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equinoxequinox

Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel

equinoxequinox
13 years ago

Flowthrough, 24 inch max material depth, full open top, full open bottem, huge air holes at 12 inch depth, 9X9 inches wide. With all this air when I scrape away the bottom material to harvest I should smell that spring time fresh forest smell. Sometimes I don't. I smell the swamp bog monster. I conclude that air AIN'T gettin in. The bin had been soaked. The worms loved it. The material was not going anywhere and needed no bars. I have been letting it dry. It is maybe wrung out sponge dampness and good for casting harvesting but the worms do not seem as happy. Yes I am now qualified to testify in a court of law on the relative happines of compost worms. They aren't as fluffy. They arn't as juicy. They aren't as active. I am unconvinced air gets even an inch into vermicompost. I was waiting for that drying out CRACKING effect to make air passageways. But way before that even thought of happening the worms seemed to not have free access to all the moisture they would like. A tiny bit parched yet still not spring time fresh. The ideal moisture does not seem to exist.

Comments (21)

  • randomz
    13 years ago

    I have never bought into the "air gets in" theory.

    24" of what is pretty much like mud is under a fair bit or pressure, so any air gaps will get squeezed out pretty quickly. How much pressure? Try lifting a full FT bin!

    Moisture is also going to seep downwards, so the bottom isn't really going to dry out that much unless the top is also fairly dry - probably too dry for total worm happiness.

    Perhaps fan forced drying might help at the bottom.

  • alabamanicole
    13 years ago

    My vermicompost and castings have never been like "mud." They are more like a medium density silty loam. Soil has capillaries through which air and water move, and the action of worms improves this flow. You'd think a whole bin full of worms would produce excellent flow indeed. Even in fine clay soil air permeates about 40" into the earth.

    So yeah, I think air flow isn't a problem in worm bins and is better with additional air space around the compost -- unless the bin is so overwet it has standing water filling all the capillaries.

    I do agree that the whole notion of the bottom drying out in a FT seems unlikely. Perhaps in a deeper FT, moisture from the food items placed on top wouldn't reach the bottom, but I couldn't guess how deep that would have to be to have a good moist zone up top.

  • bigtexworms
    13 years ago

    Too wet or too dry, the same issues I have with my barrel bin. Either way I dont seem to lose worms, so I guess it is all good.

  • fam62cc
    13 years ago

    I have a rule of thumb concerning moisture content that I use with my 3 COW towers. If the inside of the lid is dry I sprinkle in about 1/2 cup of water. Repeat in an hour or so if necessary. If the lid is damp, let it alone.

    Dave Nelson

  • rookie09
    13 years ago

    I have 3 55-gallon flow-thrus sitting in a row in my garage. They are fed pretty much the same and have about the same quantity of worms. The castings are falling on their own now but it is like Goldilocks. One is too wet, one is too dry and one is just right.

    So when I need some castings I mix some from all three (I don't like to show favorites) and they turn out just fine.

  • PRO
    equinoxequinox
    Original Author
    13 years ago

    "but I couldn't guess how deep that would have to be to have a good moist zone up top." If my old, feeble brain has not yet totally deserted me as I recall sbryce has stated 24 inches as the gold standard of flow thru depth. Based upon as best as I can tell chicken blood spaters and rolls of the dice. On the other hand he may well be exactly correct. It does seem to be a place to start. I will use it as a guide line until something better comes along.

    "unless the bin is so overwet it has standing water filling all the capillaries" Maybe this is what happens when bins go bad.

    "Even in fine clay soil air permeates about 40" into the earth." But is it enough air to support the almost unnatural mega worm population we encourage? And do wet castings act the same way as soil? Maybe it is. Maybe they do. I don't know.

    "I do agree that the whole notion of the bottom drying out in a FT seems unlikely. Perhaps in a deeper FT, moisture from the food items placed on top wouldn't reach the bottom," You have described exactly what I think flow thru-ers are trying to achieve. That is what I want to happen. Wet top. Dry bottom. Wet enough to attract the worms. Dry enough to discourage the worms and make harvesting pleasant not mud wrestling.

  • sbryce_gw
    13 years ago

    The 24 inch depth was determined by Clive Edwards when he designed the first Flow Through worm bin, the Holcombe Reactor.

    The depth is based on the idea that the VC/bedding will increase at the rate of one inch per feeding (in the case of a Holcombe Reactor, one inch per day) which will give time for worms to thoroughly process the food, and give time for eggs to hatch before reaching the bottom of the VC/bedding.

  • randomz
    13 years ago

    That logic would be flawed based on 24" = 24 days, as it takes EF cocoons 30 - 75 days to hatch.

    It would actually be a more complex calculation though, as the volume is also decreased as the food is processed. Raw food added at 1" per day probably means that the castings grow by 1/10th of an inch per day. Which would allow time for hatching.

