Worms in permaculture
Worms are one of our newer
permaculture additions to the farm. Just like chicken tractors,
worm bins add animals and fertility back to the garden ecosystem in a
controlled manner. You can read about our experiments with an
indoor worm bin here.
Last week, I decided it was time to move our worms to larger quarters
outdoors. Although we'd been planning on trying an outdoor worm
bin eventually, the move was mostly the result of a mistake I
made. All winter, I kept the bin healthy by feeding the worms
solely on Mark's tea bags. But a month or so ago I started
cleaning out our winter stores, throwing in a lot of rotting sweet
potatoes and nasty frozen peaches. It was way too much food all
at once (and too wet because of the peaches), so we ended up with a
fruit fly paradise.
When we have time, we'll probably make a more professional outdoor worm
bin, but for now I put a quick one together in an afternoon. I
placed a few cinderblocks in a rectangle to form a basic perimeter,
spread my current worm bin contents over the ground in the center, and
topped it all off with a load of grass clippings from the mulching
lawnmower. It's essential that worms stay cool and damp, so I put
the outdoor bin in the shade behind the trailer where it also gets
runoff from the roof. In a few weeks, I'll give you an update on
how our exterior bin is doing!
This post is part of our Permaculture lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
|
Want
to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the
RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed.
