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Why a WormGin™ worm bin?
- It's easy and it works and even your hippie neighbor will be impressed.
- You too can get rid of your stinky garbage can.
- Organic Gardening works great if you have Vermicompost!
- Learning about Red Wiggler worms is a great way to connect with Nature.
- Nature highly values your kitchen scraps, so you are "giving to a good cause".
- Your garbage can will not be adding to the problem at a landfill somewhere.
- Your garbage disposal will not be adding to the problem at your wastewater treatment plant.
- Your garden and indoor plants will adore you.
- You can keep it indoors without worrying about it smelling bad.
- You can keep it in the garage or on the porch for most of the year.
- You can start other worm bins with the worms you will raise.
- Waste not, want not.
- Fisherguys and gals: These are not the worms you are looking for!
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WormGin™ Setup and maintenance:
Setup in one sentence: buy it, open it, attach tray supports, set the bin in place on blocks (Expanding) or attach bin to tray (Standard),
add base bedding (with worms), attach feed shelf,
add newstrips and water, add food, add more newstrips and water, snap on lid and place feed pipe. You are done.
It's that easy! Just put it someplace safe and where you can walk up to it, lift the plug
and drop the food in. You lift the lid up to check out the moisture level by looking at the newstrips (that's my word for newspaper that has been
torn or cut into long strips, separated from each other, then fluffed up) and reacting. More on that below, the short version is
that you add the newstrips dry, and then maybe sprinkle a measured amount of water over them. You check the upper bedding a
couple of days later and if it is damp, you are good to go. If things get too wet, you mix in more dry newstrips, fluff the bedding
up and you're good to go.
Setup, detailed:
To start the setup from the very beginning, you might want to look at the
About WormGin™ shipping
discussion.
Assembly instructions are of course included, and the images shown here should give you a pretty good idea of how simple
the setup is.
The two 2x4 lumber pieces are called "tray supports" and are packed inside the bin to save shipping costs.
You will attach the tray supports using a screwdriver or cordless drill to install large steel wood screws (pilot holes provided).
For the Standard model,
you then attach the tray assembly to the Bin assembly (left) by installing 4 small wood screws with washers thru the tray and up into
the blocks already attached to the bin (pilot holes provided; you actually do this step with the setup upside down).
Installing the feed shelf (right) finishes the "hardware", but leave it off until after the base bedding goes in.
For the Expanding model,
you simply stack up the 1x2 wooden blocks (left) before setting the bin on top of them, over the feed shelf posts.
Installing the feed shelf (right) finishes the "hardware", but leave it off until after the base bedding goes in.
Put the WormGin™ in its location before adding the bedding.
The base bedding includes pioneer worms, and goes into the bin if you're ready to finish the setup. If you purchased
a half-pound or pound of worms with your WormGin™ they are mixed in with the base bedding already. Spread
it all out more or less evenly across the bottom of the bin.
You will then attach the feed shelf using stainless steel fender washers and hex nuts, just "finger tight". The base bedding
can be easily knocked off the posts to get it out of the way.
Next comes the food. The ideal amount to feed depends on the amount of worms and how stressed out they are, but
no more than a pound to start with. Spread it out on top of the feed shelf.
Then you will add the lower newstrip bedding layer to cover the food, about 4 inches thick dry. Then sprinkle a measured
amount of chlorine-free water over it (about a cup).
Then the top layer of newstrip is added: you want to stuff it full and then again add a measured amount
of water. The top layer only needs to be damp. (Its purpose is more about blocking fruit flies from
the food than about providing worm habitat.)
If you don't have your pound or half-pound of worms yet, the pioneers in the base bedding will get things
started. When you get the main worms,
lift up the upper and middle bedding and drop the worms on top of the base bedding and food.
Snap on the lid, put the feed tube in place with its plug and you are done. Go have an adult beverage if you'd like to.
Oh wait, one more thing. When setting up, the Standard model WormGin™ worm bin can easily be moved around by grabbing the bin:
it is all connected together as one unit (except the lid and feed pipe of course). With the Expanding model, not so much. You'll want to
lift the unit by the tray, not the bin, to keep the blocks in place. Of course you can always put the blocks back in place no big deal.
