My Worm Ranch and Other Lies
I have been a composter for a long time after having read
many ‘how to do it’ articles about composting. Most were glowing reports about
the benefits of composting, and how you can help save the world by reducing the
amount of your throw-away food stuff. Some of the reports included grandiose
claims that aren’t quite true. My composting experience has taught a few things
about what works and doesn’t work. Here is my story.
I got into the composting game as a consequence of a bad
experience in fertilizing flowers with commercial products guaranteed to create
bigger flower blossoms, more potatoes, redder tomatoes and so forth. My bad
experience occurred when I was put in charge of managing flower gardens at our
church. Early one spring after I had chosen and procured all the new flowers, I
had the job of planting each of the tender plants that would provide a variety
of colors and shapes in my newly created garden. Since there was talk of
entering our church garden in the annual community garden walk, I wanted our
garden to look its best. Since I had read too many ads about the benefits of
‘Super Booster Flower Food,’ I purchased a large bag of Super Booster
determined to make sure that each of the tender seedlings had a generous
helping of Super Boost right from the start of their new life. I reasoned that
the best approach would be to put some of the fertilizer in each hole dug for
the new plants.
It was a mistake. The plants soon kneeled over and died.
WARNING. DON’T EVER PUT FERTILIZER IN THE PLANTING HOLE
DUG FOR NEW PLANTS. (Unless you enjoy watching your new plants slowly die from
the effect of too much fertilizer that will ‘burn’ the plant’s roots.)
This grievous error provoked my interest in composting since
most of the composting proponents claimed that with proper soil mixtures and
generous helpings of composted material, no added fertilizer is needed. Why
spend your hard-earned cash for fertilizer when you can make your own? For
free, according to the gardening folks who know about such things.
I was hooked. I began my composting at home in a shaded,
hidden part of the backyard that very fall. Within weeks I had a gargantuan
pile of leaves, weeds and various food wastes that altogether formed a
disgusting pile. “Just pile it up and forget it,” said one of the articles. I followed
their advice, making regular trips to the backyard pile with left-overs and no
thought of aesthetics or the critters that regularly visited the pile to
consume those materials they believed were too tasty to ignore. My potato peels
and dinner left-overs never went to waste as it always seemed there was someone
in the world of wild critters who favored such a dish, leaving in its place a
small pile of their wastes (already composted material, it seemed to me). I
continued my treks to the compost pile in the winter. As fewer critters were
about in the cold, snowy weather, the waste food began piling up, slowly changing
colors and losing all semblance of form or color, becoming a pile of disgusting
gunk. Fortunately, my pile was well-hidden and I was able to ignore the mess
since it was mostly hidden from view and I consoled myself to its nasty
appearance with visions of spring time, with a new source of fertile soil
springing forth from the pile of wastes. Meanwhile, the pile continued to grow
in size. I could hardly wait for spring to arrive.
As winter weather subsided and the month of May appeared,
many of our spring birds had arrived before I decided to open up the compost
pile and take some of the free, fertile soil for use on my garden beds. Upon
examination, I was surprised to learn that the pile was frozen solid,
unyielding to my piddling efforts with a shovel. I waited another two weeks as
the wild flowers came into bloom and the weeds began to grow in my gardens. One
inch below the surface, the hoped-for compost was still frozen solid,
impossible to dig. In June, the compost yielded 2 inches of melted soil that I
furiously hacked into while the garden weeks grew even higher. The ice was
still several inches thick, impossible to dig. It took until early July before
the compost pile had finally thawed, allowing me to dig into it, uncovering the
still undigested left-overs, that no one would want to see on any garden bed. A
new composting strategy was clearly needed. I decided to move my compost pile to
an area exposed to the sun in hopes of an earlier melt. I also filled several
plastic bags full of leaves to serve as insulation to keep my compost pile warm
for next year’s compost. The experts said the leaves would become themselves
composted even as they performed their insulating duty. I also decided to hedge
my bets and begin a worm ranch in the basement where freezing would not be a
problem.
Worm ranching, (or vermiculture, as we experts call it),
involves creating a ranch for the worms and feeding them for a period of
several months as they create fertilizer, otherwise known as a pile of worm
poop. I spent a good share of my first vermiculture winter climbing up and down
the stairs to the basement for feeding our left-over food scraps to the worms.
In a few weeks I learned what the little red worms liked and didn’t like.
Coffee grounds were favorites, while they disdained banana peels and most other
left-over fruit peels. It turns out that red worms don’t need many left-over
food scraps to be happy. My observation was that they favored eating their shredded
paper bedding material since their bedding seemed to rapidly disappear while
they ignored my food scraps save the coffee grounds and the odd morsel that was
free of meat, diary, and citrus. Around Christmas, I finally gave up on much of
the left-overs still adorning the ranch and removed the mushy, blackened peels
and other detritus returning it to a rightful place in the trashcan. The worms
didn’t seem to mind.
The following spring, I moved the worm ranch to the now-warm
garage and opened the frozen outdoor compost pile early, using water to help
the sun in thawing the pile. In the meantime, I found that the piles of leaves
were just as I had placed them in the fall. The black plastic bags that were
supposed to help make compost failed to do any such thing and the leaves were
beginning to blow around the lawn due to the large tears in the bags from my
rough handling as I tried to nudge them in place around the unforgiving pile of
compost. I judged the leaf insulation to be a failure in my compost adventure,
despite the garden magazine recommendation.
I kind of forgot about the worms in the ranch that was
stationed in a corner of my garage while I watered, turned and fed the outdoor
compost. The worms in the outdoor pile seemed much more forgiving than the
ranch-raised red worms about their food. The outdoor worms seemed to delight in
practically everything I fed them. I remember putting a melon peel in the pile
and in several days the peel was coated with large worms, of the size of night
crawlers. I assume they were happy with the melon peel while their cousins, the
red worms, had earlier ignored all fruit peels. After the spring had turned
into early summer and we returned from a camping vacation, I remembered the
garage-based worm ranch. I opened the top (worms don’t like light) and was
surprised that I hadn’t been greeted by several wrigglers. With no worries, I
pushed my hand into the worm poop that now occupied most of the ranch. There
was no sign of any worms. None. Apparently, the worms had all gone to worm
heaven and they were now as one with the worm poop, leaving no sign of their
adventures in the plastic bins that had been their homes. I was a little sad
and I hoped they had a good life. Thus ended my six-month adventure into
ranch-based vermiculture. I deposited the 12 by 16-inch tray of worm poop into
my outdoor compost, certain that the worms there would happily make use of
remnants of my ranch.
Now, here it is summertime with the gardens in full bloom
and the worms still happily helping to turn lawn, garden, and food wastes into
newly created soil. I should add that I have returned to the occasional use of purchased
fertilizer, sprinkling it adjacent to growing plants but never in a hole dug
for their roots. Sheesh! Who would do such a thing …
Your gardening friend,
Bill Green Thumb
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