Colin Leitch , AU
Colin Leitch , AU
The third and last guess , Colin from Melbourne ( VIC ) has been exposed to composting quite a while ago and is still doing it as a hobby that has grown along the year .
Worm ’ ag : When and what got you into vermicomposting ?
Colin : It was accidental actually Huy ! About 20 years ago I discovered that the family compost bin ( an open-bottomed one ) was teaming with worms , which I attributed to the wet nature of our kitchen waste . From then on , it was pretty basic worm bin management : dump the kitchen organics and garden weeds in each week , fluff the bin if it gets smelly and harvest every six months or so . No dramas ...
My vermicomposting took a big step up two years ago when I set up an organic waste collection project at the Community House in Lorne ( 1000 permanent residents and up to 25 000 holiday makers in summer ). That ' s when I had to learn about worm husbandry !
Worm ’ ag : What difficulties have you encountered along the way and how have you resolved them ?
Colin : The initial aim of the project was to divert 90 % of Lorne ' s cafe wastes from landfill . I started collecting from one cafe in May 2015 and by the end of the year was collecting around 300 kg of wastes per week . The key elements to stepping up from household quantities to commercial quantities without buying any worms nor spending significant amounts on infrastructure were :
I divided up my original worm farm population and established five large wheelie bins as worm nurseries ; and flattened a mature compost heap containing some worms to form a 5 sq m worm bed to handle large quantities of waste
I used the courses available on Bentley ' s Red Worm Composting site to get an understanding of how to optimise worm production . In particular , I utilised the concept of living bedding by combining the sloppy juice pulp I was collecting with rotted woodchips that I poached from neighbouring land . This overcame the problem of embarrassing odours in the Community House carpark when the juice pulp went off !
I quickly discovered that worms steered clear of large quantities of used coffee grounds ( UCG ) fresh from the barista . So I cadged a truckload of shredded garden trimmings and hot composted it by adding around 30 % UCG . Once the coffee compost had cooled , it became attractive worm food as well as providing a new source of living bedding to mix with the juice pulp .
In the first six months we made around 9 cu m of coffee compost ( containing some 3 t of UCG !) which was way more than the worms needed so a number of us at the Community House used the coffee compost in potting mixes and directly in our gardens . It took an article about UCG being allelopathic to realise that this was the likely cause of our collective gardening failures : seeds that hadn ' t germinated , tube stock that had died , stunted growth of veggie seedlings and defoliation of vines !!
Worm bed managed as a wedge 30