This is a an update on my evolution in the process of vermiculture, or red wiggler composting worms, making the manure and using it as fertilizer.
The more interesting dynamic is to create the compost tea product, or what some people call worm juice, which is, you might consider it a tonic for plants.
It has many benefits, including adding a sort of slurry of nutrient that's biologically enhanced by the digestive process of the worms.
And it's basically breaking down all of the food scraps, usually from the kitchen.
If you're doing the worm composting for your kitchen scraps, your green waste, typically avoiding meat and dairy, not because they're unable to consume them as they break down, but because it tends to attract rodents and other pests and have potentially foul orders in the process of breaking down.
So most people just preferentially avoid doing that because it's a small scale, and some people even do it under their sink or even on their counter tops with different devices for this.
But if you're at the farm scale, you probably can get away with putting more things in there, in the system.
But for the most part, they have some foods that they would avoid. It could be harmful to them. Spicy foods, acidic foods, mainly, I've read lists of things not to include, and some of them can be so exhaustive that there's almost nothing left you can feed them.
I've tended to lean towards just not excessively introducing food scraps that would be harmful to them.
Therefore, if there's a small amount that they would just prefer to avoid, as long as there's plenty of places for them to go to avoid it, then eventually it will just rot down on its own and be less harmful, if not, if not no longer harmful at all.
So the more the merrier, in terms of the volume of the system, in my opinion.
But I've built a number of these, a number of different ways, small, tiny ones, large ones, and indoor, outdoor all scales, pretty much then there are larger scales that I would like to get to eventually.
But for now, the most workable, most human scale operation for a typical gardener is gonna be something even as small as a five gallon bucket, but on from there, the large plastic totes.
However, for me personally, I'm trying to avoid plastic.
So I've gone with terra cotta pots for my own aesthetic and done very well, it costs quite a bit more money to get those at a large enough scale for it to work the way you want it to.
To me, it's worth it, and maybe you can source similar things for free.
The idea is, if you have the right size container for the scale you're operating, at making sure that their needs are met in the design of the container, that there's ventilation holes or airflow aeration of some kind, so doesn't lose all oxygen and drainage.
So that the leachate from the waters, the moisture in the food as it gets broken down by the worms.
That leachate or that runoff is gonna need to go somewhere, because it'll just create what's called anaerobic digestion bog at the bottom of the container, which will have a foul odor, and it will be noxious to the worms.
A lot of people would argue it would spoil the product of the compost that you're trying to harvest, and it would make it even in some ways, harmful to plants.
There are people who advocate for a sort of paradigm shift that would integrate so called anaerobic compost products.
I'm not an expert in that, and certainly to me, it's just so foul. I'd rather avoid it and stick with a more aerated type of product.
Another value to this, taking a side note here, is that whereas if you were doing what's called thermophilic composting, and you have a large compost pile, then you have to heat it to a certain temperature in order for the composting process, the thermophilic composting process to work.
You're favoring the use of temperatures to kill pathogens and to hopefully kill or make inert weed seeds and end up with a very fine grain, very dark, humus material that has been fully composted.
Because compost both a thing and a process. And it doesn't typically happen in nature as fast as we're able to do it.
But a thermophilic compost heap involves maintaining a certain moisture level, maintaining a certain heat at the core of the pile, so that chemical reactions occur to break the material down, and certain biological actions occur, and you have to continually move the edges into the center.
It is a labor intensive process that's very rewarding and a good workout and great exercise and produces a great product and a great volume of product.
But in terms of the density and the potency of fertilizing material, worm compost tea is actually the right tool for the job.
If you wanna spot treat things and you wanna enhance, maybe the compost material that you already have, maybe it's a little stale, and it's not quite as vibrant, not quite as full of flourishing, adding the living worm tea, that's living compost, as opposed to what could be just essentially dead compost that was biologically alive in the composing process.
And was probably more potentially useful when it was more alive versus when it is essentially just inert and dead again.
If it's allowed to dry out and just be a dry compost, then you have to bring it back to life somehow.
That's only gonna happen naturally at a very slow pace. That's my way of putting it. There's people far more scientifically trained than I am to explain all that in much better detail.
But with that said, going back to the design of the system, which is where I'm at now.
After creating systems that have not just generalized drainage holes that would just seep into the ground or kind of do nothing useful.
The idea for me was to lift them up, lift the system up on cinder blocks, or build a table, or whatever it takes to elevate it, so that you can have a more of a funnel, and sometimes even a hose so that it’s not just dripping out of holes in the bottom of the container.
