Worm Hotel

A little over a year ago,

we fashioned a worm bin using a couple of storage containers.

You can find that post here.

I've got mixed feelings about it.

It's definitely a cheap and easy way to create castings for the garden.

Those critters do nothing but eat and poop,

so within a couple of months,

you've got plenty of castings to add to the garden.

The one thing that doesn't appeal to me

is that it's hard to remove the castings

without taking out a lot of the worms.

My friend Jannah has a store-bought worm bin

that works great and is much tidier for harvesting the castings.

I'm still thinking about getting one,

but at over $100, I thought I'd try a different way of worm farming first.

This is a take on an idea I used in Florida,

but on a bigger scale.

It's a worm hotel and it's used directly in the garden.

I cut a nine foot long PVC pipe into 3-foot pieces,

using a jigsaw.

Next, using a drill with a large bit,

holes were cut around the bottoms of the pipes.

I placed them in various beds,

being sure to keep the holes under the soil.

This one is in the white sweet potato raised bed.

The gist of it is that food scraps are added to the top of the pipe,

where worms can enter from the drilled holes near the bottom.

Since the worms are all about finding goodies to eat,

they remain in the bed, enriching the soil with their castings.

This gives us yet another way to use up coffee grounds, eggshells, 

food scraps and paper.

As long as they continue to be fed,

these workers continue to poop and feed the soil,

thus feeding your crops.

The worms check into the hotel and leave behind their gifts.

To ensure the interior stays dry,
I covered the opening with an old coffee can 
and placed a brick on top to keep other busybodies out.
I'm looking forward to seeing how it works.
One of my goals as a gardener is to eliminate the need for fertilizer,
and this may just be one way to reach that goal.

Do you use worm castings in your garden?