Once the bin is well established, it will get heavy, and lifting the bin should be done with a helper to grip each end
of the bin to lift up together; better yet lift by the tray which is easiest on the worms but maybe not on your back.
A worm bin is meant to have a permanent home so you don't
have to move it around, but the WormGin™ worm bin easily slides on the floor. It's just
the lifting that can be a hassle. You can install casters if you want.
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Maintenance:
Other than providing ideal worm habitat, the most important design criteria was to make your WormGin™ worm bin
as low maintenance as possible. It's pretty much all about occasionally adding newstrips and having a spray bottle
of water handy. And NOT overfeeding. At some point you will be harvesting the vermicompost, no big deal.
That's pretty much it. Make sure you read the Bedding section below, because maintenance of the
WormGin™ worm bin is all about keeping the bedding in good shape. Not that you have to deal with it often.
You can maintain your worm bin once a month, or weekly, or whenever. Red Wigglers are very adaptable: just don't
foul their habitat and they will be fine.
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Dos and Don'ts:
- DO NOT OVERFEED: if you recognize lots of two week old food you are overfeeding
- DO keep the WormGin™ indoors at normal room temperature
- DO stuff newpaper strips in to keep the bin stuffed full
- DO mix in some dry newpaper strips if the layer on top of the feed shelf is too wet (slimy)
- DO fluff up the lower bedding if it becomes a dense wet mass
- DO NOT OVERFEED: If it smells bad you are overfeeding
- DO NOT put bad foods in (NO Meat, Dairy, Oils, Pet Waste; light on citrus and salty stuff)
- DO NOT add liquids unless the base bedding is clearly too dry (no more than 1 cup; pour in all around the
inside perimeter, not above the feed shelf).
- DO NOT allow the WormGin™ to be affected by vibrating appliances
- DO NOT OVERFEED: if there is smelly liquid on the tray you are overfeeding
Feeding:
WormGin™ systems include base bedding which has some food mixed in. For the first few weeks, as your worms get up to speed,
you will either be feeding no more than 1 cup at a time or no more often than once a week.
Feeding is very easy and you should soon get a good feel for when and how much. But as a beginner, you
are likely wondering about the first few weeks as you establish the ecosystem. I've got you covered with an
extended discussion. But I do not want to fill up this page with more details than it already has. And I want
it to be an actual discussion, not just a one-way thing but giving you the ability to ask questions in near-real
time. That is a job for good old fashioned Bulletin Board software. So here it is:
About WormGin™ Feeding.
By the way you will be amazed at how much food you end up putting in before it fills up.
Harvesting:
Of course, at some point you will have to remove some of the vermicompost. Oh darn. Nature's Favorite
Plant Food, with a mild but nice earthy aroma, it is the richest soil you will ever see. When other animals
poop it is typically rather disgusting, but worm poop isn't like that: worms poop a finished product that
is the opposite of disgusting. That's right: worm poop is as wholesome as it gets. Seriously, it's
like anti-poop. The best description of its appearance I've come across is that is looks like super moist
and crumbly chocolate cake. It basically is the "rich" part of "rich" soil. Instant Humus if you will.
You can regularly harvest the compost, a pint or two at a time, perhaps bi-weekly,
very easily once the system is up to speed. The WormGin™ concentrates the highest quality compost
around the perimeter of the bin, at the bottom. Scoop it into the Harvesting Basket, leave it for two weeks and
most or all of the worms will have moved out of the basket. Pick out any straggler worms, if you want, and put them back
in the bin; empty the basket into your container, scoop the next batch into the basket and you are done.
Harvesting a WormGin™ can be done by several different methods, you will choose the
one that works for you.
You can wait for 3 to 6 months or so and do a large harvest by removing most of the bedding and the
Feed Shelf, then the compost, sorting out and returning the worms. Then you return the WormGin™
to normal use by leaving some compost, replacing the old bedding and adding fresh bedding.
Or you can wait up to a year until the WormGin™ is packed full of compost and do a massive harvest.
