It was bound to happen. Any true blue gardener would attempt to compost at one time or another. This is my story.
One quiet Sunday afternoon about two months ago, I took Jean on a drive to Concepcion, Marikina. It was an hour-long drive to some faraway place. Why? Well about a week before, I stumbled upon an ad of a guy selling African Nightcrawlers. Apparently, this type of worms is used for composting. I was amazed. These worms eat organic garbage and their castings (poop) make for rich fertilizer called vermicompost. I was hooked on the concept. After all, I am the same guy that saves rainwater to flush the toilet and uses old bottles as flower pots. The recycling angle tickled me.
So I happily bought 250 grams worth of African Nightcrawlers for P250. Yes, they are expensive. For lack of a container to transport them in, we used the Starbucks grande cup that I just used. Grande worms!
Over the past few months, I have been attempting to compost in a large pot, but it was just happening so slowly. Nonetheless, that was my source of somewhat decayed organic material. Where does that come in?
Well, to create a good environment for the worms, you need bedding made up of shredded wet newspaper and some semi-composted material. So I put in the newspaper in the bin and added the contents from the pot I talked about. Then I put in the worms.
Two months and regular inputs later, here's how my bin looks like. Still lots of green material, right? Makes me scratch my head sometimes. Then again I have been regularly putting in fresh stuff. I guess for me to really observe the conversion of organic material to worm castings, I have to stop feeding the worms. Sigh. But it's so much fun. Oh well. I will try to leave this bin alone (no feeding) for about two weeks. Let's see what it looks like then.
Next time, I'll talk about worm bin # 2.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Vermicomposting: My New Fascination
Labels:
GREEN HORIZONS,
METRO MANILA,
PHILIPPINES,
QUEZON CITY,
VERMICOMPOSTING
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