But actually funneling with the hose attached so that it can be directed either into an area of the landscape that you want, or collected in a bucket or some other container underneath the main compost tea system, so that you can harvest that worm tea or that compost tea or that worm juice.
Then with a watering can or a pail or a bucket, you can toss it around trees.
And then with the watering can, you can apply it to the soil of plantings of all kinds of, all different types of crops.
Also, for the crops that you may not necessarily be eating the leaves of, at least not until it rains, or you water them thoroughly, rinse them thoroughly, there is the value that I learned about, which is to create a sort of protective biofilm with the compost tea. It's preventative of of fungus and other diseases.
I'm not well versed in the science of that, but I take it on high authority that this is a thing.
If it's an herb or a green or something you're gonna be eating a lot, I’d avoid spraying it.
Though on the soil or on leaves you’re not gonna eat right away, you can spray it as a concentration with whatever type of spraying mechanism you have, then water it for dilution.
Obviously, you wanna be careful about the force of the delivery. With that said, there are various applications, I’m just giving that sort of background, the thing that I've arrived at, having done this system many times, where I'm really mainly just wanting to create that compost tea, and you could just wait and let it slowly drip of its own accord over time.
That's gonna create very little volume of a product of the compost tea.
And it's most likely gonna be that just letting that drip and collecting something, it's gonna go sour.
It's gonna attract mosquitoes, it's gonna be harmful and noxious and smelly, and it's gonna be anaerobic, because stagnant water that is filled with rotting organic material, is going to become anaerobic very shortly after, unless you are aerating it.
They have aeration stones, for fish tanks and aquariums or whatnot.
The idea is you could aerate water by submerging some sort of device that would a pump and send air into the water in very small bubbles, to prevent the anaerobic process.
And it would keep the water moving slightly, not not as much as a water pump but it would create some turbulence in the water.
That point is to be made for the purpose of warning against just having a dripping compost tea system where you just say, oh it's been there for a week, and I see that it's filled up an inch in the bottom of something well, by that time, it's really not safe to use in terms of it could be doing harm in the soil, or it could be aerobic and anaerobic composting organisms don't play well together.
That's my understanding. So it's best to, if you're gonna make the tea, harvest it quickly and create enough of it in that time so that it's freshly poured, it's still very aerated, and it's supplied very immediately.
So for the people that sell compost tea in a bottled form, I would make it myself fresh and extremely fresh, and not think to buy it because it's just one of those things where, if I can do it myself. I will to save the money. I'm not gonna disparage bottled compost tea.
I'm just curious what they are doing to keep it preserved in a certain state where it doesn't become noxious or harmful.
I'm sure there's something they do, or there's some science behind that, I'm not hundred percent aware of.
So I'm sure they know what they're doing, but I wouldn't know, because I haven't needed to use it.
I make my own and I make it fresh. So the thing I do in that process, which is to some people, unorthodox or extreme, but because I've had great success with it in terms of the health of the worm population and the effectiveness of the product in the soil and for production of the plants.
My technique is to create a worm bin of whatever size, and then even up to on a daily basis, flush the bin with very clean, either filtered water or well water, water that is not filled with chlorine and chloramines and other chemicals from the municipal water supply.
Or whatever scale the piped in water, if it's filtered or it's fresh or clean, because from a well, or it's rain water, whatever may be flushing in and flooding and flushing, those cycles of water I was getting, I was using, I don't know how many gallons. Maybe 20 to 30 gallon bin type of thing, storage tote, if you will, and using that as the container to collect the food scraps and keep the worms alive within. And rather than just having the food pile up in there and fill it up, and then have to wait for the worms to break it down, and then have to move the worms out and harvest the manure from the bottom, and then recycle the positioning of everything, then have it fill up again.
My method is flushing it with water every day.
I was providing the worm compost to quite a large scale of plantings and trees over the last several months.
In that process, I was able to with a large volume of food scrap input from a kitchen with a fair amount of food scraps coming out every day.
Within a few days it would have filled up but because I was flushing it, I would say somewhere between ten and 30 gallons of compost tea every day through that system...
The first couple of gallons would be very rich and dark and very potent with the the compost tea, or the manure that was being hydrated and made into a slurry, and that coming out.
And then, of course, you would imagine it getting very thin over several wash out periods, if you will. But in fact, it stayed very dark and very high manure content for most of those batches of filling it up and letting it drain into a five gallon bucket, funneling it into that and then taking a bucket out.
I would rotate the buckets. So I'd have two buckets, one that was getting filled up as I was filling it with the hose, and it was draining into the bucket.
