Wigglers Work Wonders

A Recipe for Garden Success by Lynn Huntington

Combine lettuce that is a little past its prime, some eggshells and coffee grounds, throw in the peelings from a carrot or two, add a few dead leaves from a houseplant and you will have a feast. A feast for red wiggler worms. These little workers will turn that recipe and any other fruit or vegetable remains into rich fertilizer for your houseplants and gardens.

These sometimes maligned creatures offer you an easy and efficient way to create an organic fertilizer that is hard to beat. Darwin is quoted as saying, “It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly organized creatures,” so give worms a chance in your gardening efforts. When you compare the cost and benefits of this fertilizer to commercial fertilizer you will see how economical this method is.

How to get started

You can create your own worm hotel using ordinary storage bins or, for a modest sum, purchase a ready-made upward migration stacking bin system, which is what we have used for well over a decade for our vermiculture. “the cultivation of annelid worms (such as earthworms or bloodworms) especially for use as bait or in composting.”

With dozens of ways to create your own system, you can find lots of how-to videos on the internet. One of the more interesting methods I found was utilizing 5-gallon buckets from food establishments. These offer the added benefit of being food safe containers.

To make your own you need three buckets or bins with quarter-inch holes drilled into the bottom of the middle and upper layers. Add a drain spigot used for coolers in the bottom layer to drain off excess liquid that you will dilute 10 to 1 to make a liquid plant fertilizer. Then you need one cover and you are set for equipment.

The best worms for this application are red wigglers, which are now widely available online or in bait shops. If you want to do a trial to see if you enjoy this you can start with just one bin. If it works for you then you can get your worms into a bigger home when the time is right.

Setting up the bin

1. Layer inside the bin just like you would an outdoor pile. I started mine in the middle section of the bins with a layer of wet coir (coconut fiber), a cup of red wigglers that I got from a friend, and food waste that included no protein; please note that the worms won’t touch junk food or fried food and they’re not crazy about citrus so offer that in small doses.

2. I then covered the whole lot with some chopped leaves and cut-up unbleached cardboard egg cartons. A little covering of dampened burlap makes a very fine top coat but these creatures don’t seem awfully fussy, so while you want to avoid newspaper you can just leave it at the egg cartons—you just want the food waste to be covered. The bottom section of the bins I left empty, to collect liquid that will drain through the drilled holes, and the top bin was also left empty.

3. As you create more food waste you can add it to the bin when you have time. Eventually the middle bin will become quite full.

4. You can then repeat the starting recipe in the top section of the bins.

I have often ignored my worms for long stretches and they eventually die and beWorms will not touch junk food or fried food.

come compost. As they are fed more, the worms reproduce more. I find that for the busy gardener this is a very handy self-regulating reproduction system. Note that these worms will not survive our winters so finding a spot inside is your best bet.

Some people use their vermiculture bin as a coffee table, which is a testament to this no fuss and no odor method of composting. I keep mine in the cellar on two concrete blocks, which makes it easier to feed and easier to drain the liquid.

Fertilizer vs. outdoor compost

Note that I call the results of these efforts fertilizer. Compost from an outdoor pile or bin that has completely broken down is spread luxuriantly on your garden beds and into planting holes for shrubs and trees.

The composted results of vermiculture are rich in vitamins and minerals and a potent fertilizer. You can use just a cup in the soil of a heavy feeding plant like tomatoes and considerably less than that for light feeding plants.

Skip fertilizing legumes or nasturtiums with your composted scraps from the bin or the plants will provide you with beautiful foliage and no blossoms. You can be very miserly with your black gold; use too much and you risk burning the plants.

This is an easy and fun project for children to manage as well. The only job that is somewhat time-consuming is harvesting the castings, which is what the finished product is called. For this you need a bit of time and an adult but this happens only twice a year for me. I hope you get started and enjoy these fascinating creatures.