Worm Composting - as the Worm Turns

Saturday Anna and I attended a Worm Composting class at a local organic farm. It was very interesting and lots of fun. We came away with a set-up worm bin containing aged worm bedding and 1/2 lb. of red wiggler worms. 

We plan on using the bins primarily to generate worm casting for the garden. As half a pound of worms really cannot digest more than about 1/2 cup of food a day, or even over a few days, we will not be relying on these worms to recycle all of our table scraps, at least not just yet.

For recycling our table scraps we will continue to use regular composting and Black Soldier Fly larvae. 

We learned at the class that the red wiggler worms do not actually eat the stuff you put in the bins, but eat the microbes and fungi generated by the decomposing foods. Black Soldier Fly larvae on the other hand can directly consume several pounds of table scraps a day. They begin eating the fresh table scraps right away, before they have a chance to start decomposing, and they generate a substrate that is perfect worm food. 

We plan on trying to create a system using these two organisms. First the BSF larvae will take fresh table scraps and convert them into worm food, then the worms will take that BSF compost and create worm castings for the garden.

The BSF larvae are set up outdoors and the worm bin is in the laundry room. Neither bin is smelly. I will have another post soon about the self-harvesting BSF bin I set up, in addition to the bin that contains the BSF larvae now, if it looks like it is going to work. I want to be able to harvest the mature larvae for feed when we get our chickens.

Anna's comments - The worms were cool, but she liked the farms friendly baby goats best.