For details, this is also a subject for 2-way discussion, so there is another thread on the forums
About WormGin™ Harvesting
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Inside the WormGin™ Design
The WormGin™ is a "normal" worm bin, with two features not found anywhere else: the Feed Shelf and Feed Tube. Without them,
you have a "normal" bin, the kind that often does well but also often fails. The Feed Shelf and Feed Tube work with the rest
of the design details to prevent all the known problems that home-made worm bins see.
For this business to be successful, the price
has to be as low as possible. Therefore only those parts that are needed for success are included, costs are kept low, and I'm only taking enough
profit to eke out a living.
What you get is extraordinary value. By all means check out other products: you will find out that
WormGin™ worm bins out perform everything else on the market. The cost is the same or lower and
no where else do you get personal customer support direct from the manufacturer.
The WormGin™ works well for the worms and for you, and is managed quite differently than the stacking tray systems you
may have seen. WormGin™ worm bins are much easier to maintain, have more capacity and are generally more successful.
Optional Drain System for WormGin™
WormGin™ systems offer an upgrade to add a collection system for liquid that drains through the bottom
of the bin. This option is not normally included for two simple reasons: You may never need it, and having the ability
to collect liquid from the bin is based on a fallacy.
A normal, healthy, well maintained worm bin does not produce excess liquid. There are two ways it happens: overfeeding and
flooding. You have likely seen the warnings against overfeeding, which can cause your bin to "go sour" and stink and - wait
for it - drain off excess liquid that STINKS! A bin can also go sour if it has no drainage, so it is essential for a plastic bin to
have holes in the bottom, and a tray underneath. This catches the smelly liquid and issues the warning, via your nose, that you
have been over-feeding.
So if you think about it, you need to have a tray under the bin, but if all goes well, you will never actually need it. (I have
several test bins with completely clean trays after many months of operation.) We (you, following my instructions)
control the moisture level at set-up time,
and we don't overfeed or add more than a cup or two of liquids, so there is no excess to drain. Excess moisture goes into the bedding.
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Worm Tea vs. Worm Extract
If you pour a bunch of water over the worm bed, it will need to drain the excess. This is what is done with the stacking tray
systems to produce what they call "worm tea". This is a fallacy: it isn't really worm tea. It is what I call worm 'extract' because
what you are doing is rinsing the worm bed to extract the good stuff for your plants.
Real worm tea is made by suspending
a mesh bag of fresh vermicompost in a bucket of water, adding some molasses or other food, providing air bubbles, letting it
brew for 24 hours; it is then used immediately. This is the stuff that gardeners rave over because the results can be spectacular,
because you are breeding billions of friendly microbes and plants groove on it big time.
Especially as a foliar spray.
I'm not saying worm extract sucks, but it is a long ways from worm tea. I have
no doubt that plants love the extract from a stacking tray system. It's just that, well, "they are doing it wrong". There,
I said it. I feel so much better now.
Of course, if you want to make worm extract from a WormGin™ you can: simply harvest a cup of compost and
stir it into a bucket of (chlorine free) water. Hey presto you are doing organic gardening! Note that without the drain system, you can still
collect liquid from a corner of the tray, tipping the whole works to pour out liquid. This is less than nifty but does work, at
least until the bin gets too heavy to deal with.
If you get some liquid in the tray, which should only happen, if ever, during the first few months,
just leave it alone. After all, that's why the tray is there. A small puddle will evaporate soon enough without you having to do anything.
(If the liquid stinks, you are overfeeding and you should soak it up in some paper and put it back into the bin, buried.)
If you really want to collect worm extract directly by flooding your system, hey it's your worm bin, you can do what you want.
Order your WormGin™ with the drain system (note that it cannot be added later as an upgrade without some
work on your part). With the drain system, you have a small hose that you can insert into your collection container.
You will probably want to put the WormGin™ on a short stand or table if you plan to do it often.
If using the goodness of vermicompost in liquid form is a priority for you (and why shouldn't it be? Plants LOVE it in most any form),
simply scoop compost into the harvesting basket on a regular basis. Then when you want some liquid, toss a cup or two of
compost into a bucket of water. This will be a higher grade of extract because it will contain the solids from the compost, not
just the rinsed-out stuff.