    As those of us with FT's know though, worms are all the way through it, so are they also dropping fresh cocoons all the way too? Or are the cocoons only released close to the top surface?

  • pjames
    13 years ago

    That's the fallacy... from what I have observed cocoons are dropped wherever. I've almost got to the point where I do not care if I retrieve the cocoons in my castings. But I will certainly take care for castings I use in my indoor plants.

    I just looked at the FT I set up the other day. I have leachate so that means I have saturated the bin like I had intended. Now I will let it sit for a couple weeks and then operate my harvesting system to see if it will work. i know the compost that drops will not be worth sifting so it will be recycled thru the bin..

  • sbryce_gw
    13 years ago

    In a Holcombe Reactor, raw food (usually pre-composted cow manure) is added at 4 inches per day, which is expected to decrease to 1 inch as it is processed.

  • randomz
    13 years ago

    So you are saying that they did in fact only allow 24 days from feed to collection for cocoons to hatch?

    This is the problem with having an opion by reiteration. Things get burned into legend that aren't always correct.

    As a group, we are building our own bank of knowledge that is just as useful, perhaps more so.

  • lkittle
    13 years ago

    Hi All; The hatching of a cocoon is dependant on two major factors. The first is moisture and the secound is temperature. With about 80% moisture in the bedding and a temperature of 75 deg F a cocoon will hatch in 11-14 days. I have checked this several times and know it to be true. I done an experiment keeping worms in a burlap bedding just for the purpose of getting them in a bedding material that would make easy collection and observation and found that in order to collect the cocoons it needed to be done every 9-10 days. Do your own experiment using the same method 12-14 layers of damp burlap 12-15 worms in each layer and feed oatmeal(uncooked) sprinkled using a cheeze shaker in each layer. Check after 8-10 days and remove cocoons and try different temps and dampness of bedding and varify for yourself.

    Before discounting "old" information as not valid do some controled experiments and you will probibly only confirm it to be accurite. I would rather doubt so called new information until it has been confirmed several times. Most of the time old information is taken out of context and that makes it appear to be invalid.
    Case in point in thread up page about worms eating rocks. What is a rock. Is it a mixture of elemental atoms or alarge hard collection of pressure formed(sometimes with heat present) chunk of earthen material. It is both! Worms that live in the soil and tunnel eat or squeeze around all objects they can't swallow. In the every day goings on in a worms life it eats all thats in its way. The rocks (grains of sand) are swallowed along with all the other matter including soil particals and the worm is able to take the elements it needs to live from the swallowed material. Keeping worms captive by food bribery in case of composting worms is far from the natural setting in which they live in nature.

  • PRO
    equinoxequinox
    Original Author
    13 years ago

    The worms eat small rocks was probably a way to say worms need the burned into legend grit without plagerizing. BoysLife is a magazine for boys and some of the articles may be written by boys. We all know how difficult it is to wade through the worm information out there. Without getting into the whole gritty mess... back to the topic.

    24 inch gold standard flow through depth. If Clive said it. It is good enough for me. Backed up by lkittle, I'm not arguing that one. 24 inches it is. I'm a believer.

    The whole "Holcombe Reactor" has me reading interesting stuff. I am even less sure air is getting in.

    "Optimal conditions for worm health and growth include maintaining the bed at 60º to 70º F (15º to 20º C), moisture at 80 to 90%, pH between 5 and 9 with oxygen present throughout the bed"
    http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/vermicom.html#3

    "Basically, you feed the bin on the top, slice castings off the bottom, and the castings fall through a mesh screen to the floor and are then collected, dried and screened." Slice (through 80 to 90% moisture mud?), Dry, Screen. Maybe I am expecting too much for dry screened vermicastings to fall from (the sky) the bottom of my flow thru. "worm castings at the bottom of the windrow had some anaerobic conditions due to the high moisture content necessary to grow worms. The combination of high moisture content and no airflow at the base of the windrow caused the anaerobic conditions to occur." Sounds like protein poisoning.
    http://www.o2compost.com/content/VermiCompost.htm

    "when air is introduced into an active compost pile by turning, the oxygen level in the pile drops off very quickly - often to less than 1% within 30 to 45 minutes." "With aerobic composting, our goal is to maintain the oxygen level at 8% or greater."
    http://www.o2compost.com/content/Secret.htm

    Really long quote: "I believe the fundamental problem in grasping these results is because of the routine discounting of the value of the microherd (bacteria, fungi, etc.) that does the majority of the work during the wastes 30-day journey through the reactor. The worms aerate it and the medium, chew it, innoculate it with spores and bacteria, open up many more surface areas for colonies of the microsopic organisms to populate. My opinion is that the earthworms are just the pre-processor, a biomechanical assistant for the benefit of the microherd. I believe Holcombe has inadvertantly discovered the most efficient habitat for microbial decomposition of wastes to date, and the large visible earthworms are a fundamentally essential part of the process, but they are not the totality, or even the majority, of the process." I can believe that.
    http://segate.sunet.se/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind04&L=et-jizo&D=0amp;F=P&T=0amp;P=131758

  • sbryce_gw
    13 years ago

    Responding to randomz:

    Holcombe Reactors were designed by one of the world's leading experts on worm composting, and have been in operation for 30 years. I am not going to question Clive Edwards, unless I have a very good reason to do so. IIRC, the 24 inch depth was intended to allow 20 days for cocoons to hatch.

