Tired of feeding my kitchen scraps to the rats and opossums

[journey11]

So here's an idea I've been tossing around...I think I'd be better off to start a worm bin! Maybe I can get more soil building value out of all my scraps without drawing vermin and flies. I end up dumping anywhere from a quart to a gallon of kitchen scraps a day, sometimes more in the summer. Anybody got one? I'm not really sure what I need to do to get started in vermiculture or how big of a bin I would need. Can you use nightcrawlers? (I'd also be glad to have an endless supply of fishing worms!) How do you get them through winter? Can you keep them in the basement?

 

[thistlebloom]

I don't have an answer, except I don't think you can use regular "outside" worms. I was just wondering...you don't have your chickens anymore?

 

[897tgigvib]

There is a small inexpensive paperback book called

Worms eat my Garbage.

It is an easy to read book, plain writing, down to earth. Several seed catalogs have it, it may be at libraries, and it's likely to be on the big book online things.

The worms have to be Red Worms
She says how to make the bins homemade out of rubber 10 buck boxes.
She describes how to herd worms(!) yep
Regular earthworms are not recommended for vermiculture
And Red Worms should not be let loose in your garden, they just die.

 

[NwMtGardener]

And there are some good how to videos on youtube. Some friends have a bin and love it, they say it doesnt smell and works great, i think you have them inside for the winter if it gets cold where you are.

 

[journey11]

Thanks for the info, everybody. I will look on Amazon for that book, Marshall. I tried the online catalog for my library and they don't have *any* books on it within the state network. :/

The neighbor's dog ate all 12 of my chickens, Thistle! Just when they were reaching the point of lay. Not been my year for gardens and chickens... Chickens will eat a lot of things, but there's still a lot they won't touch, like broccoli, beets, etc.

I wouldn't have thought to look on Youtube, NMG. They have everything on there.

I guess growing nightcrawlers must be a totally different operation then? I have seen red wrigglers in my compost heap before. I don't know how they get in there. Maybe from the bark from the wood pile. They are fast and hard to catch, but maybe I could gather up enough to get it going!

 

[hoodat]

The sort of nightcrawlers that are wild in the US need cool temps, deep topsoil and a less rich diet so they seldom survive in a worm box. I've heard about imported African night crawlers that are supposedly more suitable but I haven't actually seen any in action.

 

[lesa]

I will be very interested in your experiences with a worm bin, Journey. It is yet another thing, I never seem to get around to! I am surprised you are getting vermin in your compost pile.... I know we are in different zones- but I never see any evidence of critters in mine. I take note in the winter, when I can easily see footprints- and don't even see a mouse! I do have a fence around my pile- but it is just chain link, certainly not critter proof... I presume you are not putting meat or dairy in there? Sorry to hear about your chickens. I always appreciate them as the garbage disposals that they are! Now that is tomato canning season, it is funny to watch their reactions. The first time I dump a few pounds of tomato scraps in there, they are all excited. Now, they look at me like I am crazy! More?? They will be happy to see the end of tomatoes!

 

[journey11]

Lesa--The dog gets all the meat scraps, but I do occasionally toss a bowl of cereal in the compost. Eggshells too. We had a GIANT rat in there this summer. My little white cat finally caught him. I only found the back half. But judging by that, he was at least a 1/3 of her size! I've found an opossum actually inside my compost turner one time. I think we both jumped out of our skin.

Very interesting, Hoodat. I wondered about the nightcrawlers. On my dad's farm, down by the hog barn, you will usually see 1000's of them lying on the ground at night after a hard rain. That must be some really good soil there. You don't see them do this everywhere. Most places you only get a few inches before you hit hard red clay. If you come armed with a flashlight and a coffee can (to put them in) it makes really good sport trying to catch them. They are lightning fast! Most grabs result only in a handful of mud.

 

[catjac1975]

Your neighbor should have reimbursed you the cost of buying laying hens. But, if they are anything like some of my neighbors, I'm sure their dog wasn't even home the night of the massacre. You need an enclosed composter.

Thanks for the info, everybody. I will look on Amazon for that book, Marshall. I tried the online catalog for my library and they don't have *any* books on it within the state network. :/

The neighbor's dog ate all 12 of my chickens, Thistle! Just when they were reaching the point of lay. Not been my year for gardens and chickens... Chickens will eat a lot of things, but there's still a lot they won't touch, like broccoli, beets, etc.

I wouldn't have thought to look on Youtube, NMG. They have everything on there.

I guess growing nightcrawlers must be a totally different operation then? I have seen red wrigglers in my compost heap before. I don't know how they get in there. Maybe from the bark from the wood pile. They are fast and hard to catch, but maybe I could gather up enough to get it going!

 

[journey11]

I'm thinking about fencing my whole property, both barrier and electric. We want to get goats anyway. And for all the money I invest in my meat birds, I am glad that I didn't do them this year. It would have been a loss. We took the dog back to the neighbor the first time we found him in with the hens and spoke with him about keeping it tied. The dog didn't kill any that time, but he agreed that it would the next. I figure they know it was their dog. Their closer neighbor found one of my chickens in her flowerbed between the two properties. I think they tried to tie it, but didn't do a sufficient job. But I know this man just got laid off from his job and has two small children. They live in a rented trailer. I would have otherwise asked him to pay for the hens, but I hated to ask under the circumstances.

But yeah, good fences make good neighbors. I'm just going to have to tighten down security around here before I put my time and money into anything else right now. Baffles me too, the big gardens I've had year after year and the deer have pretty much left me alone. Yet this year, I didn't plant much because of the new baby. I put all my efforts into a new bed of june-bearing strawberries. Then the deer wiped me out! My husband had put 1x2 wire on on the compost bin to keep dogs out, but smaller vermin still get in. My compost turner is a homemade job. The opossum just pushed the lid in. I guess it wasn't sturdy enough.