To really utitlize your valuable vermicompost, just get a medium sized aquarium air pump, large airstone, 5 gallon bucket and
some molasses. Blackstrap molasses if you can get it.
Fully brewed Worm Tea is like a magic elixir, and once you're set up you can make it all the time.
But getting back to the worms, to make extract, you have to flood the system. Maintaining the worm bin is all about maintaining
the moisture level of the bedding. You can remove the bedding (messy) before flooding, or you can put your bin into a state of
near-emergency, requiring recovery by stuffing in more dry newstrips. It's not a huge deal but why take a well functioning setup
and throw it out of whack?
If you have any question or comments on this subject or any other, remember that the forums here are open to all.
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Worm Bedding
Like any critter, worms need "a place to be". They can't just live in pure rotting apples, for example.
Like many "pets", worms need bedding but, unusually, they actually consume the bedding.
WormGin™ systems are designed with careful attention to the bedding, so that it works in conjunction
with the feed shelf, the drain and ventilation holes, etc, to provide general ease of use and ideal habitat for worms.
There are many ways to approach bedding for worms, but this discussion is about the specific way I have developed, to make
life easy for you and your worms.
There are at least four layers of bedding in the WormGin™: Base Bedding covers the bottom of the bin, then a layer
of wet newstrips is added, to be mixed with the food, and then an upper layer of newstrips that is kept damp: not dry
yet still fluffy. An additional layer of dryer but still damp newstrips goes over the top of it all, leaving a passage in the
middle for the Feed Pipe.
These layers are not something you have to monitor and control, that would not be user-friendly.
This description of the bedding
is more about what naturally happens when you set the WormGin™ up
as directed and as you maintain it by simply stuffing newspaper in and spraying some water on when needed.
Really, most of the actual work to maintain a WormGin™ is simply tearing newspaper into strips
to make the bedding you replenish. If you have a strip-cut paper shredder, you can even skip that effort.
You only have to maintain the upper layers of bedding. Stuff it in and use a spray bottle of water to moisten it a bit.
Check back in a day or two and it should be slightly damp everywhere. If it is dry, your worm bin is too dry and
you should spray it down and maybe add as much as 1 cup of water, poured in all around the perimeter.
The Base Bedding is yet another innovation by the wormgineer. This is a mixture designed to get worm bins off
to a great start. It eventually becomes compost and does not need to be replenished (when doing a major harvest,
you can start the WormGin™ up again using vermicompost instead of base bedding). Of course, Base Bedding
is available for anyone starting any worm bin: click on the 'Supplies' category in the 'STORE'. But WormGin™
owners only need to provide newstrips to maintain the bedding.
The Base Bedding is a mixture of nine ingredients, each carefully chosen and balanced in proportion in an effort to
make the worms as happy as possible. There is a forum thread on
Base Bedding details
Once set up, what you need to do is make sure the bin stays stuffed full and fluffy and damp, but never soaking wet.
If the upper layer always fills up the bin almost all the way to the top, you will isolate the food from fruit flies.
You do not have to get too carried away with keeping it stuffed nearly full all the time, but that is the ideal.
The WormGin™: Simple but effective small scale vermiculture. Next thing you know, you'll be an expert
organic gardener. Mix some vermicompost into the top few inches of soil, at any time of year, and stand back as
your vegetables jump out of the ground!
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Worm Behavior
Some worms behave differently than others. Apparently, some like to explore. I don't know if it's a phase
they go through or what. But you will see some worms crawling up the sides of the bin and even
sometimes stuck to their ceiling. This is normal, and one reason the feed tube is so convenient:
the lid stays in place. When lifting the lid, you need to remember that worms might be stuck to the
inside of the lid.
On the other hand, if worms are leaving the base layer and massing together in squirms away from the
food area, this is potentially a sign of trouble. There is likely something about the food area they don't like.
It may be too warm or too wet or too acidic or too anaerobic. What you need to do is stir up the food area,
either by hand, with a spoon or by using the food tube.
The WormGin™ is your best value in vermiculture.
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Turn your food waste into Nature's Favorite Plant Food
The Clean, Green Machine: Garbage Disposal the Natural Way
The WormGin™: You'll love it and your worms will love it
Be part of the solution for our sustainable future
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