pretty good over the winter). I got 2 large, construction size wheelbarrow loads which I put on a bed I had prepared and that raised my bed up one landscape timber deep.

This is great stuff for the garden. Just one more reason to worm bin compost.

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