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Here are the top 10 tips on how to
maintain a vermicompost bin. I spoke
about in a previous video how to start
a vermicompost bin but this video will
be about how to maintain a vermicompost bin.
So the first tip I have for you is you want to maintain the moisture in the
vermicompost bin because the worms
don't really thrive when it's dry.
You have to think about how it is like in
their natural environment where it's
deep in the soil, its moist and when it's
raining you see that the worms are coming out.
So you want to keep a similar kind of
environment for them in the bin. So what
I do is when I see it's kind of on the
drier side, I will use like a mister and
use the cleanest water that I have which
is Brita or you can use rain water if
you have any and I'll like spray it and
just really make sure that it's always moist.
Tip 2, put in your food scraps in the bin once a week because the worms
don't like to be disturbed, they don't
want to be stressed. Don't think of the
vermicompost bin as like your regular
trash bin where you open it up and put
in trash whenever you feel like it.
You have to have a separate bin. Collect your
organic scraps and then empty it out
in the vermicompost bin once a week.
You want to make sure that you put in your food scraps
in a different part of the bin every week.
So one week you'll put it in the centre of the bin.
The other week you put it in the
top left corner, bottom right corner.
It gives them a chance to move around in the bin.
Make sure that the food scraps are in small pieces. They're not gonna like
decompose if you just throw in
like your watermelon rinds just like that.
You want to make sure- some people
actually use blenders- but you want to
make sure that you like try to dice it
or cut it up as best as you can
it'll decompose a lot faster and
you'll have good compost for your garden
a lot faster too.
Make sure you have like a ton of bedding to put in your vermicompost bin.
You want to make sure that your food is
fully covered with bedding. You don't
want any of the food to be exposed
because that will cause some smells and
you also want it to decompose a lot faster.
This bedding that you use (most people
use newspapers), you want to shred it up
in as small pieces as possible because
it creates this like nice fluffy
atmosphere for the worms to make their
homes in and I know some people like
they don't want to have to use scissors
and hurts their wrists, it takes a long
time to cut it up to cover all the food
so you can use a shredder and it's not
that expensive as I thought. I went
to my local stationery store and bought
a good shredder for $20 and in an
instant I was able to make a ton of
bedding that I could use to fully cover my food scraps.
Make sure that the bedding that you use is safe for the worms.
So, most people use newspapers as their
bedding. So, you don't want to use like
glossy paper, computer paper, anything with
harmful inks. You want to stick with
soy-based inks or vegetable-based inks
and newspapers tend to be the best for
that and I guess you want to double
check with your local environmental
office, but in North America generally
they use this kind of inks on their
newspapers, so it's safe.
A lot of people are confused as to what
they should be putting in their bins.
I generally tell people that the worms are
vegans with a few exceptions and
allergies and they are on a raw food
based diet. So fruits, vegetables, tea bags,
you can put some breads. Don't put onions
or something heavy like garlic or lemons.
They don't like that.
Make sure you put in the right amount of food in your vermicompost bin.
Don't put like way too much
I mean the worms actually eat a lot.
I heard online they eat 4-6
times their own body weight every day.
I also heard it's half their body weight
every day but clearly like it's still a
lot so for two people we usually have
600 grams or so a week to throw out and
I know it's not like a lot for two
people we should probably be eating more
fruits and vegetables but that's another
video. Anyway so we will put like 400-600
grams of fruits and vegetables once a
week and that seems to work.
The worm population, once you was feed them, it
grows in a few months. It in fact doubles
their population in a few months and
you'll end up with all these worms and
you don't know what to do and I heard
that it's okay you can leave them there
if you want but you can give them away
to people. But I would caution on that
because a lot of people are not aware of
the discipline and commitment it takes
to take care of the worms. So before you
give them away to someone else tell them
about it, coach them, show them this video,
quiz them, you know, you want to make sure
that people who are starting their
vermicompost journey have a successful one.