How to Build a Red Wiggler Composter
Red wigglers are used to speed composting. The worms eat kitchen waste, grass clippings, leaves and chipped wood pruned from trees and shrubs. They can eat their body weight every day and they produce a rich, black soil that can be applied to your garden as soon as all the organic material in your compost bin has been consumed and excreted. You can use any container with a lid for your red wiggler composter, as long as it does not make an airtight seal. Does this Spark an idea?
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Things You'll Need
- Four sheets of 2-feet by 7-feet by 1/2-inch plywood
- Two sheets of 2-feet by 2-feet by 1/2-inch plywood
- Bag of 1.5-inch long, 1/4-inch diameter wood screws
- Power drill, 1/8-inch and 1/16th inch diameter bits
- Dryer lint
- Shredded newspaper
- Grass clippings
- Sifted garden soil
- Spray bottle mister filled with water
- Cornmeal
- Kitchen waste: eggshells, fruit and vegetable peels, tea bags, coffee grounds, Shredded chipboard
- 2 pounds of red wiggler worms
Instructions
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1
Assemble a worm box by butting the 2-feet by 7-feet plywood sheets against one another. Have a helper hold the boards in place. Use a power drill to make 1/8-inch diameter pilot holes as shown in the diagram. Attach the front and back sides to the bottom using 1.5-inch long, 1/4-inch diameter wood screws every four inches as shown.
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2
Attach the right and left sides to the worm box as shown in the diagram, using wood screws every 4 inches. Drill four drain holes in the bottom of the bin using a 1/16th-inch diameter bit.
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3
Fill the bottom of the box with dryer lint about one inch deep. Sprinkle garden soil over the dryer lint until it is covered. Add a 3-inch-deep layer of shredded newspaper. Sprinkle with soil again until the newspaper is covered 2 inches deep. Add an inch of grass clippings.
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4
Add soil until the worm box is filled to within 6 inches of the top edge when open. Add 2 pounds of red wiggler worms. Spray the entire surface of the compost bin with a fine mist of water. Set the fourth sheet of 2-feet by 7-feet plywood on top of the box as a lid and wait one day.
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5
Sprinkle the entire surface of the soil in the compost bin with cornmeal and close the bin. Wait one more day. You wait the first day for the worms to settle in and the water mist to evaporate. If you add the cornmeal and water on the same day, you will get a glutinous mess that will mold before the worms can eat the cornmeal. You wait the second day so that most of the cornmeal is eaten or is taken into the soil before adding the kitchen waste. Kitchen waste has a lot of moisture, and will cause the cornmeal to mold if added on the same day.
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6
Add kitchen waste daily beginning on the third day. Sprinkle the surface with cornmeal once a week. Two pounds of worms can eat one pound of food every 24 hours, and will produce enough castings to fill a 7-foot by 1-foot by 2-foot box halfway every four to six months.
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To harvest the soil, place a screen over the back of a garden trailer. Sift out any large bits of uncomposted material and allow the good soil to fall into the trailer. Return all worms to the bin and repeat entire process.
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Tips & Warnings
If there are too many worms at harvest time, divide the pile of worms carefully and make a new worm box with the "extras." Use a power drill and a 1/16-inch-diameter bit to drill air holes and drain holes in the top and bottom of an old cooler if you want to make a worm bin that does not use wood.
