Indoor Vermicomposters

Comment by Sherry on May 20, 2008 at 9:23am

I live in an apartment and have 2 rubbermaid bins in my spare bedroom, aka "the worm room."

As you can see from my pic, 1 of my 3 cats has taken one of the bins as his personal sleeping place.
I have 5 lb of red wrigglers and they are doing fantastic. There is NO smell, no fruit flies; nothing to show that I have several thousand "pets".

Sherry

Comment by Susan B on May 24, 2008 at 4:51pm

Hi guys, glad to have this forum within a forum. I'm in a 20th floor studio and started with 3 oz of worms in new year's eve that I got at a seminar given by waikikiworm.com. I have the same type of bin as Sherry (without the cat sleeping on top!) but it's half the height. I think that's better to avoid anaerobic problems. I also have drainage holes so I have 2 of the containers nested with spacers. I've heard they're not so smart and can drown! Why don't they just go up? I'll bet lots do. I've harvested my first round by pushing the stuff to one side and adding bedding and food to the other. Wait quite a while and then take out the 'older' half. It won't have as many bits and shouldn't have any food bits. I then put it in 2 small containers for a month to let the eggs hatch and the little guys get big enough for me to see and sort out. The hardest part is waiting. I've now got cherry tomatoes, snap peas and lettuce growing on my balcony. (The lettuce is inside because of the wind.) Now I get to wait again!!

The reason I'm so keen to get every last worm is that I've been setting friends up with 'mini-bins.' I use about 60 oz plastic ice cream tubs that my neighbor used to throw away. Poke holes, do bedding, add 1-2 oz worms, add partially degraded food, then bedding, let your friend add more food to slowly degrade. It's fun. I'm out of containers and thinking of using small cardboard boxes about the same size that I've scrounged from work. By the time they are ready for a bigger bin, the cardboard will be shaky.

Comment by Lesley Marie on July 4, 2008 at 10:59am

hee hee, my plan was to put them under the sink... but now they are under my bed!
I've got a rubbermaid bin for now.... we'll see how things go this year, I'd like to set up something a little easier to harvest.
The rabbits like to sit on top of the bin at my house!

Comment by Dorna & Violet Kiwi on July 19, 2008 at 11:50pm

Any recommendations for a decent and compact worm bin? I found this wooden one...

http://www.woodwormfarms.com/

Comment by Amy Youngs on August 9, 2008 at 3:03pm

For something different, you can make your own flow-through worm bag.

I'm excited about mine, so I just made an "Instructable" about how anyone can make their own.

Comment by Steven Chow on November 5, 2008 at 4:15pm

I didn't realize there were so many people who also vermicomposted indoors.. it has been cool seeing this little subgroup grow.

Comment by Cassandra on December 2, 2008 at 7:53am

Hello. I kind of jumped in and went a little overboard. I was able to get some babies in an old sugar container and I'll be giving them to my uncle this summer when we go visit. He lives on some acreage and has a compost pile with lots of worms I'm sure but I bet he never thought of having some in the house!

Comment by Scott Dickens on December 2, 2008 at 8:02am

My son and I have just started this worm thing.( It started as a science fair Experiment but I think he wants to try to grow some worms to sell to the local bait shop) I am having trouble keeping my worms in the tub ( rubbermaid roughneck with a lid) each morning I find a few on the floor and when I open the lid there are a bunch up at the top. any suggections on what to do ?
Thanks Scott D.

Comment by Eli on December 2, 2008 at 8:50am

I found a wonderful Jerry Baker idea for fruit flies that I wanted to share. Fruit flies will find old rotten produce with your lid on or not.
Pour soda, juice, honey, or put a bit of the fruit into jar. Cover the jar with a small plastic bag, and wrap a rubberband around the lid to secure the plastic bag. Use a fork or pin and poke a few holes into the bag.
This works in pinciple to the crab pot. The flies go into the tiny holes and are content eating. You can easily move the fly trap outside into the cold to die, with out them escaping. The bag is clear and the holes are small, their brains are a few nerve endings not to much reasoning.
Once dead clean out trap, refill, cover, and your ready to start trapping again.

Comment by Brent Anderson on December 2, 2008 at 1:05pm

Scott: Put a light above the bin. A ten watt night light might do the trick if it's bright. Worms are sensitive to light... they don't like it. If a dim light is used it may actually attract them out of the bin.

Eli: Those things work great..... Adding a little yeast to the mix can make it work a little better. Yeast helps to attract other non-fruit fly species. I've found that you don't have to put the trap out in the cold to kill them. Simply wait and they will go for their endless swim.
It's kinda funny when one thinks about it. These were the first fly traps. We have been making them similar to this method for thousands of years. Almost every household in the world has the right ingredients and materials to make a trap like this, and yet you can buy these "systems" in the store with dehydrated vinegar / yeast tablets and injection molded plastic traps. Just add water!!! Americans nauseate me sometimes.

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