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why not just let the garden worms eat it?
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Posted by
ffreidl (
My Page) on
Wed, Jul 20, 11 at 15:52
| I happily seem to have a abundance of regular garden worms in my soil this year, so, I've got a question:
I have an informal compost pile that I dump my veggie & yard waste into. I've never managed to turn it into a proper heating-up pile, but the worms have been doing a damn good job turning everything into castings in record time.
Is there any reason why that's not as good as "real" compost? It sure is easy - just chop up some stuff, make a litle hole and put it in - no worries about moisture, proper ratios, mixing, etc.
Your thoughts? |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: why not just let the garden worms eat it?
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- Posted by shebear z8 NCentralTex (My Page) on
Wed, Jul 20, 11 at 16:03
| The Indore method of composting is the most popular but not the only one. Mother Nature does a fine job of it in all her forests and prairies but of course mankind has to do it faster. |
RE: why not just let the garden worms eat it?
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| It IS real compost! See, it's not so hard. |
RE: why not just let the garden worms eat it?
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You could add both your kitchen and yard waste directly to your garden and the Soil Food Web, not just the earthworms, will digest that material and convert it to nutrients your plants can use, aka sheet composting. However, there is some evidence out there that making compost, the Indore method, is better and produces a soil amendment that is overall better for the soil then sheet composting is.
If you are doing the Indore Composting Method and have a number of earthworms working that material then your material is too wet for the bacteria to work it. Earthworms need a fairly moist environment to live and work in, an environment that is too wet for the anearobic bacteria can live and work in. |
RE: why not just let the garden worms eat it?
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| Ha! You guys are cute! I've never heard of the Indore method - now I'll have to look it up online. But it seems like my method is okay with y'all, so that makes me happy. I like the idea of adding stuff directly to the garden too - had planned to do some of that, but then things got to the point where I didn't want to disturb anybody's roots. I can't think of why there are so many worms this year - I'd like to take credit for it, but it seems like my whole neighborhood's got a lot of 'em. It's been hot and very little rain, so I'm surprised, although we had good spring rains. Loving my worms in any case! Even more than my vegetables, I think! I feel good every time I see them. Who would've thought...? |
RE: why not just let the garden worms eat it?
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| I actually posted something about this recently, I have been burying most of my kitchen scraps shallowly in between the rows of my veggie garden and letting the worms/bugs take care of it. Most everything (except egg shells) is gone within a few days. I'm not sure if this is "real" composting, but it works for me! |
RE: why not just let the garden worms eat it?
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| C'mon people, it's not 'Real' composting unless you've done it like a good consumer and bought a plastic bin, a box of starter/booster, a special tool to aerate it, a thermometer to check the temperature, and a Martha Stewart brass plated sifter to make it all nice when it's done. How can you call this real composting? |
RE: why not just let the garden worms eat it?
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| Fast composting is useful when you have a lot of materials to handle & want it reduced or have weed seeds or diseased materials to "clean up". Otherwise, composting in the garden is much easier! A great book to read about all sorts of composting methods is below by Barbara Pleasant. Many gardeners tend soil & this book explains the many ways that it's done with the details to show you how. Our public library had it. |
Here is a link that might be useful: The Complete Compost Gardening Guide
RE: why not just let the garden worms eat it?
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- Posted by shebear z8 NCentralTex (My Page) on
Thu, Jul 21, 11 at 13:25
| If you're going to learn about composting, don't bother with anyone but the father--Sir Albert Howard. He's considered the father of modern composting. |
Here is a link that might be useful: Here's some of his writings
RE: why not just let the garden worms eat it?
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| that's all we ever do we have our conmposting worms as well as the others in our gardens so we daily tuck our rottable scraps from the house under the mulch, where all the action needed to feed the medium happens so the medium can feed the plants. called cutting out the middle man no work creating a composter and then turning it and getting variable reults. len |
Here is a link that might be useful: lens garden page
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