{"id":33,"date":"2021-04-11T18:29:43","date_gmt":"2021-04-11T18:29:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scottbryce.com\/vermi-adventure\/?p=33"},"modified":"2021-04-16T18:02:30","modified_gmt":"2021-04-16T18:02:30","slug":"welcome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottbryce.com\/vermi-adventure\/2021\/04\/11\/welcome\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Where this all started<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When I was 15, I was interested in fishing, an interest that quickly faded when my lack of success didn\u2019t justify the cost of a fishing license. I liked to use worms for bait, so I decided to try my hand at raising worms, even though it was a somewhat pointless project, being how I lived in an area where I could walk a few blocks into the woods, kick up some soil, and find worms almost anywhere. I came across a book on raising red worms in sewer sludge at the library. I liked the idea. I found the process fascinating. But I didn\u2019t really understand that there are different kinds of worms, and the bog soil I collected for my worms was not the same as sewer sludge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a bin under our deck that was meant for composting, but wasn\u2019t being used. I filled it with bog soil, tossed in some worms collected in the nearby woods, and began feeding them what I cleaned out of the refrigerator once a week. That fall, in an effort to keep the worms from freezing, I raked up all of our leaves, piled them on the bin, and lost interest in the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fast forward about 15 years. I was a home owner with space to grow tomatoes. I also had trees on the property that dropped enough leaves every year to rake up 10 yards of compostable material. I was also new to the internet, and found a site on oldgrowth.org that ran a forum for composters. I built 4 compost bins from scrap cedar collected at a construction site where an old fence had been torn out. I also went on line to learn what I could about making the compost bins successful. One of the groups on the site was about worm composting. I soon found that group more interesting than the conventional composting group.

Encouraged by what I was learning in the worm composting group, I stared a rather ambitious project of building a continuous flow through bin with 6 square feet of surface area. I stocked it with 5 pounds of worms. I did not, however manage the bin well. I overfed it, and the worms died. My wife was not happy with the money and effort spent on the bin, and I gave up the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, I also gave up my wife.  Living alone in an apartment, I had a new opportunity to try again. I made a DIY bin from an 18 gallon RubberMaid tote stocked with a pound of worms. This bin was a success. It eventually grew to 2 RubberMaid totes and a small continuous flow through bin that I designed and built. I liked to feed my worms foods that were usually on people\u2019s Do Not Feed lists, like onions and orange peels. I learned a lot about growing and feeding worms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But that project was also short lived, since keeping worms was against the terms of my lease agreement, and I didn\u2019t want trouble with my apartment manager. All 3 bins were given away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fast forward again. I am again a home owner, and a husband, and I just really like raising worms. I started a new DIY Rubbermaid tote bin with 1 pound of worms. My wife did not like the fruit flies and fungus gnats in the house, so I moved the bin outside. I wanted to expand, so when she came across some scrap lumber to build some shelves in her sewing room, I told her I would build the shelves if she would get enough extra scrap lumber for me to build a largish continuous flow through bin with the extra lumber. She agreed. I built a continuous flow through bin with 8 square feet of surface area. That has become my main bin, and the bin in which I continue to do feeding experiments. I am hoping she has enough scrap lumber left over from her latest project, raised garden beds, to allow me to expand again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When we moved into this house, my wife dug up a grapevine at her old house and we transplanted it here. I got tired of weeding around it, so I decided to mulch it heavily. As long as I was mulching it, I might as well use something organic that would break down and feed the soil. As long as I had a thick layer of organic mulch, I might as well toss in some worms. That has now become another successful worm bin at the base of the grapevine.

Since I like pushing the limits of what we can feed worms, I will often make videos of my worm feeding experiments and post them on a Facebook worm composting group. There has been quite a bit of interest in the videos.

This blog is a way of sharing what I have learned over the years: what the experts have posted on the various worms forums I have been part of, what has worked for me, and what hasn\u2019t, and what I will continue to learn in the years to come.

I invite you to join me on my Vermi Adventure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Where this all started When I was 15, I was interested in fishing, an interest that quickly faded when my lack of success didn\u2019t justify the cost of a fishing license. I liked to use worms for bait, so I decided to try my hand at raising worms, even though it was a somewhat pointless… Continue reading Welcome.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7,6,5],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-composting","tag-vermicomposting","tag-worms","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottbryce.com\/vermi-adventure\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottbryce.com\/vermi-adventure\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottbryce.com\/vermi-adventure\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottbryce.com\/vermi-adventure\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottbryce.com\/vermi-adventure\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/scottbryce.com\/vermi-adventure\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46,"href":"https:\/\/scottbryce.com\/vermi-adventure\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions\/46"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottbryce.com\/vermi-adventure\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottbryce.com\/vermi-adventure\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottbryce.com\/vermi-adventure\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}