    Responding to equinoxequinox:

    I don't think anybody is questioning the role that the microherd plays in breaking down organic matter in a worm bin, nor the role that worms play in assisting the miroherd. In any case, worm castings are the goal, largely because of the large numbers of microbes that are present in the castings.

  • randomz
    13 years ago

    That's all very well, but I don't have a system that monitors and corrects either temperature or moisture to be able to achieve the ideals required for this result.

    Perhaps we need "Ideal" and "Real World" guidelines.

    Evidence from pretty much all comments I have read on home based FT's is that at 20 odd inches they still have worms/cocoons in the bottom layer.

    Perhaps when we can get home based non-powered systems to consume 4" per day of fresh feed, then the rest might also fall into place.

    Has it been established that cocoons are only ever laid at the top level of the mix?

    How many of us have monitored/corrected holcombe reactors at home?

  • 11otis
    13 years ago

    "Evidence from pretty much all comments I have read on home based FT's is that at 20 odd inches they still have worms/cocoons in the bottom layer."
    In order for the worms not to like the bottom of the FT, we have to make that area on the dry side. How can we achieve that??? I am still getting leachate since I fed them +/- 40 pumpkins (over time since H'ween 2009, minus the water I can press out of them by hand once thawed).
    Feeding them papaya, grapes and other fruit doesn't help either. I bury the food. Now it's about 1 cup/day leachate. However, the top 3 to 4" of VC is rather on the dry side and the VC is about 24" deep. My bin is a converted 96 gal. Schaeffer bin. How can we beat gravity?

    I already have a table lamp situated at the bottom opening shining inwards and up to deter worms coming down. They still come down but at least they don't crawl OUT anymore.
    Maybe I should add a small fan there to add air circulation and dry the area out? Use electricity again?

  • randomz
    13 years ago

    That's the thing. To have the top at the theoretical 80% moisture, yet have the bottom dry enough for fluffy worm free castings.

    I tried a 8" 12 volt fan on a batter with solar panel for a few days, didn't really help much, but the weather is cool and damp here at this time of year. In summer it would make more difference.

  • haley_jean
    13 years ago

    If anyone can help me, that'd be great. I live in northeast Wisconsin and am very interested in starting a vermicomposting bin. Our yard is small and I really don't want a big, ugly box in the backyard, so I was wondering if I could put my worms in a underground bin? I have a 55 gallon drum sitting around that I thought I could maybe bury in the ground? I would put gravel underneath it for drainage and drill holes in the bottom and sides for ventilation and drainage. Do you think that would work or would there be not enough air flow in there? Any advice would be appreciated! Thanks!

  • PRO
    equinoxequinox
    Original Author
    13 years ago

    We need that poster who said it was called a flow thru because air flowed up thru.

    otis11, "In order for the worms not to like the bottom of the FT, we have to make that area on the dry side. How can we achieve that??? I am still getting leachate since I fed them +/- 40 pumpkins" I would say add more bedding. But... "the top 3 to 4" of VC is rather on the dry side". This is maybe a problem we are all having?

    randomz, "That's the thing. To have the top at the theoretical 80% moisture, yet have the bottom dry enough for fluffy worm free castings."

    Yes, That's the thing. I think many of us want to do that. Maybe it is impossible? That would be sad.

    We read even Clive had slices of mud harvested from the bottom of his flow thru.

    As moist as a wrung out sponge. Sponges have big air holes. Vermicompost does not. Is 80% wet vermicompost mud that was dripping wet a week ago?

  • randomz
    13 years ago

    Haley, could you please start a new thread for your question?

  • PRO
    equinoxequinox
    Original Author
    13 years ago

    haley_jean, haley_jean, haley_jean, Be more proud of your worms. Put them in the front yard. You may of noticed all the cool moms now are raising chickens for the eggs. And the ultra cool moms are vermicomposting. The extra super cool ones are BSFL their watermellons and pumpkins. I'm not that cool. YET! Keep your eyes on me. :-) You might want the underground bin simply to hide some form all who will want some. Sort of your own private stash O worms.

    So ya this is so much a new thread. Cause Randomz is not alone here. Please start one.

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