And then once it was filled about two thirds of the way, so it was manageable to carry, I had to hike it around a bunch of places. But once that was filled up to the line that I was comfortable with at that point, I would take the take the second bucket and drop it in place so it could be filling with the slower flow.
As I'm filling the bin with the hose, it's flushing out very fast into the first bucket.
And then by the time that fills up, when I'm ready to walk away from it, it's starting to drip slower as the last remaining water is still filtering through.
By the time I get back that second bucket is full enough to take out.
So it's an interesting cycle, interesting cadence of cycling through them.
It was amazing to me that I found the perfect balance of the size of the bin, the amount of food stamps coming in, the amount of or the number of gallons that I was flushing through it per day, and to get it to a point where it became this perfect balance, a perfect equilibrium.
It only ever got and stayed half full for months, which to me, is a major accomplishment, or major discovery and breakthrough, that it's possible to have this very sustainable flow, literally, flow sort of pattern to where one relatively small bin, with that flushing process happening, can be in this steady state of not getting too full.
Not getting too empty, the worms thriving, and them doing their work in that 24 hour cycle of new food gets added and basically, overnight, they're doing their thing to break it down.
And then at some point the following morning, I come around and I start for an hour or two. I'm doing this process of filling the bin, letting it drain into a bucket, taking that bucket out to the watering can.
If it was trees, I would just take the bucket as it is, and I would use the watering can to be more surgical and directed with vegetable plantings and berries and whatnot.
But a very effective process, and I’m very excited that I was able to prove to myself that this can be done because I had set these up before, and then I would just very infrequently use it, it was more like a rare treat for the plants.
I would give them their worm juice smoothie and I wasn't doing it every day.
The reason I did it every day, this cycle, this time with this particular worm bin system, was that it was late in the season to get started planting, and I wanted to super charge the growth and the fertility and the resilience of these plants that were getting established in the middle of the summer and suffering in the heat and not getting that head start by being planted earlier or being planted from seeds.
So from transplant shock to the heat of the summer to it being late and also it being new, undeveloped soil, all these factors, that's probably the biggest one, is that it was inert dead, sort of dirt.
Soil that wasn't highly flocculated. It wasn't highly filled with living biology.
So to kick start that biology, it was an experiment for me to say, I'm going to push this to the max, and I'm gonna do the worm juice treatments every day.
Whereas I don't know what a rule of thumb would be, but I would say for me, I would probably thought, okay, oh, just water and I'll irrigate and water with just clean water. And then maybe once a week, I'll give them that treat of or I'll fertigate is the word for fertilizer and irrigation in one formula.
So pushing to the max every day, it was fine for the worms. It did not harm them. It did not slow down their growth.
They're stoked and very prolific. And my analogy with nature, which is how I wanna be bio mimetic, the word bio mimicry to actually think like nature and act like nature.
Well, these worms, in nature, if it was a tropical climate or a climate with a lot of rainfall then in nature these compost worms doing what they would do in piles of leaves or in that naturally occurring piles of manure or whatever they're obviously expecting to get rained on and sometimes there's heavy rain so as long as there's drainage and they're not getting flooded and drowned.
Then they're just getting running the water through there. It's essentially the same process of them being rained on. So it's not unnatural to put the water through.
It's like, well, if it's the tropics in a certain time of year, then that's to be expected.
So sometimes you kind of ratchet things up and push things to the extreme, and it can do harm, or it can be excessive.
And something to be aware of is like not taking things and running with them and say, oh, I'm replicating nature, but you're doing it on a scale, or at a rate that's gonna be harmful.
And so I'm glad to have, again, found that it's a perfect balance and that's possible.
And from now on, I may not be as extreme about it.
Hopefully I won't need to be, maybe it'll be just several times a week and not every day.
But if it has to be, it can be and it will get the results.
So the conclusion is that the production of the crops was enhanced, the health was vigorous vitality, everything that I wanted to see, lots of growth and rapid soil improvement and enrichment.
And the results would have been far less glorious had I not been using the worms use at that scale, and that rate, which, again, I would say, was experimentally extreme and potentially excessive.
I was willing to roll the dice to hope to get the best results and I certainly did.
And again, I think the most important thing besides just okay, it worked, and it did what it was supposed to do. It's just that it's possible to have that equilibrium, that balance of the volume, and to keep it in that zone.
So with that, said, happy worm composting. I'm excited to have that new discovery and that new research, that pseudo scientific laboratory research of just being the folk science, the anecdotal experience.
I don't know how to put that in a MIT like chalkboard formula, but I'm sure someone will figure it out. And hopefully we are able to push the limits of these systems and get maximum results without going too far and actually doing any harm.